Here winter carrots, cut into thick strips, are slow-cooked in their own moisture until swollen, succulent, and flavorful. The vivid taste of the carrots, the aroma of the olives, and the pungency of the thyme make this a great accompaniment to meat or poultry.
The Lazy Front Porch Supper menu includes: Pickled Red Onions with Cilantro, Corn and Haricots Verts in Lime Shallot Butter, Heirloom Tomatoes with Bacon, Blue Cheese and Basil, Shellfish Watermelon Ceviche, Grilled Steaks with Red Chile Sauce, and Fresh Fig Tart with Rosemary Cornmeal Crust and Lemon Mascarpone Cream.
Porous, golden, and springy, real Russian blini are both ethereal and substantial, and utterly unforgettable. In the West, buckwheat blini are perceived as authentic. That much is true, but during Soviet times buckwheat flour completely disappeared from stores. I've never had buckwheat blini in Russia and when I tasted them in the West, I've found them dry and odd - a flavor anachronism.
When we were kids, eggs were a staple on our table. Meat or poultry showed up there once a week at the most, and more often than not, our "meat" dinners consisted of a delicious ragout of potatoes or cabbage containing bits of salt pork or leftover roast. Eggs were always a welcome main dish, especially in a gratin with béchamel sauce and cheese, and we loved them in omelets with herbs and potatoes that Maman would serve hot or cold with a garlicky salad.
Our favorite egg recipe, however, was my mother's creation of stuffed eggs, which I baptized "eggs Jeannette." To this day, I have never seen a recipe similar to hers, and we still enjoy it often at our house. Serve with crusty bread as a first course or as a main course for lunch.
Ingredients
This glorious cream cheese, caper, caraway seed, and paprika combination, spread over sour black bread or over slices of any dark or brown bread, is rhapsodically unbeatable.
Traditionally, smooth liver pâtés are bound with large quantities of pork fat, butter, cream, and egg yolks, which give them their rich and creamy consistency. The question is, what can be used in place of these saturated fats to achieve the same delicious effect?
This is a pretty winter antipasto requiring almost no work.
Alexander will like these olives. The seasonings are straight from his time. These are a good foil for the cheese and tomatoes, coarse bread, and cool wine, besides being classic finger food. Since the olives keep about two weeks in a refrigerator, it is a generous recipe.
You can make this Lebanese soup with a light chicken stock, but the leek trimmings, an onion, a few extra wax beans, and cilantro stems will make a fine vegetable stock. In either case, the stock should be delicate enough that it doesn't overwhelm the vegetables.