Sally relates to beans like no one else I know. I am convinced her last wish will be for a bowl of beans. She's somehow even trained her kids to crave them. She claims, "This recipe is my midweek savior, the kids scarf it directly from the pan."
This is absolutely one of my fallback dishes for entertaining families when I don't know how finicky the kids' palates are. My kids usually eat the grown-up version but occasionally one of them has a relapse of sorts and declares the sauce (which he loved the week prior) to be unfit for human consumption. Suddenly the simplified version of chicken breasts and rice or potatoes with no sauce is all he will touch. This is exactly the kind of flexible option that doesn't make the cook (aka you) nuts and vaguely irritated since you will make one dish, just one, that allows the blander eaters to enjoy the meal without rendering the adults bored out of their skulls.
This thick Greek garlic sauce makes a marvelous dip to be served with vegetables as an accompaniment to fish or chicken. Avoid using a food processor or an electric mixer, which can make potatoes gluey.
Leftover parsley and walnut pesto is great with spaghetti.
There are almost endless possibilities for variation here. Potatoes are my favorite thickening agent for garlic soup, but it can also be thickened with a roux of flour and butter or with bread, the traditional choice in the South of France, where this dish is a specialty. Onions and scallions can be used instead of leeks, although the soup won’t have the same subtle taste. If you use the leeks, include most of the green leaves.
It takes very little work to make your own stock; mostly it is a matter of being at home for the several hours it takes to cook. A flavorful money saver that is practically fat- and salt-free, homemade stock can be frozen in small quantities and used as needed.
You'll notice I use a little bit of water in the bottom of my roasting pans so that we're able to catch the drippings before they burn. When we're able to collect these tasty drippings along with the aromatic vegetables that have softened in the fat and drippings from the roast, you've got yourself the makings for an incredible tasting pan sauce.
Carolina Gold rice “grits” from Anson Mills are short, uneven pieces of rice that have been broken during the threshing process. They cook up creamier than long-grain white rice, which can be substituted in this recipe: pulse it in batches in a spice mill or clean coffee grinder for 5 seconds to create the same effect.
Seasoned in the style of ancient Greece, this dish benefits from marinating overnight in the refrigerator. Serve chilled and garnished with lemon wedges.
This is the quintessential Italian pasta dish, especially in Naples and Rome. The clams are the smaller ones — vongole veraci — and they are always cooked in their shells. Once they open, the sauce is done. Here in the States, linguine with clam sauce is made with chopped clams, and I guess this adjustment makes sense, especially since the clams here can be quite large, from littlenecks (small to medium) to topnecks (large) to quahogs or chowder clams (very large). Today, thought, one is ever more likely to find smaller cockles on the market; if you find them, by all means use them.