You won’t find chunks of lobster, cheeses with French names, or even bits of bacon in this macaroni & cheese. It’s certainly not virtuous (whole milk, butter and cheese are used with abandon) and it’s far from elegant. Yet this recipe is one of my favorites. It’s fun to make as it takes a little finesse, it makes your home smell wonderful as it bakes, and one spoonful will bring back lots of memories. In short, this recipe for macaroni and cheese yields good food.
After a week of overcast days and dismal weather, today blue skies and a warm sun are making me want to put on shorts and eat ice cream. A steaming bowl of belly warming, cream of broccoli soup couldn’t be further from my mind. Unfortunately, that bowl of soup is exactly what I whipped up this morning for a segment on WCNC’s Charlotte Today show. Let it be known that I’ve never claimed to have good timing.
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Tagged Broccoli, Charlotte Today, Comfort Food, Food, How-to, Recipe, Soup, video
What a shame that quiche is usually reserved for bridal showers and ladies lunches. After all, it’s an economical entrée of endless variations that is equally at home on the table for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Consider that you can prepare it ahead of time and serve it hot, cold or at room temperature and your probably kicking yourself that you don’t have a quiche in the fridge now.
Before you run off to the grocery store to buy the ingredients to make this quiche, stop for just a minute. Peek inside your fridge. I’m willing to bet that you have some milk or cream and a couple of eggs. How about some flour and butter? Yes? Congratulations. You can make a quiche.
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Tagged Baking, cheese, Eggs, How-to, milk, Pastry Dough, pie dough, quiche, Recipe
Every time I make this sandwich, my husband starts talking business plans. He wants to know how much the food costs for such a sandwich would run and how many he thinks I could make on a Sunday morning. Talk then gets into whether a food truck or a food cart would be a better long-term investment.
“We need to think about these things,” he tells me. ”After all, we wouldn’t do this full-time. Nope, we would just have our little banh mi cart (or truck) on Sundays for Panthers home games. But” and he pauses here for emphasis, “we would make a killing. How could people resist this sandwich? They’d have to buy it.”
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Tagged banh mi, Football Favorite, Recipe, Sandwich, sriracha, Vietnamese
Earlier this summer, I was excited to be featured in an article about Davidson College alumni making careers in the food industry for my school’s alumni magazine: the Davidson Journal. As part of the article, titled “Main Courses,” they asked me to share a recipe that I thought alumni might enjoy.
I wanted to pick a recipe that was approachable, but also taught a technique that could easily be applied to other meals. My two most frequent requests from clients seeking private cooking lessons is that they want to learn how to cook fish and that they want to cook healthy, yet still delicious, food. This recipe for Halibut a la Provencal is perfect on both counts.
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Tagged en papillote, Fish, halibut, How-to, Quick and Easy, Recipe, video
When it’s this hot, easy and refreshing are my two qualifications when it comes to preparing dinner. This recipe qualifies on both counts. It also uses one of my favorite cuts of meat: the flank steak. Lean and flavorful flank steak is an economical alternative to the prime cuts yet still a step up from the humble skirt steak. Yes, some might say that flank steak has a reputation for being tough, but I promise that cooking it to medium-rare and slicing it against the grain will eliminate any gnashing of the teeth around your dinner table.
Where have I been? It’s August and my last post was back at the beginning of June. Since I last posted, I’ve taught over 30 cooking classes. The bulk of these classes were Kids Classes that I taught at Cooking Uptown here in Charlotte. In June, we offered four week-long courses for 9-13 year olds and then in July, we offered three week-long courses for 14-17 year olds. The courses were a great success (check out the press on WSOC-TV, WCNC, and in Southpark Magazine) and I have a new-found respect for parents everywhere. I have a better understanding of how you do it, but I still am in awe over how you do anything else!
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Tagged Baking, Breakfast, Food, Granola, Healthy, Kid Cooking, Recipe
I posted my recipe for shrimp ceviche over a year ago, but I couldn’t resist pulling it out one more time for a demonstration on WCNC’s Charlotte Today Show yesterday. After all it’s the perfect hot weather recipe and in Charlotte we have plenty of “hot.” Refreshing, colorful, and easily made ahead, this is the appetizer that you’ll want to serve to friends at your next BBQ.
It’s Mardi Gras! And if you can’t celebrate in the Crescent City, you might as well eat like a Cajun at home. Buttery barbecued shrimp, decadent eggs benedict, beignets, muffulettas, and bread pudding all rank high on my list of favorite New Orleans delicacies, but a good gumbo takes the baby in the King’s cake.
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Tagged duck, Football Favorite, gumbo, Mardi Gras, New Orleans, Recipe, Regional Cuisine, Roux
The internet revealed its full potential to me many years ago when this recipe arrived in my inbox. The title of the email read “$250.00 cookie recipe” or something similar and the body of the email told the story of a mother and daughter who had enjoyed a cookie at Neiman Marcus.
The cookie must have been delicious as the mother asked for the recipe and was told that it would cost “two fifty.” Only later, upon receipt of that credit card bill in the mail, did she realize that she was charged two hundred and fifty dollars for the recipe. Seeking justice, she promptly typed up the recipe, emailed it to all of her friends, and instructed everyone to get back at Neiman Marcus by forwarding this pricey cookie recipe to everyone they knew.
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