Before Alexandra “Alex” Guarnaschelli became a Food Network celebrity chef, she was crowned as America’s Next Iron Chef on Iron Chef America in 2012. Now, aside from her successful shows on the Food Network, she is the world-renowned executive chef at both New York City’s Butter restaurant and The Darby restaurant.
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For some reason, our family always made the traditional Green Bean Casserole with broccoli. I really can’t tell you why, but that’s how we had broccoli. So, when my husband requested this for dinner one night, I accepted the challenge. Instead of using canned soup and canned onions, though, I knew I had to make the whole dish from scratch. Of course, Alton Brown came to the rescue this time, and while reading his rendition of the American classic, I decided it’s easy to make this dish in three steps. And I did. Continue reading
Every year I make a big deal out of choosing and baking a special birthday cake. And for a good reason. Every year on December 17th we celebrate two special birthdays, so of course the cake has to be extra amazing! I don’t only do this for my birthday, though. I like baking for everyone’s birthdays! My specialty is delicious layer cakes, not decorated cake mixes or sheet cakes with too much icing. Last year, we had a maple crunch layer cake, which we made by hand and was a hit at our birthday party. This year, though, I thought just baking one cake would be a little boring. So I racked my brain until I figured out what the perfect birthday dessert would be, and settled on these ice cream sandwiches. Chocolate, ice cream, and cookies all in one! What could go wrong?
I’ve made mushroom bourguignon before, but I wanted to try the real stuff—well, as real as I could get to it, while still keeping kosher. So I bought myself some facon and got cooking!
These lentils are easy to make, can be made in advance, and are super healthy! Score! You can definitely just chop all the veggies and then throw everything together while preparing a different dish. It’s a great Sunday activity. For some reason, this Ina recipe was never on her show (according to the Food Network site), but it is in one of her cookbooks, which I own, and you can also find it online on her website. I made it vegetarian so we can use it with any type of meal. Continue reading
Ina Garten usually makes roast chicken for Friday night dinner. When she decided to make a traditional Jewish meal of brisket, she made rugelach for dessert. It looked delicious. There was a small problem with the recipe, though! It was very dairy. She used two sticks of butter and a package of cream cheese to make the dough. For a Shabbat dessert, this is not okay. Luckily, Toffuti makes some pareve cream cheese that you could substitute quite easily.
Happy 2013!
I finally got Ina Garten’s new cookbook! It took a while, especially because I pre-ordered it on Amazon. Turns out, shipping during Hurricane Sandy got kinda iffy, and it just never showed up. Thanks to Amazon’s amazing customer service (once I figured out where to find it), they overnighted me a new copy! Yay! After looking through the recipes, and weeding out the very unkosher ones, I decided that a one-pot pasta dish was the perfect first recipe to try. Why? Because we love pasta! Because Richie loves pasta. Because It reheats easily on a weeknight. And because sausage is something I don’t cook much, so I thought I’d give it a try.
Genius! Instead of plain old boring croutons, make grilled cheese and cut it into cubes for grilled cheese croutons. Makes the classic winter meal a little fancier and is completely amazing, especially if using fresh mozzarella, which I did.
Happy Hanukkah! You probably thought we were going to post a recipe for sufganiyot, but nope. We’ve made donuts for Hanukkah in the past, but maybe next year we’ll stuff them with hot jelly. This year, we’re going France/New Orleans-style.
People think that risotto is hard to make. And it is, but only if you use one of those recipes that has you standing over the stove mixing the wine and chicken stock and adding ladlefuls each time the liquid is absorbed. One of my favorite people ever, Ina Garten, just makes her risotto in the oven. So easy! Especially if you have homemade vegetable broth in the freezer, like I always do.
