Until I moved to New Mexico, I had never tasted tres leches cake. And the first few times I did, I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. The samples I had in local restaurants didn’t have much flavor – and, shockingly, they were actually kind of dry! I couldn’t figure out how they…
Archives for February 2011
Creamy Honey Mustard Salad Dressing
A little over a year ago I swore off bottled salad dressings. I grew up on Kraft dressing – sticky white ranch, sweet and oily dark-red Catalina, and (my favorite) bright orange French. I’d stopped using those several years before when the tangy orange dressing stopped tasting pleasant to me and just tasted like chemicals….
Moo Shu Pork with Vegetables
Cravings often come on hard and fast. Sometimes you don’t even know where they came from. I know right where last week’s craving for mu shu pork came from, though; I opened my bag of extras from the Los Poblanos CSA and spotted the package of Leona’s tortillas from Chimayo, NM. Something about their nonuniform shape,…
Creamy Baked Ziti with Cottage Cheese and Tomato Sauce
Baked pasta is incredibly appealing, especially on chilly winter evenings. Yielding pasta, tangy tomato sauce, creamy cheese, chewy brown edges – what’s not to love? Unfortunately, baked pasta often fails to live up to its Platonic ideal. The pasta overbakes to mush, or comes out dry and unappealing; the ricotta layer that should give such…
Browned-Bone Chicken Stock
You might say there’s nothing unfussy about making your own chicken stock. I would counter that, while it’s pretty fussy to insist on cooking everything with homemade chicken stock, making your own is simple. And, like baking bread or roasting a chicken, there’s something about it that gives a primal satisfaction. This is cooking at…