Category: By Course

Modernist Mac & Cheese

While I personally prefer a Cheddar Pasta with loads of vegetables cooked into the sauce, my son likes his mac & cheese closer to the modern American style. To make this style of sauce, you need one unusual ingredient, sodium citrate, a type of salt which acts as an emulsifier. It’s available at Amazon, with $10 getting

Shortbread

1 lb. butter 2 c. superfine sugar 2 c. rice flour 2 c. flour Cream butter & sugar together, mix in flours well. Turn dough out onto a baking sheet or press into a baking dish, 3/4” to 1/2” thick. Prick with fork. Chill at least 30 min. Bake in moderate oven (375ºF) for 5

Grilled or Roasted Tofu

On its own, tofu is fairly bland,  but that just means you need to drench it in a tasty sauce before you grill it. Select a extra-firm or firm tofu, as soft or silken tofu will fall apart during cooking. Cut it into flat pieces about 1/2″ thick — for a commonly-sold 14-16 oz block

Mashed Potatoes

Based on a recipe by Alton Brown. Around 4 pounds of potatoes — yukon gold, or a mix of golds with russets and reds. If you’re using russets, scrub them with steel wool or a stiff brush to soften the skin; golds and reds can be left Cut the potatoes into pieces between 1/2″ and

Autumn Salad with Roasted Squash

We served this salad at Thanksgiving this year. The first step is to cook the squash. We used a butternut squash, but other winter squash varieties would work. The squash we used made about twice as much as we needed for the salad. Cut off the hard ends of the squash and then peel the

Apple-Chestnut Bread Dressing

A traditional side dish at Thanksigiving, some people use this to stuff their turkey, but the emerging consensus is that it’s better to bake it separately — which is good news for us vegetarians! I made this for the first time at this year’s Thanksgiving, after reading a dozen different recipes and extracting the elements

Creamed Spinach

Sauté a large chopped onion in half a stick of butter until onion softens. Optionally add a carrot, a bell pepper, a large mushroom, or a handful of chopped cherry tomatoes. Make a space in the center of the pot, add garlic, basil, paprika.  Cook a few minutes to take the edge off the garlic.

Alfredo Sauce

Alfredo is about as simple (and rich) as a cream sauce can get. It takes less than ten minutes from start to end. The original recipe for Alfredo sauce called for butter, Parmesan cheese, and some of the starchy water that was used to cook the pasta, but nowadays nearly everyone uses cream instead. You

Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Set a griddle or frying pan over a medium flame to pre-heat. Build a sandwich with two pieces of bread and a healthy layer of cheese. Cheddar is the classic choice, but nearly any soft or medium-firm meltable cheese is a good candidate, including American, Swiss, goat cheese, butterkäse and more. Mixing and matching cheeses is tasty

Marlborough Pie (Apple Custard Pie)

Marlborough pie is found in an English cookbook from 1660, and was popular in New England through the mid-1800s. Make a pie crust. Prick the crust with a fork, and/or cover it with a circle of parchment paper and sprinkle it with pie weights, then blind-bake the crust until it just starts to brown (10-15 minutes).