A few years ago, a very dear friend gave me a Hungarian cookbook that had once belonged to her grandmother. My gram was Hungarian, but never met a recipe she wanted to follow or write down, so this book has been my next best reference whenever I get homesick for the meals she used to make. That goes some way towards explaining how I found myself paging though it on a recent 25 degree day, sick and cold and thinking of nothing but the comfort of soup with dumplings. However, a yellowing bookmark was still tucked into its pages marking off the recipe for Hungarian Love Letters and, what can I say? The antihistamines had me lulled into a sentimental… Continue reading »
The Beet of My Heart
It started with the beets. This weekend I went on a bit of a tear cooking with my eyes more than anything else, and it all began when I spotted a lovely box filled with deep purple beets from Gardener’s Gourmet at the farmers’ market. Since I’d also managed to stuff some cilantro, limes, buttermilk, and broccoli into my basket while shopping, when I got back home, I worked out a plan of attack that looked like this: First, I got the oven going and made another one of these for the husband. Then, while the oven was hot, I cleaned, cubed, and roasted the beets like this, though the yogurt dressing I made was pressed garlic, grated ginger, and… Continue reading »
Yes, This Is Just Soup (No Lunchbox Edition)
I’m really getting into soup for lunch, especially now that I’ve started just drinking it out of a Mason jar. When I need to travel, I pop a lid on it and toss it in my bag; when I’m working at home, that still means less silverware to wash. Either way, my computer keyboard remains un-sticky and crumb-free. Plus, it’s winter (ostensibly), and I’m a girl who loves her roasted root vegetables and her immersion blender. Lately, I’m also loving buttermilk for baking and salad dressings, so a little of that goes in the pot as well. You see how this works? Soup is one of the few cooking areas where I feel safe stirring without a net because while… Continue reading »
Don’t Lick the Screen
[via NPR] I know this is old in internet time, but I just can’t stop watching this butter commercial. Maybe it’s all the “Big Game” hype that has me commercially minded this week, but still. The color is obviously eye-popping and it’s about food, so there’s that connection. But I think it’s actually the sound design under the creepy vocal line that has me obsessed. That said, director Dougal Wilson clearly has a handle on the visual. Here’s another one of his creations: Aww…I feel emotionally manipulated, which I’m pretty sure means it worked.
Fuzzy Math: The Hot Toddy (A History)
I am very excited to be able to welcome musician and mixologist Matthew Guerrieri, a.k.a. Soho the Dog, into the Kitchen. What began with me pestering him for a hot toddy recipe transformed into me pestering him for an entire post, and boy did he deliver. Please enjoy, and big thanks to Matthew–for his wit, his knowledge, and his willingness to handle flaming alcohol in the name of thorough recipe testing.—Molly In 1805, having become the first professor of chemistry at Yale University, Benjamin Silliman traveled to the British Isles to get up to international speed on the subject he had been hired to teach. Silliman also took the opportunity to observe the social mores of his hosts, duly reporting… Continue reading »
Pas Grand Chose
After two consecutive weekends making sourdough bread using recipes that took literally days to complete, I was transfixed by this little gem while paging through the new King Arthur Flour catalog with my morning coffee: a recipe for French Herb Bread. It wasn’t just that I had recently stumbled across an adorable little bag of Herbes de Provence in my pantry (a souvenir of a French vacation–sadly, not mine). It was that the whole kit and kaboodle went into the mixing bowl in one go and would come out of the oven just a few short hours later. I was smitten, and the butter wasn’t even melting on the bread yet. By 8:15 a.m., it was measured and mixed and… Continue reading »
