Looking for an easy way to get more greens in your diet? Try this simple sautéed Swiss chard recipe.
In the spectrum of greens, Swiss chard lies between spinach and kale—not as tender as spinach, not as tough as kale. But like spinach, you can easily sauté it in some olive oil in just a few minutes.
Creating the smooth, flawless buttercream finish you often find on professionally made cakes comes with practice. It also comes with the knowledge of a few insider techniques.
So, some simple secrets from a pro baker’s kitchen, straight to yours. These are three of the easiest ways we get that gorgeous finish on our layer cakes.
Quick, can you name all seven layers in a seven-layer dip? If you can, you’re invited to join me on Team Party Dip. This team knows that a party is only as good as its best dip, and a classic seven-layer dip with all its spicy Southwestern goodness is a guaranteed win at the party.
Even if you’re skeptical of all those layers, I’m willing to bet we’ll find you hovering over the dish within five minutes of walking in the door.
When you’re looking for something beyond vanilla, but still aiming to please a crowd, try a classic lemon cake. Something as simple as lemon might get overlooked in a world of salted caramel, velvety raspberry, and matcha-everything, but this lemon supreme cake is anything but ordinary. With three layers of lemon-soaked cake blanketed in satiny vanilla buttercream, this little cake makes for an exceptional dessert for anything from a bridal brunch to afternoon tea to a birthday party.
Last week I wrote a post about different ways to organize your tea — but the thing is, if you don’t store your teas correctly, it doesn’t matter how you organize them. Before you waste your efforts clearing cupboards or drawers and sorting through your collection, you need a place to put them to keep them fresh and at the ready. And when it comes to fresh tea, there’s one important element.
Sometimes what really makes a meal stand out is a small touch of the unexpected. These bite-sized pieces of chicken coated with a crunchy layer of panko breadcrumbs look like your standard homemade nuggets, but take your first bite and you’ll see we reached for something that might surprise you to get to this sweet and spicy crust.
Two things my fiancé and I are excited about when it comes to our wedding are food and family. We’re sentimental and love to eat, so we made it a point to incorporate our favorite family recipes into the celebration, which neatly covers both our loves. It’s an easy way to personalize your big day and make your loved ones feel super, well, loved!
Here’s what’s on our menu.
When heading out for breakfast or brunch, you’ve got a choice to make: Do you order something sweet, or opt for something savory? For me, it’s a no-brainer — I go for the savory option every time. I’m in it purely for the home fries, and the only thing better than ordering this side at your favorite diner is making them at home exactly when you want them.
While I certainly enjoy the cake portion of a slice of cake or a cupcake, I’m really in it for the buttercream. That thick, sugary frosting brings the sweetest finishing touch to these desserts. There are a few different styles of buttercream, but no matter which one you make, be sure to avoid these mistakes.
Me and this salad go way back. In 2007 — you know, back in the days when I imagine that all of our conversations might have gone “What should we do today?” “Oh, I don’t know, anything we want.” — I had this salad at the then new-ish Spotted Pig in the West Village and attempted to recreate it. It didn’t go well and because I was as mature then as I am now, I had a tantrum and didn’t get back to it until 2009, at which point I made a roasted carrot dish with a bit of cumin and topped it with avocado slices that had been tossed with some lemon and everyone was happy. However, in 2011, Jean-Georges Vongerichten published a book of his homecooking favorites including this salad, which is also on the menu at ABC Kitchen and in 2012, April Bloomfield included the recipe in her first cookbook and I’ve thought it might be nice to circle back to these more complexly spiced and textured versions.
Can I veer off for a moment here? [I mean, that’s kind of my thing, not being able to finish a sentence without at least one other tangentially-related sentence inside it.] Okay, so I get a lot of cooking ideas from restaurants I go to and I jot them down but it’s not because I want to do anything sinister like pretend I came up with them first, but because I want to do something with the impression it made on me. It’s like going to a museum and admiring the soft colors in a painting and realizing you want to soften the palette in your own artwork; nobody is going to mistake you for Monet any more than anyone is going to mistake me for Beyoncé if I buy thigh-high tights and wear them as pants. (They’re more likely, in fact, beg me to never do this again.) People have said to me, “Why don’t you just ask the chef for their recipe?” or “But this recipe is published! Don’t you want to make their version?” but I actually don’t for two reasons. First, I want to stay true to what I remembered about it, even if it might have been incorrect, because it was my impression that got me daydreaming about a new flavor combination or approach to an ingredient. Second, holy moly, are chef recipes usually a headache! For restaurant purposes, this makes a ton of sense (each element prepared separately before service so it can be assembled and cooked to order) but to cook like this at home — at dinnertime no less, when everyone is hungry — is madness and a short path to being so exhausted you might need a week of takeout to recover.
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