Like a gastro-Menhir, this juicy omelet stands on the plate waiting for your bite. Five delicious…



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This one is personal. Four years, five months and 19 days ago, I was bested by this quiche and as noted by the detailed date count, I may not be over it. Worse, it wasn’t even the quiche that bested me, but the crust. A flaky shell with even more fragility-enhancing butter than a standard pie dough, it was twice as big as a regular quiche shell, and then, instead of letting you press it into a shallow tart pan, it was draped inside the towering (okay, three-inch) walls of an open-hinged 9-inch springform ring. Without a base. This crust takes no prisoners and my 2007 take — a slippery, torn-up, leaky shell that only held half the quiche batter and dribbled much of that, too, onto the oven floor — was nothing to write home about. Not that this stopped me; this is, after all, an Internet Weblog.

I finally got back to it last week and here’s the point in the story where I’m supposed to tell you that four years later, I won. In the Smitten Kitchen vs. Thomas Keller’s Buttery Quiche Shell smackdown, Smitten Kitchen prevailed. Take that, commenter who said “you know, this IS a Thomas Keller recipe so it’s not meant for the casual home cook,” and that “some things should be left to the pros.” Alas, I’d totally not seen and patched the tiniest of holes in my shell and a small amount of filling dribbled out. And then a huge chunk fell off the crust as I was trimming it. I did it to keep it real, okay?

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permalink to over-the-top mushroom quiche | 254 comments to date | see more: Breakfast, Mushrooms, Photo, Tarts/Quiche, Vegetarian

The baking fever goes on and on… I tried this classic yogurt cake with the perfect outfit:…



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Every year around this time, behind the scenes, I go through my annual Macaroon Marathon, in which I decimate bags and bags of coconut in an effort to find a variation on the lowly macaroon worth noting, publicly. As evidenced by the fact that my archives are virtually coconut macaroon-free, I hadn’t thus far succeeded. But it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Two years ago, insistent on making something my coconut-loathing but chocolate-adoring husband would find palatable, I made multiple attempts at chocolate-coconut macaroons. They were… brown. And tangly. And rarely chocolaty enough. I don’t remember them fondly. Last year’s experiments centered on whatever appallingly bad home economics had led me to having three (3!) bags of unsweetened coconut in my pantry, and my determination that they would leave my kitchen in cookie format. They were… okay. I am sure more skilled macaroon makers than I make excellent macaroons from unsweetened coconut, but I found them consistently more dry and scratchy than those that began with sweetened coconut. This week’s coconut macaroon trials were the most obsessive yet, with versions rolled in unsweetened coconut chips (gorgeous, but man, are those chips unpleasant to chew), chopped almonds (tasty, but hardly noteworthy), thumbprinted with the intention of filling the indentation with jam or chocolate down the road but I lost interest before I did (a sure sign that they were a snooze) and even flattened, with designs on a sandwich cookie. Were it not for the one in which I’d actually pressed a whole raspberry inside a sealed ball of coconut macaroon, I wouldn’t be here discussing macaroons today because although it was fussy and odd to construct, the flavor smacked unmistakeably of cookie destiny: coconut and raspberries were meant to be together.

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permalink to raspberry coconut macaroons | 330 comments to date | see more: Cookie, Gluten-Free, Passover, Photo, Raspberries

My friend Guy (that’s pronounced “Gee” with a hard “g”) grew up in Southern France, in Provence, near the sea. And like so many people from Provence, Guy has a passion for all things seafood, especially mussels, or as the French call them, “moules”. Mussels steamed in white wine and served in a sauce made from the cooking liquid with butter and shallots is a classic French preparation of mussels, moules mariniere. This is Guy’s method for moules mariniere, the way he grew up making it in France, and one of the easiest and loveliest ways of preparing mussels. It is wonderful for an appetizer or a light lunch, and excellent with a glass of white wine and some crusty bread.

Continue reading “Mussels in White Wine Sauce” »

My friend Guy (that’s pronounced “Gee” with a hard “g”) grew up in Southern France, in Provence, near the sea. And like so many people from Provence, Guy has a passion for all things seafood, especially mussels, or as the French call them, “moules”. Mussels steamed in white wine and served in a sauce made from the cooking liquid with butter and shallots is a classic French preparation of mussels, moules mariniere. This is Guy’s method for moules mariniere, the way he grew up making it in France, and one of the easiest and loveliest ways of preparing mussels. It is wonderful for an appetizer or a light lunch, and excellent with a glass of white wine and some crusty bread.

Continue reading “Mussels in White Wine Sauce” »

Even though the weather has been rather dreary and cold the last week or so, spring is officially here, which means it’s time for asparagus. This is a quick and easy salad, made with fresh asparagus spears that have been blanched for a few minutes, thinly sliced on the diagonal, and tossed with shrimp in an olive oil, garlic, parsley, lemon juice dressing. So good!

Continue reading “Asparagus Salad with Shrimp” »

Even though the weather has been rather dreary and cold the last week or so, spring is officially here, which means it’s time for asparagus. This is a quick and easy salad, made with fresh asparagus spears that have been blanched for a few minutes, thinly sliced on the diagonal, and tossed with shrimp in an olive oil, garlic, parsley, lemon juice dressing. So good!

Continue reading “Asparagus Salad with Shrimp” »

  And finally Spring is here!!! Let’s celebrate, and have some Pinchos con cerveza in a…



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