I cook fava beans once a year. When I spot the first of the season at the market, I fill up a bag, take them home, and set to work, peeling, blanching, and then peeling again. With the work done, I then open Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Vegetables and weigh my options: purée them and stir them into risotto or eat them raw with prosciutto and Pecorino. I’m sorry, but anything that calls for two peelings is not going into my blender....

Flaky, buttery, lemony, and nicely sweet, these currant scones are perfection. If you need a reason to break out the good Irish butter, look no further! I’m preparing for Thanksgiving and for my sole visitor, my father, who loves a proper English scone. Unfortunately, I am fairly certain these currant scones are not proper by any British standards. And I know that after one bite, my father will in fact tell me that what I have served him is not a proper British scon....

Seared Duck Breast with Port Wine Reduction — it’s a dish fit for a bistro menu. Truly, the sauce tastes as if it took hours to prepare, as if pans loaded with veal bones had to be roasted, as if those bones then had to simmer into a rich stock, and as if that stock had to reduce to a syrup. The sauce, incredibly, has only three ingredients — port wine, shallots and chicken stock....

This is my favorite dessert: peach-frangipane galette. Here I share my recipe for foolproof all-butter pastry dough, which comes together in no time. There is video guidance for both the pastry and the galette assembly 🍑🍑🍑🍑 Every time I take a bite of David Lebovitz’s peach-frangipane galette, I feel I have been transported to a French pâtisserie. Truly: the crust is so incredibly flaky, and when it envelops layers of creamy, almond frangipane and sweet, juicy stone fruit, the result is, well , simplement magnifique!...

When I was flipping through Chez Panisse Vegetables a fews week ago en route to green goddess dressing , I came across a recipe for smoked trout and avocado salad. I had coincidentally just returned from Trader Joe’s, where I had stocked up on tins of their smoked trout. Have you ever had it? I can’t seem to find it anywhere else, and I love it — it’s so nice to have on hand for quick meals and snacks....

Leftover turkey? Look no further! This turkey tetrazzini, a classic pasta dish made with sautéed mushrooms, a light sauce, and parmesan, will put all that turkey to delicious use! Several months ago, one of you shared your recipe for turkey tetrazzini with me. I made it after Thanksgiving to rave reviews, and I have since made it several times since. I love making it not only because it is delicious, but because it puts any leftover ​turkey​ and/or ​turkey stock​ to great use as well as any leftover ​cranberry sauce​ : they go lovely together!...

Homemade Biscotti The base recipe for these vanilla-almond biscotti (pictured above) can be adapted to all tastes. Know that the nuts can be replaced with any you like and additions such as dried fruit, chocolate chips, and coconut are all welcomed. Lemon and/or orange zest add a nice touch as well. Although a chocolate or white chocolate coating is unnecessary, it adds a festive touch: white chocolate pairs especially well with the cranberry and pistachio variety....

We all face failure, at some point, when making sourdough bread. Common troubles include: an impossibly sticky dough a just-baked loaf looking more like a pancake than a lofty boule a crust so tough it might rip your teeth out a dense, gummy crumb Sourdough is a journey. Failures are a rite of passage. If you can embrace the failures, learn from your mistakes, and make changes based on your results, you will find success....

There is a restaurant nearby that serves a chickpea tagine made with a “tomato jam”, a mixture of tomatoes and sun-dried tomatoes cooked with garlic, parsley and ras-el-hanout, a sauce that binds all of the elements together and gives the tagine both a sweetness and bite. Thinking about making tomato jam reminded me of this butter-roasted tomato sauce , a sauce I first tried last November but have made several times since....

Shortly after making Samin Nosrat’s five-ingredient corn soup from Salt Fat Acid Heat , a commenter pointed me to Deborah Madison’s curried coconut corn soup, which employs the same technique: making a stock from the stripped corn kernels and water. It’s a brilliant and simple technique that provides tremendous flavor in a very brief amount of time. In Deborah’s soup, the stock gets added to a pot of curry-spiced sautéed onions, along with the stripped corn kernels, coconut milk, fresh cilantro, and lime juice....

On the fussiness scale, this recipe is up there. I hate to start on a negative note, especially when these little ricotta-stuffed rolls turned out to be so stinking good, but I’m not so drawn to these types of recipes anymore — the ones that call for salting and draining and blotting and deep frying and rolling … as adorable as they may be. But I’ve had this recipe bookmarked since last Christmas when I first opened Tartine Bread ....

I rarely make bread crumb chicken recipes — the flour-egg-coating assembly line always deters me — but this dijon mustard roasted chicken thigh recipe, from the Barefoot Contessa’s Foolproof is simple. A quick dip in a dijon mustard-buttermilk bath provides enough glue for the bread crumbs to adhere, and roasting versus pan-frying makes the hands-on time minimal. This bread crumb chicken has become a favorite around here, both piping hot right out of the oven for dinner and cold straight from the fridge for lunch....

In the fall of 2016, I posted a recipe for curried apple and egg salad . It was pictured piled atop slices of quinoa-flax bread, a recipe I couldn’t yet share because it, or a variation of it, would appear in Bread Toast Crumbs the following April. I’ve been meaning to share the recipe ever since BTC made its way into the world because it’s one of my favorites—of the 40 variations of the peasant bread included in the book, this (along with a variation of the focaccia ) is the one I make most often....

The unfortunate consequence of being deprived of chips and dip as a child is that I am the girl at parties hovering over the crock pot filled with queso dip, piling more than a manageable amount of hot crab spread into my Tostitos scoops, and destroying the poor bowl filled with spinach-artichoke dip. In addition to childhood deprivation, part of my love for these sorts of dips, I suspect, stems from the fact that I never make them....

Loaded with olives, scented with rosemary, this sourdough loaf is so flavorful and fragrant, perfect for serving with good olive oil or, of course, with dinner. This recipe employs a lamination method to incorporate the olives and rosemary into the dough, which helps them disperse evenly throughout the baked loaf. Recently, I saw a recipe for an olive sourdough bread recipe that employs a different technique: lamination. Lamination calls for spreading the dough into a thin rectangle, scattering the inclusions over the top, then folding the dough envelope-style from right to left, then top to bottom....

Save yourself the stress and hassle of making gravy on Thanksgiving morning: make it ahead! This is a very simple recipe, which will leave you with a quart of rich, flavorful gravy you can have at the ready when the bird is cooked. Warm it gently on the stovetop before serving, and fortify it with this year’s drippings for even more flavor. A few weeks ago, when I began thinking about Thanksgiving, I logged in here, to my Alexandra’s Kitchen dashboard, hoping to find a Thanksgiving 2018 “After Action Report”, a draft I thought — hoped!...

Spiced with a dash of nutmeg and freshly grated orange zest, these hot cross buns are perfectly sweet and such a treat! Find step-by-step instructions below for making hot cross buns from scratch two ways: overnight and same day. Just as Holly’s challah can be twisted into babka and Nigella’s Danish pastry can be spiraled into croissants , cinnamon roll dough can be rolled into hot cross buns. Here, I’ve used a simple sweet dough recipe as a base, adding a few dashes of nutmeg and freshly grated orange zest, both of which impart warmth and spice to the buns....

I’ve done a 180. Last week I encouraged you to use canned beans ; this week I’m telling you to cook them from scratch AND, if you’re up for it, to roll your own flour tortillas. Ignore me. Or don’t: Earlier this week, for reasons I cannot explain, I made flour tortillas from scratch , something I did often years ago, but can’t justify making a priority anymore. And then, with a full pot of slow cooker black beans on hand, I took my favorite quesadilla recipe down a different path: I made burritos instead, warming the homemade tortillas slightly, then rolling them with Boston lettuce, sour cream, a little grated Monterey Jack, the smoky sweet potato filling, a spoonful of those warm, creamy beans, and a big squeeze of lime....

To me, this is the BEST chili, vegetarian or otherwise. It’s loaded with vegetables, and it has nice body thanks to bulgur (or quinoa) as well as beans. Chipotles in adobo give it a nice smokiness and heat, and chili powder and cumin offer more spice and smoky notes. This is a staple all fall and winter long. You won’t miss the meat — I promise! Last Greek Easter while standing around the lamb turning on a spit, a few of my cousins confessed:...

This French apple tart recipe is simplicity at its best: buttery pastry dough + unpeeled, thinly sliced apples + a sprinkling of sugar + a few pads of butter. That’s it! It’s so easy, so pretty, and so delicious . A few weeks ago I came across a photo of an apple tart in Sarah Copeland’s Every Day is Saturday that stopped me in my tracks. For one, it was stunning....