Okay, my friends, here it is: This is the kind of recipe you’re here for. It’s truly luscious, sensuous with cream and bright with tangy lemon. But even better, it is dead simple. The shopping list for this luxurious lemon-cream sauce? Butter, cream, and lemons. I often read in Italian cookbooks that a simple…
Crispy Vietnamese Rice-Flour Crepes with Nuoc Cham
I live near Albuquerque’s International District, which means there are probably 20 Vietnamese restaurants within two miles of my house. I have by no means tried them all, but of those I’ve tried I have three favorites: Banh Mi Coda, an addiction, which I reviewed rapturously here; Banh Mi’s big sister, Cafe Trang, with its…
Savory Fig and Shallot Jam with bonus recipe: Wilted Spinach Salad with Fig Dressing
Take a deep breath. Can you smell that first whiff of fall in the air? In Albuquerque, the scent of early fall is the rich, mouthwatering aroma of green chile tumbling in the spinning mesh barrels of propane-fired roasters. Take a trip up the mountain, as we did on Saturday, and you’ll be rewarded with…
Japanese Curry Rice
I have hesitated for some time in putting this “recipe” on the blog, because it goes kind of like this: Follow the instructions on the box. But I finally decided to do it for three reasons: 1) Not many Americans know it exists; 2) It’s really delicious; and 3) It’s close to my heart. In…
Homemade Sriracha Sauce
It’s a ubiquitous sight in Asian restaurants around the country, that green-lidded squeeze bottle with the rooster on the front. The New York Times and NPR have run stories about it; Bon Appetit declared it “the new king of condiments” and suggested 25 ways to use it. (I think I need to try those shrimp soon.)…
Sour Cherries in Caramel Sauce
Yes. This is as delicious as it sounds. It came about simply enough: I got a sack of precious, rare sour cherries from the CSA. I wanted to use them in something simple but glorious, something that would show off their brilliance and not cover it up. Something, since it was midsummer hot, that did…
Spiced Plum Jam
Plums are not my favorite fruit. Even the best ones, eaten out of hand, don’t do much for me; to my taste, the skin is sour and the flesh insipid. However – as I learned years ago from a recipe for plum sorbet – a little home processing brings about a marvelous change. There is…
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….
Tomato Jam
This recipe, from reliable Mark Bittman, is a treasure. Easy to make and simply delicious, it’s a great recipe to have in your arsenal in the summer, when tomatoes are piling up and you need something new and exciting to do with them. The batch I just made used up a windfall of free tomatoes…