Ingredients
I had these potatoes for Christmas dinner at the home of my friend Lindita Klein. She found a similar recipe in Gourmet magazine that called for butter in place of the olive oil and a sprig of Italian parsley in place of the rosemary. You can use either or both of the herbs, but olive oil makes these potatoes remarkable. This is one of those dishes that everyone loves and wants to know how to make. It is simple and enormously appealing.
The very simple stuffing for this butternut squash is made primarily of the flesh of the squash itself. Garlic, a bit of ginger, and chopped scallions are added for flavor. If you are not fond of ginger, which gives this combination its unusual taste, you may want to use less of it, or eliminate it altogether. Bread crumbs, tossed with a little oil and sprinkled on top of the filling, become brown and crisp in the oven, and their crunchy texture contrasts nicely with the creaminess of the filling.
All those people who claim to hate Brussels sprouts will like this.
This is the perfect potion to sip when experiencing winter flu. It nourishes and hydrates the body without disrupting digestion.
Mary Sonnier's eccentric hot chocolate is an evocation worthy of New Orleans's legendary voodoo priestess, Marie Laveau. But the potion has more to do with the restaurant Gabrielle's Contemporary Creole Cuisine, characterized by enchanting complexity, bold tastes, and unusual combinations, than with the casting of spells or keeping the bayou's spirits at bay.
Pork shoulder roast is also known as Boston butt. This cut benefits from long, slow roasting or braising. Try braising some pork bones along with the pork shoulder. While cooking, they'll release a tiny bit of gelatin to give the dish a rich, unctuous texture.
Ingredients
I swooned the first time I made this. What makes it exceptional? It's hearty, deeply flavorful, lapped in a rich, glossy, savory sauce, spiked with red wine—serious wintertime satisfaction in a bowl. It is everything you want from a stew, from the seductive aroma with which it warms the house as it simmers, to its robust, filling substance and big, distinct ("manly," we might have said in pre-feminist days) chunks of potato and other vegetables. Dried shiitakes absorb the ragout; garlic (and no wimpy amount of it, either) is used almost as a vegetable in its own right. And, though it seems impossible that something so stalwart should be low fat, low fat it is.
This is a wonderful dinner party dish, because it takes so little work for such a dramatic effect. It is also delicious cold.