Yellow Onion

My mother got this recipe from her friend Judy, a Korean woman who immigrated to Argentina before making her way to the States. Judy’s empanadas are like grown-up hot pockets, neatly packaged meals of tomato-y beef, melty cheese, hard-boiled egg, and a single olive tucked into each like in a dirty martini (which makes all the difference). Stored in the freezer, they feed the family happily throughout the holiday season.

Serves 8–10

Buckwheat is the most popular grain in Slavic cuisine. When a crisis hits any Slavic country, buckwheat is usually the first thing that disappears from grocery store shelves. That’s how much people rely on it in their diet. I was never crazy about buckwheat when I was a kid. But when mom made me this soup, everything changed. It has the most alluring deep flavor of buckwheat and mushrooms with the right balance of sweetness and earthiness. It’s just like being wrapped in a cozy blanket and taking an autumn walk in a forest. I love eating this soup piping hot with the darkest rye bread I can find.

Its November and I’m gearing up for my holiday turkey.  I love a brined turkey and cooking with beer, so I combined these elements to create a juicy beer-brined turkey with a Dankful IPA gravy.  Dankful IPA has piney hop aromas, so I paired that with juniper berries in the brine to accentuate those flavors.  

The greatest failure when making potato salad is overcooking the spuds—creamy mashed pota-toes is a no-go for any potato salad recipe. You want a waxy variety like fingerlings, Yukon Golds, or red potatoes; these varieties will keep their shape and texture when cooked right. Bobby Seale, cofounder of the Black Panther Party, said it well in his 1988 cookbook Barbeque’n with Bobby, where he wrote under a recipe titled “Hunky Crunchy Potato Salad” that his mother’s potato salad was a “tasty quasi-mashed potato salad.” My pro tip is to season the potatoes while they are warm. Begin your training to be a queen.

This is a playful twist on a classic recipe that pulls you back to childhood.  I like cooking and pairing spicy, hearty dishes with Torpedo Extra IPA because the punch of the spice and sharp cheddar stand up to the hop forward, bitter notes of the beer.

Linguine with clams, white wine, fresh garlic, lemon, and parsley– Francis Lam’s One is a nod to a childhood dish his parents used to make when family or friends came for dinner. It’s a  simple and loose recipe that can be adjusted based on desire– add more wine and butter to make it more saucy, use additional clams for extra dinner guests, add herbs, or not depending on what you have on hand. 

Red rice is a traditional Southern dish (and a tradition in other cultures as well), and I love the nostalgia of it. This version is an update that makes it into an easy one-pot meal where you don’t have to cook the rice ahead of time. And there are so many variations. You can add cheese. You can serve it as a side instead of a main. You can make a vegetarian version. My children love it. My favorite thing is the way the rice gets crispy on top. It gives the dish that extra bite and texture that makes me happy.

"Tamal en cazuela is our ultimate comfort food," insists Acela Matamoros, one of Cuba's top cooking teachers and food historians. A kind of Cuban polenta -- or a stove-top tamal -- at its most basic, tamal en cazuela can be just a soft mush of water, cornmeal, and salt, sometimes eaten with milk and a sprinkle of sugar. Other versions use grated corn or the strained "milk" of the corn puree, which thickens when cooked. The flavorings range from classic pork, such as here, to chicken to seafood. This recipe, using pork ribs and a combination of grated corn and some cornmeal to thicken it, is easy and fairly quick but delivers plenty of that comforting, grandmotherly flavor.