The recipe below is, I think, almost perfect. I have been playing for more than a year to find ways to use a new flavor bean found by the Callebaut chocolate company called a ruby chip (available on Amazon.com.) It is a deep pink and looks like any chocolate chip, but it takes nothing like a chocolate chip. Instead it has floral notes and when you taste it, you look for … [Read more...] about A la Carte: Time for Tea … so Let’s Have a ‘New Tea Cake!’
Nibbles
A la Carte: Need to Slow Down Your Metabolism? Try Auntie Todd’s Slow-Carb Muffins
Todd Lyon, restaurant reviewer, food writer, all-around great person and fashionista from New Haven, Conn., found that her body had turned its back on her ... sort of. She developed Type 1 diabetes. She loved breakfast, but found out that her favorite breakfasts (cereal, toast, pancakes, fruit juice and the like) gave her body a jolt but metabolized quickly. “Eventually, it … [Read more...] about A la Carte: Need to Slow Down Your Metabolism? Try Auntie Todd’s Slow-Carb Muffins
A la Carte: Pasta with Peaches … and Tomatoes? Try It, You’ll Love It!
I don’t know about you, but I bought my CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) last December, 2021. Remember December, 2021? Joe Biden had been elected in early November. We knew that two COVID vaccines were being tested, but no one had them yet. I had not been inside a restaurant in almost a year and I was 1) tired of my own food, and yet 2) couldn’t really afford … [Read more...] about A la Carte: Pasta with Peaches … and Tomatoes? Try It, You’ll Love It!
A la Carte: So You Have Heard of a BLT … Well, Why Not Try a BLT Soup?!
By the time you read this, my CSA (community-supported agriculture) will have begun. Will the farm stand at Stone Acres be filled with the summer’s best of the best? Well, not really. Sweet corn will be a few weeks away (and usually the Connecticut’s first sweet corn comes from the Windsor area) and tomatoes may not available for another month or more. I love my own … [Read more...] about A la Carte: So You Have Heard of a BLT … Well, Why Not Try a BLT Soup?!
A la Carte: A New Twist on an Old Favorite with an Unexpected History
Sometimes I try to come up with recipes that have themes or special times of years, such as holidays like Memorial Day, the Fourth of July or Labor Day. But I sometimes I forget, before Columbus landed first in the Bahamas and later on the coast that would become America, that the native Americans were here first. I also forget about the white people, who came soon after … [Read more...] about A la Carte: A New Twist on an Old Favorite with an Unexpected History
A la Carte: Cowboy Beans … a Sure-Fire Favorite
I have had the requisite failures in the kitchen, and they may have been legion, but the one I remember happened decades ago and it had to do with baked beans. We lived in our first old house in Leicester, Mass. It had massive stone kitchen fireplaces, this one with a beehive oven. That failure was on a day we invited friends for dinner. It was a cold winter, and we had … [Read more...] about A la Carte: Cowboy Beans … a Sure-Fire Favorite
A la Carte: A Special Soup for Summer … Asparagus, of Course!
I had promised to send you my friend Stacie’s flan recipe, but time, as often, got away from me last week. Perhaps I was dreaming about a book I just finished reading, “We Begin at the End,” a sort-of growing up and murder mystery recommended by my good buddy, Rick Koster of The Day. Or maybe I was thinking about a new novel I am reading now, “The Plot,” written by an … [Read more...] about A la Carte: A Special Soup for Summer … Asparagus, of Course!
A la Carte: These Chicken Lettuce Wraps (After PF Chang’s) Make Perennially Popular Hors D’Oeuvres
I can’t remember a more beautiful couple of weeks in May. Years ago my husband and I would charter a sailboat in the Caribbean for a week in the winter. The mornings were cool in the morning, warm and cloudless in the afternoons and out of nowhere a cloudburst would appear for just 15 minutes. After that it was clear and sunny for a few hours and cooled down … [Read more...] about A la Carte: These Chicken Lettuce Wraps (After PF Chang’s) Make Perennially Popular Hors D’Oeuvres
A la Carte: Surprise! Creamy Cauliflower Rice with Shrimp is a Winning Combo
I used to write about the surprises I often find in my garage freezer. I used to call it Lee’s Freezer Diary. The truth is that if I kept a diary, perhaps there wouldn’t be surprises, since the freezer often looked like Fibber McGee’s closet. (For those younger-than-me readers, it was a radio show in the 50s and maybe in early television in the 60s. Fairly often, Fibber’s … [Read more...] about A la Carte: Surprise! Creamy Cauliflower Rice with Shrimp is a Winning Combo
A la Carte: Linguini with Rhubarb and Parmesan is a Perfect Combo, Who Knew?
I am wild about rhubarb. I had wonderful friends who had an enormous rhubarb patch. When they were younger, they would bring arms full of the ruby and green fruit to me so I could make strawberry-rhubarb pies and puddings. (Yes, I know, rhubarb is a vegetable, just as tomatoes are a fruit, but we are free to call them whatever we like!) They also showed me how to “stew” … [Read more...] about A la Carte: Linguini with Rhubarb and Parmesan is a Perfect Combo, Who Knew?
A la Carte: Pasta, Pesto … and Chicken!
I woke up to this sun-filled morning and decided that, for dinner, I wanted pasta with the basil pesto I still have from last summer’s batch. I am happy just with pasta, but my body didn’t need, with its still pandemic 20 (extra pounds), five or six ounces of pasta. I wondered if I still had Pam Anderson’s How to Cook Without a Book on how to make a thin chicken cutlet to … [Read more...] about A la Carte: Pasta, Pesto … and Chicken!
A la Carte: Celebrate the Season with Spring Green Spaghetti Carbonara
There was snow in parts of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, according to friends and family who live in those places, but not here (crossing fingers here for the next month or so). But there has been rain, and lots of it, for the beginning of April. Now it has been glorious, except for that night that dropped to 28 degrees. But to me it is spring. I bought a … [Read more...] about A la Carte: Celebrate the Season with Spring Green Spaghetti Carbonara
A la Carte: Savor a Hint of Hungarian with Chicken Paprikash
Last Saturday night, for the first time since March of 2020, I had dinner inside a restaurant. My stepdaughter, who is bicoastal (spends two weeks in Boston and the other two at her home in San Francisco), drove down and we had dinner at the Water Street Café. My friend Amy is chef-ing there while owner/chef Walter Houlihan rehabs from a broken leg, and Walter’s wife, … [Read more...] about A la Carte: Savor a Hint of Hungarian with Chicken Paprikash
A la Carte: A Better Bit of Brisket Made for a Super Seder
It was such a nice seder for Passover 2021. My friend Lisa and Eric invited six of us, all but eight of us vaccinated twice, the others soon to get their second. We played boules for a couple of hours; I hadn’t seen Jacques, the Hopkins or the Yavaris for over a year. In addition to appetizers including home-made latkes, along with gefilte fish and chopped liver, we drank … [Read more...] about A la Carte: A Better Bit of Brisket Made for a Super Seder
A la Carte: Smart Spice Veggie Soup Goes Easy on Calories, But Big on Taste
I had such a lovely weekend in Newburyport, Mass., two weeks ago. My granddaughter Casey, a junior at UMass-Amherst, is still in on campus learning in-person, but Sydney, whose 26th birthday we were celebrating, was there, as was middle-granddaughter Laurel, a tennis teacher/elementary school teacher. We all met at my daughter-in-law’s house and my son, Peter (the two are … [Read more...] about A la Carte: Smart Spice Veggie Soup Goes Easy on Calories, But Big on Taste