This dish is simply addictive. To make. Since giving it a vegetarian spin with mushrooms and breadcrumbs a few years ago, I’ve put all sorts of things in stuffed cabbage: spicy chorizo, roast chicken, rice and beans, and mixtures that might form a veggie patty if fried. I can see why rolling things up in large leaves has struck people from all parts of the globe as ideal: it’s a great treatment for any leftover food.
I once ordered a stack of “harvest pancakes” from the menu of a small diner. They came to my table beautifully browned, light and fluffy, and studded with dried, sweetened cranberries and kernels of canned corn. Well, it’s “harvest time” now, and instead of reaching for these preserved legacies of previous ones, I’ll make use of the fresh bounty, with tart cranberries just in season and sweet corn on its last ears of the year.
Sometimes, I have an internal speedometer going on when cooking at home. Twice in the past few weeks I made a batch of these cookies in record time, before taking off to bring them to holiday house parties. Even when I’m not in any rush, I get a keen satisfaction out of completing a (good) meal that was surprisingly fast. That’s something you don’t really get to see through the recipes on this blog. I could add an “estimated cooking … Read More
The culinary concept of “Asian fusion” is one that both excites and troubles me. It’s sparsely defined (there is no Wikipedia entry for it), and it sometimes can mean a melding of different Asian cuisines, or a hybrid of East-West tastes. Understood in the latter sense, I find that I really do enjoy so many of these types of dishes. I’m not saying that I have a better perspective of it than anyone else, but since Asian fusion is also … Read More
This weekend I was invited to a dinner party at the home of two friends (and award-winning chefs). The clever theme for the event was elevated fifties’ American cuisine: “We’re swapping out the cans of condensed soups, processed cheese, canned black olives and Wonder Bread, and are replacing them with homemade, organic, high-quality ingredients,” the invitation read. As I typed out my RSVP, I apologized for my late response because their email had initially fallen into the clutches of my … Read More
So, nobody was exactly clamoring for me to remake a traditional British Christmas mincemeat pie this year at Thanksgiving. Blended dried fruits and the word “meat” in its name doesn’t conjure the most appetizing dessert (even though today, meat is commonly left out). It certainly never did for me, especially since I’ve only had mincemeat once before as a straight-out-of-the-can pie filling. This was at a Thanksgiving long ago, and I recall reading the ingredients on the can: It was … Read More
Curry is only optional here. I had begun this dish with the thought of splashing in the remaining cupful or so of white wine I had left in the fridge and maybe sprinkling some rosemary in the pie mixture; instead, I drank the wine. Something in between a mild chicken curry and a stuffing mixture, this meal was a quick alternative to baking a real chicken pot pie. I shouldn’t even call it a pie, really, since the “crust” was … Read More