So Many Recipes, So Little Time
Another day — another lasagna. Nothing special: good sausage, good cheese, home made marinara — that’s what it is. Another family favorite workhorse. This recipe is huge and good for large gatherings. It also stores well and, in our clan, its leftovers have never been frozen, beautifully survived transportation to college campuses, and never went…
Julia Child’s The New Way to Cook was my very first cookbook. Ever. Almost thirty years ago, Tom got it to mark our move from Manhattan to New Jersey and the start of our new life. The book started my cooking craze. Until then, I didn’t really know how to boil eggs or peel potatoes….
When someone compliments my cooking, the family’s joint response is — Enjoy, she’ll never make it again. Can you blame me? So many recipes, so little time. However, there are exceptions. Here’s one. Since in 2003 I got Tom Valenti’s book of One Pot Meals, this lasagna has been on our table at least once…
Kimchi Fried Rice from Dinner in One by Melissa Clark — tasty, quick, easy, perfect for leftovers, excellent refrigerator cleanup. Love the ending of the recipe that suggests topping the rice with eggs, scallion greens, more kimchi, more sesame oil, more fish sauce, more soy sauce. More, more, more!.. That’s how I like it —…
Dan Dan Mian is one of our family favorites. We tried many versions of this simple Sichuan pork-and-noodles staple and never had a bad one. This version from the Milk Street Magazine is attractive with its super streamlined process — dinner comes together within minutes it takes to boil pasta and calls for the ingredients…
Honestly, the picture of the reddish brown mass called carcamusa in Milk Street Magazine didn’t excite me. Besides, I am not even good at imagining flavors by reading the ingredients. It just happened that all the parts were on hand and we had to have something for dinner and tomorrow’s lunches. My excitement started building…
Quite an undertaking for an average weekday dinner. Nevertheless, a woman of purpose and power, she persisted and, after six hours, we had a Jordanian Maqluba on a Tuesday night. This version is a compilation of different recipes but the main one I pushed from is Maqlubet el Foul el Akdhar from Falastin. Maqluba means…
Steamed Crab and Pork Shumai flavored with ginger, shallots, and scallions are much quicker to shape compared to regular dumplings. And only eight minutes in a streamer. WHAT WENT IN— small wonton wrappers (about 3” in diameter or across if square) FOR THE FILLING— 6 oz lump crabmeat— 6 oz ground pork— 1 Tbsp minced shallot— 1…
Savory Snow Balls. These pork and shiitake meatballs covered in sweet rice do look like mini snowballs and make the table so festive. They take under ten minutes in a steamer and can be steamed at the table. WHAT WENT IN— 3/4 cup sweet rice, rinsed and soaked in water for 2 hours— yuzu-kosho, for…
Donabe winter months go on. That was the day to pull out Mushi-nabe — a steamer kind of day. Steamed Shrimp on Tofu from Classic and Modern Japanese Clay Pot Cooking. These are absolutely ingenious shrimp tofu bites — chopped salted and peppered shrimp mounded on bite size pieces of tofu. Sprinkled with potato starch…