theparkerfamily.org

Tag: Cooking

  • macaroni and cheese (for adults)

    thanksgiving dinner is a really big deal for the lady sparkler’s family.

    everybody contributes a dish (or two) and each of the recipes are suitable for the pages of bon appetite or gourmet — wild rice with dried cranberries and chick peas, mexican Chayote with garlic, green beans with lemon zest and hand roasted pine nuts, a spiced pumpkin souffle.

    for the first time since “i” became “we,” i joined the thanksgiving culinary arms race this year — with macaroni and cheese.

    granted, it’s an adult version of mac and cheese — it uses gruyer and fontina instead of just cheddar, and uses both a tablespoon of mustard and a bit of red pepper to add a little kick.

    i’m pleased to say that i held my own.

    (i’ve tweaked the recipe each of the last four times i’ve made it, but it was originally based on alton brown’s baked macaroni and cheese.)

    full recipe after the jump.

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  • jalapeno-cheddar scones

    we’ve always been a biscuit family, but we just cribbed a jalapeno-cheddar scones recipe from the talimo’s and i’m not sure we’ll ever go back. full recipe after the jump.

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  • chorizo and spinach tacos

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    this is based loosely on a breakfast taco that i love to get in texas. only, i’m not such a big fan of the egg — to i left that part out and made them dinner tacos instead. they’re super simple to make, but the result depends almost entirely on the quality of the ingredients.

    more after the jump …

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  • real “oreo” cookies

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    a good friend of mine from my early days at the Conservancy used to take people around on their first day with a plate of brownies, which (i have to admit) puts people in a pretty great state of mind to meet a new colleague.

    i decided this weekend to resurrect the tradition — after tripping on a real “oreo” cookie recipe on foodnetwork.com.

    great cookies. the only thing i’d change is that the two outer cookies (at 1/4 inch each) were waaaay too thick. when i make these again, i’m rolling out the dough to less than half that, so people can actually bite through without squirting out all the cream-filling.

    oh, and turns out our new employee has an problem with gluten, so it was really more of a present for everyone else.

  • three-cheese mushroom and spinach calzone

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    made a three-cheese mushroom and spinach calzone from epicurious, and the recipe was just spot-on good. one small change — it says to use parmesan, fontina and ricotta cheeses, but i used romano, fontina and mozzarella instead (as i hate ricotta, and had just run out of parmesan).

    the other thing to point out is the note in the recipe that you can usually stop by your local pizzeria and they will sell you fresh dough — it’s true, it works, and it makes the recipe overflow with awesomeness.

  • alfredo w/ mushrooms, sour cream & dill

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    when i was in russia working on my honors thesis — reprinted here in full for those with six hours to kill — i fell in love with exactly one authentic Russian dish.

    and this isn’t it.

    the dish i loved was a side dish, some kind of mushrooms and peppers cooked in sour cream, Parmesan chesse and dill — and i’ve yet to figure out how to cook it properly.

    however, i’ve gotten basically the same taste by adding dill and sour cream to a relatively standard mushroom alfredo sauce.

    full recipe after the jump.

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  • mushroom risotto

    well, i’m cooking again.

    it took a decade for me to finally remember by culinary heritage — my father was a chef for 30-odd years — but i’m starting to have fun in the kitchen again.

    i used to love it.

    my father and i would regularly cook thanksgiving dinner for 400+ and we’d have a ball (a slightly exhausting ball, but a ball none-the-less).

    i have no idea what happened in between, but it’s passed — and the lady sparkler is now too busy with a small child to tell me what i’m doing wrong (bonus!).

    tonight was a risotto with wild mushrooms, a recipe that i picked up from a office-retreat-slash-cooking-class with Chef Susan Holt at CulinAerie (great class, btw — highly recommend it).

    full recipe after the jump.

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  • puttanesca

    made one of the lady sparkler’s favorites tonight, pasta with a puttanesca sauce. she thinks it’s all about the olives, but it’s the capers that hold everything together.

    full recipe after the jump — adapted from a Linguine-with-Puttanesca-Sauce recipe on epicurious.

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