This Cottage Cheesecake recipe originated from my great-grandmother and was a cheesecake my dad and Springfield Creamery co-founder, Chuck Kesey, loved to make. Delicious crust, easy to put together and the cottage cheese gives it a richer texture. The crystalized ginger on top is a favorite, but we have often topped with fresh berries as well - perfect!
These egg muffins are my homemade Starbucks dupe without the Starbucks price tag. I used to be a total cottage cheese skeptic, but once I blended it seamlessly with eggs, I was hooked—and now I’m living my best cottage cheese life! This little trick not only cranks up the protein, but it also nixes the heavy, curd-like texture for a silky bite. No wonder this is one of my most popular meal-prep recipes—low-sugar, low-carb, and packed with staying power to keep that midmorning crash at bay. Use the base recipe as a blank canvas for any chopped mix-ins you love!
This dish and Pad see ew (see variation) are both super popular Thai street food dishes known for their smoky flavour and deliciously chewy rice noodles. The combination of light and dark soy sauces stir-fried with Chinese broccoli and meat, often pork or chicken, creates a rich, savoury taste. The only difference between the two is that the pad kee mao stir-fry starts with lots of fiery chilli and finishes with some herbaceous Thai basil, making it an ideal meal to enjoy with a cold drink, hence the nickname ‘drunken noodles’.
I cannot begin to describe how delicious these are: toothsome from the bulgur, salty from the feta and fresh from all that parsley, whose innate bitterness brings the fritters into balance. They are, of course, inspired by that classic Middle Eastern salad tabbouleh and—just as in that dish—the parsley is not merely a herb offered up for a bit of additional flavor, it is used as a green leafy vegetable in its own right.
Growing up in a Greek community on Long Island, I did not eat meatloaf as a kid because that was always thought to be very much an American dish. But as an adult, it’s one that I have really adopted as my own, and I love it as an easy, high-protein main dish for weeknights. I also think it’s a perfect vessel for Greek flavors like Kalamata olives, feta, and oregano, with tzatziki served on the side. As a nod to the classic, I give you the option of an American-style, ketchup-based glaze, which I am partial to, but it’s easy to leave out, based on your preferences.
A happy marriage between a roulade and a quiche! Usually roulade is sweet, but the technique works well for a savory treat too. The creamy celery root and parsnip filling adds a touch of luxury and finesse. I usually serve this as an appetizer, but it also makes an ideal veggie entrée to feed 4 people.
Omelettes were a huge part of my diet when I was growing up. They were something quick and easy for my dad to make for us when our mum was in hospital in Kolkata for her radiotherapy treatments. We would roll these omelettes up inside flatbreads or place them between two slices of bread toasted in a pan to make a sandwich, then eat them – always with tomato ketchup.
“This is not considered a special-occasion cake, but everyone loves it. It’s an everyday cake to serve with tea.”—Nawida
Flavored with freshly ground cardamom and a little rose water, this cake is made with both all-purpose flour and corn flour (which is milled more finely than cornmeal). It has an ideal ratio of cake, topping, and just a little crunch, which you get from the coarse yellow semolina flour, or sooji in Hindi, that’s dusted on the bottom of the pan before you add the batter. The result is both familiar and exciting—it’s like the best and most interesting corn muffin ever. It’s also the perfect complement to any kind of tea. Nawida usually tops one side of the cake with mild white poppy seeds and nigella seeds, which have just a touch of bitterness, and the other side with black raisins and large pieces of walnut. You can choose just one topping, but both together on one plate make this very easy dessert so much more appealing—and this approach allows everyone to try both. Ideally this should be baked in a rectangular metal pan about 9 by 13 inches (23 by 33 cm) so that you can easily cut the cake into diamond shapes. I use a square metal brownie pan, so the pieces come out a little thicker, but in a pinch you could also use two round cake pans or even muffin tins. Nawida sometimes uses muffin tins shaped like hearts and stars so that it’s easy and fun for her kids to take a piece of cake to school. Just pay attention as it bakes, as the bake time will vary slightly with a different shape of pan. As with the firni on page 299, though you can buy cardamom pre-ground, for this dish I strongly recommend you grind it yourself. It doesn’t take very long!
Spätzle batter is simple, made of just flour, eggs and milk or water, plain or sparkling, which issupposed to help achieve a light and chewy texture of the noodles.
I’ve made versions of these crispy, delicate little fried cabbage pancakes at restaurants and in my very own home, where they are a breakfast staple. I’ve often watched my mom bulk them up with canned salmon and loads of the week’s forgotten vegetables. We’d eat them over bowls of hot grits or rice. To me, they are reminiscent of okonomiyaki (loosely translated as “grilled as you like it”), a popular savory pancake from southern Japan. I like to drizzle Spicy Sorghum-Miso Mustard (page 110) over them.