Frico friabile is a one-ingredient wonder and a delightful antipasto—especially alongside a glass of chilled white wine from the region. Nothing more than grated cheese which is melted and then browned to create a light, airy, crisp, and impressively sized wafer, this simple snack highlights the intense flavor of the cheese. But despite their simplicity, these wafers can turn out bitter, and too salty, without the crispness we preferred. Some recipes cook the cheese in butter or olive oil, but using a 10-inch nonstick skillet eliminated the need for any fat. To flip the round without it tearing or stretching, we removed the pan from the heat for several seconds to cool; allowing a few moments for the cheese wafer to set up made it easy to flip. Cooking the cheese at high heat caused it to brown too fast and become bitter, but at low heat it took too long and dried out. A combination of medium and medium-high heat was best. Serve frico with drinks and other antipasti bites such as olives and tomatoes. Montasio cheese is worth tracking down; if you can't find it, substitute Asiago.
During a college study-abroad year at the Università di Bologna, William Teresa of Minneapolis, Minnesota, dated a fellow student. The couple would frequently visit her family in Cesena, a small city in Emilia– Romagna, where Teresa became immersed in the cooking lives of his girlfriend’s parents and grandparents. “They were so lovely,” he said. “It was wonderful to be in a place where food is so rooted in tradition and place, and to encounter something that has always been made by the same people, with little variation.” One of the grandmothers baked a chewy-crispy and outrageously rich almond cookie, which the family enjoyed with espresso. Teresa was instantly smitten and perfected the formula when he returned home. “They’re not like any other American cookie,” he said. “Maybe that’s why so many people ask me for the recipe.”
When he’s not working, Scott Rohr of St. Paul, Minnesota, is baking. “It’s sort of a joke with my friends,” he said. “I don’t remember a time when I haven’t baked. I grew up in one of those houses where everything was homemade. Some people come home from work and boil water for dinner. I take out eggs and butter.” For his winning recipe, Rohr started with his tattered recipe card for a cream-of-tartar-based sugar cookie, which is a copy of a similarly well-worn card from his grandmother’s kitchen. The filling and the pistachios, however, were all his idea. “I just started messing around,” he said. “It’s really hard for me to follow a recipe. These cookies aren’t complicated, and they come together fast. They look like something substantial, but they’re not hard to make. If you’ve ever baked a cookie, then you can bake these, for heaven’s sake.”
Michelle Clark’s minor obsession with a dark chocolate–chipotle truffle got her thinking: could it translate into a cookie? The St. Paul, Minnesota, resident kicked the idea around for a few weeks before formulating an unforgettable cookie. “It has fun with your tongue,” she said. “You take a bite and you get one flavor; then you chew and you get another flavor. It’s not just, ‘Here, have a sugar cookie.’” To those who may say that Clark’s unconventional entry doesn’t overtly shout “Happy Holidays,” she has a response. “Sure, it’s not your basic Santa cutout cookie,” she said. “But it has both chocolate and cinnamon, and those are both Christmas flavors to me. Besides, to have the scent of chocolate and cinnamon in the oven, well, what’s more Christmas than that?”
A last-minute need to fill out a holiday cookie tray found Kay Lieberherr of St. Paul, Minnesota, turning to the palmiers at Surdyk’s in Minneapolis. “It turned out that everyone asked for the recipe for the palmiers, and not for the cookies that I had baked,” she said with a laugh. That response sent her on a mission to develop her own palmier recipe. Using commercially prepared puff pastry makes this recipe a snap to prepare. “I love it when you don’t spend a lot of time on something, yet people think, ‘Wow, that must have taken days,’” said Lieberherr.
Meat loaf is an iconic American dish with European origins, which has become one of my favorite meals to make at home because it’s so adaptable. And it has personal significance for me because it’s the first dish Michael cooked for me. My aromatic version offers a hint of heat, a bit of sourness, and an unexpected whisper of sweetness.
Roasting chickens during pockets of spare time on the weekends pays huge dividends during busy weeks. A whole chicken can feed a lot of people, and for a family of two like ours, it lasts a few days. Plus, a roasted chicken can be repurposed for an endless number of dishes, including salad (page 148), sandwiches, mac and cheese . . . the possibilities are endless. In this nifty roast chicken, I lace the meat with green chutney and serve extra on the side for dunking.
Crispy on the outside, soft and speckled with flavorful goodness on the inside. There really isn’t anything to dislike about the stuffing muffin. Try em out on your Thanksgiving guests this year and prepare for the compliments to roll into the new year. :)
A little sweet potato kneaded into yeasted dough makes rolls extra soft and sweet. Down South, we like our bread so tender that it’s sometimes on the edge of underbaked. I affectionately call thoses quishy rolls. These orange-tinted rounds can—and should—be baked all the way through. They’ll end up as supple as any squishy ones.