Alexandracooksa

Say hello to your new favorite summer salad dressing! Made with only 4 ingredients, this roasted red pepper is shockingly easy to prepare as the roasted peppers require no peeling. The peppers lend both a sweetness and smokiness to the dressing, and the vinegar provides a perfect acidic bite. Summer salads, let’s go! After dining at Ops in Brooklyn several summers ago, I returned home dreaming about the salad, the sole salad on the menu, an artful arrangement of Little Gems and radicchio drizzled with a roasted red pepper dressing....

Made with only four ingredients, this peppermint bark is one of the simplest holiday cookies you could make and one of the most festive, too. What’s more, it yields a ton, making it perfect for gifting all season long. So easy, so pretty, so delicious! When a woman commented on this chewy chocolate sugar cookie recipe saying she loved all things peppermint and was planning on rolling the unbaked cookies in “peppermint dust,” I was intrigued....

I thought I should share it here, too. It’s simple: a mix of honey, apple cider vinegar, fresh lemon juice, salt, and extra-virgin olive oil. And it’s sharp: roughly equal parts acid and olive oil. The bite, however, is tempered by honey, the amount of which you can adjust to taste. I find two tablespoons to be about right, and if this sounds like a lot to you, know that it sounded like a lot to me, too....

Skip to Recipe Last fall I learned a bean-cooking method that — and forgive the hyperbole — changed my life. It came from the brilliant team at Cook’s Illustrated and calls for brining (as opposed to soaking) the beans overnight, which for whatever reason (the science is above my head) causes the beans to cook up so nicely. I had always liked beans but this method taught me to love beans and made them a mainstay in my diet....

This is my favorite way to make eggplant parmesan. There’s no salting, no breading, no frying, no fussing. The eggplant is roasted and layered with a homemade tomato-basil sauce and parmesan. An irresistible bread crumb layer tops it all off! This is summer comfort food at its best! 🍆🍆🍆🍆🍆🍆 On Wednesday, using one eggplant from Tuesday’s CSA and one very tired eggplant from several weeks ago, I followed Burros’s recipe, roasting a sheet pan of eggplant slices at high heat for 35 minutes, then layering the slices in a gratin dish with homemade sauce and parmesan cheese, topping it all off with a mix of fresh bread crumbs, parmesan and olive oil....

This easy Thai chicken satay has become my family’s most requested meal. The 6-ingredient chicken marinade, which requires no chopping, comes together in a snap. The chicken can be sliced and marinated 48 hours or more in advance, so don’t be afraid to make it ahead of time. I always serve it with coconut rice, which my children devour. A few months ago, I discovered my children love Thai food. If you are wondering: How could children not love Thai food?...

For three weeks in a row, this has been our Tuesday night dinner: pasta tossed with a sautéed onion, a ton of greens, and carbonara sauce: 2 eggs whisked with 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 1/4 cup parmesan, and 1/4 cup pasta cooking water. Why Tuesday? Tuesday is CSA pick-up day , and recent deliveries have been loaded with spinach, tatsoi, broccoli rabe and various other greens. After unpacking our CSA, instead of stashing the greens in the fridge, I plunge them into a bowl of water to soak, set a large pot of water on to boil, slice an onion, and whisk together the sauce....

If you love fresh sourdough bread with a golden, crisp crust and a light, airy crumb, this recipe is for you. It’s one of the simplest homemade sourdough bread recipes, and one of the best, too. It requires only 25 minutes of hands-on work and no autolyse or preferment. Below you will find guidance for every step of the way. 🍞🍞🍞 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review: “Absolutely the best sourdough recipe EVER! I have been baking bread for years (sourdough included,) and things were many times hit or miss....

This one-pot baked ziti is quick and easy, crowd-pleasing, and a godsend on busy nights and weekends. It can be made with either fresh or canned tomatoes, and it is delicious either way. This baked ziti recipe from Cook’s Country’s Cook It In Cast Iron , has the added bonus of being a one-pot wonder: after you crush the tomatoes with a potato masher (or whisk or spoon), you add the dried pasta and water directly into the pan and simmer everything together until the pasta is cooked and the liquid has evaporated....

In the past, this has happened: I blink, and rhubarb season passes. But in recent years, rhubarb season hasn’t been so fleeting. Rhubarb, in fact, is still in abundance at our little co-op, and I keep buying bundles of it because I found a rhubarb cake I absolutely love (more soon), but also because I love rhubarb schnapps: it is so refreshing poured over ice, topped with seltzer, spritzed with lime....

The weather this week called for soup. Wanting something new, I turned to Sally Schneider’s A New Way to Cook and found a recipe for roasted pumpkin and garlic soup described as “utterly simple” and “exceptionally creamy,” all of which sounded perfect. The recipe called for roasting sugar pumpkins or any winter squash and a head of garlic together, then puréeing the flesh of the two together with stock....

Two perfect eggplants arrived in our CSA this week, and I immediately wanted to make this salad. I first made it two summers ago after spotting it in Bon Appétit, and wrote about it on Food52 shortly thereafter. In sum: it’s a composed salad, three layers of goodness: Layer 1: Cucumber-yogurt sauce, seasoned with cumin, garlic, and fresh lemon. It’s kind of like a cross between an Indian raita and a Greek tzatziki....

This galette, filled with caramelized onions, fresh corn, basil, Gruyère cheese and heirloom tomatoes, is prefect for the end of summer. Serve it with a simple mixed greens salad or a cucumber-and-feta cheese plate for a light, vegetarian meal. Yum. The recipe comes from the August 2000 issue of Fine Cooking Magazine, which was fantastic. Two of my all-time favorite recipes hail from that issue — from one article in fact — and I have been making them now for almost 20 years....

This versatile homemade harissa paste recipe uses fresh peppers and chilies rather than dried peppers and is every bit as authentic and delicious a traditional harissa sauce recipes. Though spice and heat are the paste’s predominant flavors, this harissa paste has sweet notes, too, thanks to the roasted peppers and near-caramelized onions, and a freshness lent by a healthy squeeze of lemon juice. For years, I’ve wanted to make harissa paste at home, but every time I’ve set out to make it, I’ve been deterred by the process: many recipes that surface with a google search call for using dried chilies, which I can never find, and which, perhaps unfairly, I find to be a pain to work with....

In his latest cookbook, Snacks for Dinner , Lukas Volger gives us permission to make meals out of all of the nibbles we’ve long relegated as ‘starters.’ Why shouldn’t dinner be a union of creamy, dilly white beans, charred radicchio with burrata, and a hunk of focaccia? Now it can. I was immediately drawn to the dips chapter, which includes recipes for eggplant and chickpea whip, charred allium and labneh dip, and this elemental guacamole....

Tzatziki is a Greek yogurt- and cucumber-based condiment, typically seasoned with herbs such as mint and dill, garlic, and lemon. I grew up eating it with this chicken souvlaki , but I find it to be a nice match for both meat and vegetarian dishes alike: Roasted Eggplant Salad (a favorite summer meal!) Mushroom and Sweet Potato Veggie Burgers (an old favorite!) Falafel Burgers (a new favorite!) Smoky Grilled Chicken with Schug (perfect for summer entertaining) Spiced Tomato and Chickpea Salad (a meal in itself) Cauliflower Steaks with Walnut-Caper Salsa (so pretty, so tasty) The process of making tzatziki is simple: grate cucumbers, drain them in a sieve (if you wish), then mix them into Greek yogurt along with a minced clove of garlic, minced herbs, fresh lemon juice, and salt....

OK Friends, as promised here is the high-protein, gluten-free pancake recipe I learned to make a few weeks ago while staying with my friend Stacy, who made them every morning for Ben and me during our visit. I have to confess, on the first morning, when Stacy asked if I would like a gluten-free, high-protein pancake for breakfast, I was skeptical: if you know me, you know I live for toast....

This recipe is a lemon-blueberry variation of my favorite apple Dutch baby recipe , a low-lift, high-return breakfast treat I’ve been loving: it feeds four comfortably and takes no time to whip together. A Dutch baby, if you are unfamiliar, is like a cross between a popover and a pancake: it rises dramatically in the oven, then collapses upon removal. It’s custardy in texture, not fluffy like traditional pancakes , a consistency created not only by the high ratio of eggs in the batter, but also by the absence of any leavening agent — the water in the eggs, milk, and butter in combination with the hot skillet cause the batter to rise in the oven....

In this super summery salad, raw corn unites with halved cherry tomatoes, feta, and lots of herbs. A simple olive oil and lime dressing gives the salad a salsa-like brightness and freshness. This is one of my favorite salads to make when the local sweet corn begins arriving. Last week, as a side dish for dinner, I made Mark Bittman’s raw corn salad with tomatoes, feta, and mint. My husband took one bite and said, “It’s good,” adding as he put down his spoon: “But too much corn....

Early last year my aunt Marcy (from Vermont with the dogs and the spit ), became obsessed with making homemade crackers in the fashion of Raincoast Crisps . Exhaustive online research coupled with extensive kitchen experimentation culminated in a recipe she deemed worthy of disseminating to the family. Before long, the crackers began appearing on cheese boards across the country: at my mother’s house in CT, at my in-laws just a few blocks away, at my sister’s down state....