We have no idea if this dish comes from France, but its clever simplicity feels utterly French to us.
There is not a woman of any age whose heart will not beat a little more quickly when this gorgeous sweet is placed on the table.
Moist chunks of smoked fish, nubs of tender asparagus and handfuls of fresh herbs come together in this pasta that sings of spring.
Mascarpone is a delicious fresh cow's milk cheese -- it tastes like a cross between whipped cream and cream cheese.
Every once and a while, my mother follows one of my recipes. Actually, "follows" is too exacting a word for what goes on. Let's just say, every once and a while, my mother decides to cook something of mine she's seen in the New York Times.
A long with muscadine grapes, butter beans are among the farmer's market treasures of late summer in Charleston—reason to wake up with gusto to another day of stultifying heat and oxford-soaking humidity. We do all kinds of things with butter beans: we make a hummus-like spread for the cocktail hour, we simmer them with seasoning meats of all sorts, and we compose marinated salads aplenty. But this may be our most simple treatment yet, and one of the most satisfying.
Croque Monsieur is essentially a toasted cheese and ham sandwich. Put a fried egg on top and you've got a Croque Madame (the egg is supposed to resemble a lady's hat). What makes the difference between a toasted cheese and ham sandwich and a Croque Monsieur is the cheese – in a Croque Monsieur it comes in the form of a creamy cheese sauce. And boy, does this make a difference!
Equipment:
Lemon curd whizzed in a food processor for a minute or so becomes a lighter-than-air, creamy sauce for these sweet and tangy dessert crepes, which were created by pastry chef and cookbook author Kir Jensen of The Sugar Cube food cart in Portland, Oregon. If you're using fresh rhubarb, pick out the darkest red stalks you can find—they have the best flavor and color.
Kir Jensen, a pastry chef and owner of The Sugar Cube food cart in Portland, Oregon, created these crepes to go with the roasted rhubarb and lemon cream recipes. But these nutty crepes would be great in many of the sweet recipes in this book, or eaten on their own with just a smear of butter and a drizzle of honey. Look for almond paste and almond meal in the baking section of your local supermarket. (When choosing almond paste, avoid marzipan, which is not the same thing.) Almond meal is very finely ground almonds; it's like a coarse flour.