(Almost) Wood-Fired Pizza In Your Kitchen!
My no-so-secret method to fake a pizza oven in your home kitchen. Spoiler alert: preheating takes just 10 minutes!
Roasted Red Plum & Thyme Jam
Preserving is a fundamental, old-school way to keep a thrifty kitchen. Buy fruits and vegetables in peak season, and they will be cheaper and tastier. Can some of this goodness, and you can relive the tastes of summer when things like fresh plums are a distant memory. This jam uses pretty roasted red plums along...
Turmeric Ginger Beer
Fresh turmeric makes this simple homemade ginger beer bright, electric yellow. Spicy, lightly sweet and refreshing, this is a perfect cold treat for ginger lovers. One surprise: my favorite method for making ginger beer turns out to be the simplest.
Lacy Chocolate Dessert Bowls
Because chocolate is such a precious ingredient, I always want to make the most of it. And sometimes that means making a dramatic presentation with a small quantity of chocolate. I wanted to make a pretty, delicate chocolate container that was not too difficult (or time consuming) to make and did not require special equipment....
Olive Oil Granola
Bakery-style granola can be both addictive and satisfying, they're also rather expensive. Even using top notch ingredients you can get a lot more granola for your buck when you make it yourself. I whipped up a fancy new granola recipe, complete with pedigreed ingredients (almonds, olive oil, sea salt). This granola is fancy...
Pumpkin Taffy
Happy Halloween, everyone! Now let’s all make our own candy! Homemade candy can be a fun, interactive alternative to the ubiquitous processed, artificial sweets. While most candy making is not particularly kid-friendly (think dangerous, boiling sugars and the most impossibly messy ingredient of all: melted chocolate). Taffy is a happy exception. Once the tricky boiling...
Homemade Veggie Burgers
Veggie burgers don’t always have to be seen as a second-rate meat substitute; at their best they have a wholesome, not-too-filling-but-still-satisfying vegetable-y goodness. From a culinary perspective, veggie burgers are just a savory vegetable croquette topped with all of the delicious trimmings of a burger. The freezer section of your local grocery probably has its...
Oatmeal Sandwich Bread
To be perfectly honest, I am really more of an artisanal bread person. I swoon over a chewy yet crisp ciabatta, or a thick slice from a rustic boule. But I’m no bread elitist. I am not blind to the pleasures of American-style sandwich bread. It’s soft, moist even crumb is perfect for toasting, and...
Blood Orange Marmalade
Marmalade is much easier to make than most people presume (particularly made in small batches like this one). There are plenty of recipes dedicated to making jams and jellies with low sugar content. This is not one of those recipes. Marmalade is traditionally a sugar preserve — so I make no apologies about the sugar...
Whole Wheat Crackers
I enjoy all of the little– shall we say– particularities of working with pastry doughs. They must be carefully handled. (As one of my dear pastry instructors would say “like children: gentle, but firm.”) They must rest, chilled, for the appropriate amount of time, allowing the gluten to relax. Then they must be cut and...
Homemade Vanilla Extract
If you read the “ingredients” section in any book with a pastry chef’s name on the front, you will likely find a discussion of that chef’s preferred vanilla bean, complete with a discussion of its unique and superior qualities. Now let me first state that there is a marked difference between vanilla beans from different...
Candied Citrus Peel
I first candied citrus peels when I was living in Florence. In fact, I’m not sure that I had even heard of candied citrus peel before. I was amazed to find out that the pithy, spongy white part of the rind could be miraculously transformed into something far better than edible…. I would even say...
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