Are you finzlizing your Thanksgiving menu? Will you make the same foods as last year or will you try to mix it up? My mother and I love to host Thanksgiving together and we have pretty much honed our menu over past the few decades so that it is just how we want it. I did revolutionize the way we cooked the turkey about 7 years ago. (See this ...
Fall Cooking: Potato Leek Soup
The thing that you have to understand is that my husband loves soup. Rarely a day goes by during which that man does not eat a bowl of soup. And he is not at all dismayed when he has soup at lunch and comes home to find that there is soup for dinner. A two-soup day? Heaven as far as he is concerned. What's funny is that my beloved late father ...
Leek and Mustard Tart
Today’s post is sponsored by Door to Door Organics, a new grocery delivery service in Chicago, in my capacity as a Brand Ambassador. There are so many delicious vegetables that are at their peak in fall, such as squash, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, and kale. When my Door to Door Organics Medium Mixed Produce Box arrived these week, I was ...
Oktoberfest Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage
For some, October means Oktoberfest, the outdoor festival celebrating Bavarian culture, cuisine, and, of course, beer. Not being a big beer drinker myself -- although I did enjoy a pint of Bell's Amber every now and again in my Ann Arbor days -- thinking about Oktoberfest makes me think about food. I do not know much about Bavarian cuisine, but ...
Chive and Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits
Sometimes what I have made for dinner doesn't feel like it is quite enough. Maybe I made a big pot of delicious soup but something seems to be missing. Maybe we are having an omelet and green salad - one of my favorite desperation dinners -- but I'm still craving carbs. That is when I turn to biscuits. Homemade bread may take hours of preparation, ...
Chicken Escabeche & Black Bean Tostadas with La Morena
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser, La Morena. All opinions are mine alone. #VivaLaMorena #CollectiveBias Chicago knows its Latin food. With a large and thriving Mexican population and some of the country's best Mexican restaurants -- need I mention Rick Bayless? -- Chicagoans understand that the ...
How to Make Kreplach
If you think the matzo ball is the ultimate Jewish soup dumpling, let me quickly disabuse you of that notion. As much as I love a fluffy matzo ball, my heart truly belongs to kreplach, the meat-filled pasta known affectionately as Jewish tortellini and served during the High Holidays. Never heard of kreplach? You are not alone. While matzo ball ...
Carrot Tzimmes for Rosh Hashanah
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year holiday begins at sundown on September 24. One of my favorite holidays to cook for, Rosh Hashanah is a joyous occasion and the holiday meals are festive. As I explained in my earlier posts, traditional Rosh Hashanah foods are often sweet - to express our wish for a sweet new year - or round to symbolize the circle ...
Round Challah for Rosh Hashanah
As I mentioned earlier this week, the Jewish New Year holiday, Rosh Hashanah, is right around the corner. The holiday, which lasts two days, begins at sundown on September 24. Rosh Hashanah is a festive occasion, as most New Year celebrations tend to be. Many Jews will mark the occasion with a holiday dinner for friends and family. I explained ...
Rosh Hashanah Dinner: Chicken with Dried Fruit
As some of you know, I am in the midst of writing my first cookbook. The manuscript of the book, which will be about food swapping, is due in seven months. That sounds like a long time yet I have a lot to do in those seven months: research, writing, and, most important, creating and testing recipes. As a result, I have been posting here less than ...
What to Do with Fresh Figs
Dip them in chocolate ganache, of course! Why? What do you do with fresh figs? It is definitely fig season and if you only know figs from the dried kind -- or even worse, Newtons -- you are in for a treat. Fresh figs are sweet, juicy and altogether luscious. Lending themselves to both sweet and savory preparations, fresh figs are the fruit you ...
Cheddar Jalapeño Corn Pudding
My family cannot get enough sweet corn during the summer months. Once the sweet corn appears at the farmers market in late July, you can put me down for a dozen ears a week. Why buy fewer than twelve ears when corn is so inexpensive? I cook all dozen ears at the same time. Once the water is boiling, or the grill is hot, it is no extra work to cook ...
How to Host a Bagel Brunch
This past weekend, I hosted a baby shower for a friend who, like me, is an East Coast transplant to Chicago. Because my friend and her husband are both from New York, we decided to make New York the theme of the shower. The menu? A classic bagel brunch, of course! A bagel brunch is a relaxed and easy party to throw because you purchase most of ...
Farmers Market Find: Fava Beans
Some foods really make you work for it. Fava beans definitely fall into that category. Any food that you have to shell not once but twice very much runs the risk of being not worth the effort. Luckily, favas -- which the British call broad beans -- have a distinctive, nutty flavor and a buttery texture that endear them to sophisticated eaters ...
Farmers Market Find: Gooseberries
I freely admit that I am a sucker for the most unusual item at the market or on a menu. Sometimes my instinct to try that new-to-me food can backfire, such as the bitter and grassy corn shoots in my salad at the Zingerman's Roadhouse. (Some things are just not for eating, folks.) But nevertheless, I press on. So it was that I passed by all the ...
Grilled Vegetables with Balsamic-Lime Reduction
It's the lazy days of summer and I am feeling lazy too. I barely want to lift a finger, let alone make dinner. Luckily, it is also grilling season. That means that I can enlist my husband to make dinner. Thank heavens. Here is what we ate for dinner the past two nights. Saturday: grilled chicken sausage, grilled vegetables and tabbouleh. ...
Picnic Fare: Garlic & Herb Roast Beef Sandwiches and No-Mayo Potato Salad
JR is on the swim team this summer. That means that, in addition to daily practice after camp, he has weekly meets that start around 5 pm and end, well, end several hours later if we're lucky. Zuzu does the swim team during the school year. Those meets start at 6 am and end, well, end several hours later -- if we're lucky. Our mistake, plainly, was ...
Mariano’s Makes Summertime Living Easier
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. #MyMarianos #Collective Bias Summertime and the living is easy. Nowhere is that more true than Chicago. Winter is brutal and spring inevitably a wet, cold disappointment, but summer in Chicago is glorious. The days are warm and sunny; every weekend boasts a different ...
Summer Cooking: Spicy Caprese Pasta
I'm hot. You're hot. She's hot. We're hot! Sounds like a bad wedding band, right? As fond as I am of party hits from the 80's, today I am actually just talking about the weather. It went from cold and rainy to sweltering and humid overnight in Chicago. Yesterday was the first day of the year where I had absolutely no interest in eating hot food. ...
Elegant First Course: Cold Pea Soup with Mint
The appearance of shelling peas at the Oak Park Farmers Market on Saturday meant that I could make one of my all-time favorite recipes this weekend. A recipe that is only in play for a few weeks each year: cold pea soup with mint. Luckily, this recipe is also a favorite with my soup-loving husband, so when I put it on the menu for Father's Day, he ...
Sautéed Turnip Greens with Green Garlic
There is a saying in cooking, or maybe gardening, along the lines of: what grows together, goes together. As spring turns into summer, and farmers markets all over the country begin to overflow with fresh, local fruits and vegetables, it can be helpful to keep that axiom in mind. If you are not sure how to use your farmers market, or garden, ...
Father’s Day Dinner: Lighter Chicken Parm
Is it a bad sign that when I made my husband's favorite dish for dinner this week, he was terrified? Had I bought something expensive? Was the car totaled? There had to be some bad news. Why else would I make chicken parmigiana on a random weeknight? (The truth is, I was just in the mood for it myself. Also, I bought a handbag.) Yes, my ...
How to Make A Watermelon Basket
Turning whole watermelons into adorably shaped bowls for serving fruit salad is a Pinterest staple. Having once carved a round baby watermelon into a bloody brain for a second grade Halloween party, I felt like I needed to redeem myself by making one of these less macabre watermelon shapes. JR's first grade class Author's Tea was on the agenda for ...
Rhubarb Jam Bars with Ginger Crumb
It absolutely kills me that my husband doesn't like rhubarb. WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE? Rhubarb is tart -- not cloyingly sweet like strawberries can be. (Oh please, don't send me hate mail because I dared to say that strawberries are too sweet. I like strawberries just fine, but I think we've all had a few overly sweet strawberry desserts in our time. ...
Farmers Market Find: Green Garlic
If you have visited your local farmers market this spring, chances are you have seen a lot of spring onions. But are you sure it was green onions that you saw? Could it possibly have been green garlic? The two crops look very similar. And, of course, they are related as onions and garlic are both members of the allium family. (Other cousins include ...