Simple Yellow Cake
Simple Yellow Cake is a recent addition to my collection of one-bowl cake recipes. The recipe comes from Laurie Colwin’s beloved More Home Cooking, specifically, the essay “Four Easy Pieces.” Unrelated peach picture. For years I read this recipe, which Colwin describes as a “classic, basic sponge cake English women…
Pickled Eggs
Dorothy Hartley, writing in Food In England, offers this unattributed quotation about pickled eggs, dating to 1700: “When eggs are plentiful, farmers wives’ take four or six dozen newly laid, and boil them hard; then, taking off the shells, they place them in earthenware jars and pour upon them scalding…
Lamb Chops with Pomegranate Molasses and Olive Oil
Lamb Chops with Pomegranate Molasses and Olive Oil is inspired by a Paula Wolfert recipe in The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen, a book I often cook from. While today’s recipe departs significantly from the original, sources always merit citation. Basically, you’re marinating lamb in pomegranate molasses, olive oil, tomato paste, seasonings,…
Cherry Ice Cream
I know: cherry season is fifteen seconds long, and for many people, that fifteen seconds has passed. Where I call for cherries, substitute your favorite fresh fruit: peaches, apricots, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, or plums. Or use frozen fruits. Further, none of these recipes require an ice cream maker. A rather…
Stir-Fried Okra
Today’s recipe, a simple stir-fry, came about after consulting numerous cookbooks. Few American cookbooks mention okra, and those who do often have little good to say about it. Deborah Madison, writing in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, can only manage “okra is slimy, and rather than try to ignore this fact,…
String Beans Provencal
The word “Provencal,” like “Tuscany,” sets off a chain of associations: sweeping vistas, weathered farmhouses, trestle tables laden with oozy cheeses and ripe figs. In lieu of such wonders, I give you our back yard, two weeks ago, when the wild roses were blooming . The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook…
On tuna salad (tuna salad sandwiches)
— For years tuna salad sandwiches, along with hot dogs and fish sticks, were the go-to food when feeding large numbers of American children, especially in school lunchrooms. These sandwiches were comprised of cheap white bread filled with a few limp pickle chips and an oval of tuna fish,…
Zucchini & Tomato Baked Pasta
Zucchini and tomato baked pasta is one of those recipes that reads long and complicated but is neither. It’s also vegetarian and easily made vegan, should the need arise. Still not sold? Zucchini and tomato baked pasta improves with keeping, meaning it may be prepared ahead of time. The dish…
Halvah Muffins
Welcome new readers and thank you for being here. I know some people signed up for the mailing list. Please bear with me while I ensure that runs smoothly. — As part of my ongoing campaign to help my husband put on weight, I bought a box of pistachio halvah…
White Beans
A year ago this month my husband John was admitted to the hospital, spending part of that time in the ICU. After three weeks, he was discharged with a diagnosis of diverticulosis and told to eat more fiber. Longtime readers know John has a rare form of Muscular Dystrophy. He’s…
