A Spanish twist on brussels and bacon done in the style of a stir-fry.
A simple and elegant raw zucchini salad.
Over the last few years I have started to love zucchini, but I have to admit that by the end of the season, it’s like, “Not another bloody zucchini!” That said, this is one of the joys of eating seasonally -- anticipation and excitement at the start of the season, despair and overload at the end.
For some, the beginning of spring is marked by budding crocuses and blooming daffodils. For me, it’s all about the rhubarb. After a long winter of baking endless nut, citrus, and chocolate cream pies, the emergence of those leafy pink stalks from the ground is a harbinger of the coming bounty of spring and summer fruits. Some wait until strawberries are in season a few weeks later to start baking with rhubarb, but I use it as soon as humanly possible. Toasted almond frangipane is a lovely, creamy foil to the tartness of the rhubarb, and adds an extra layer of flavor without overwhelming the star ingredient.
The haunting scent of allspice balanced with bright lemon juice and flecks of nuts make these Middle Eastern kofta (meat patties) hard to resist. This recipe is Sally’s savior as she lives with a major carnivore (exactly the opposite of how she likes to eat). She uses 80% to 85% ground chuck, but because there is so much flavor here, you can use leaner meat and still have no fear of cooking them to well done as recommended. Serve them with simple brown jasmine rice or the Golden Rice Salad, and a spoonful of Cucumber Yogurt Salad.
The way America is eating chicken breasts, the day of the "Franken-chicken," one big breast staggering around on toothpick legs, cannot be far off.
Cut into buttery little pieces, this cross between a tart and a cookie crumbles and then melts away as you eat it. Best of all, this recipe belies the assumption that you need the angels on your shoulder to make tender pastry, and that it takes a lot of time.
If you cook no other potato recipe in your lifetime, you must try this one. A small amount of turmeric brings out the earthiness and somehow the sweetness of potatoes. This is kind of an upside-down potato casserole with the caramely onions on the bottom rather than the top. A final handful of crisp almonds takes these potatoes over the top.
A beauty queen of the first order, this dish flies in the face of the old saying, "two peas in a pod." The truth is no two peas are ever the same.
Roasting blanched almonds very slowly insures that they remain crisp for several weeks. In addition to bundling them with bottles of bone-dry Manzanilla sherry as gifts, I often serve the combination when friends drop by for cocktails.