Dinner with Kirsten

I always say my favorite pie is rhubarb (without strawberries), but when I happened to think about it recently, I couldn’t remember the last time I had baked or even eaten a rhubarb pie. And with the ultra short rhubarb season upon us, I knew I had to get baking!

So, I was thrilled when a friend asked me to make dessert for his weekend dinner party. I would have 7 people eagerly awaiting a sweet finale. Then the challenge was finding the right recipe. [Read more →]

I was so amazed by this dessert – it’s unlike anything I’ve ever eaten! The base is a meringue that’s crisp on the outside and marshmallowy on the inside. To use the leftover egg yolks, you make a lemon curd to spread on top. Add in whipping cream and your berries of choice, and it’s all absolutely divine. [Read more →]

Me: “Do you think we can get a smoker?”
Geoff: “We can’t really smoke inside!”

We went on to debate smoking meat in the park or propping a grill out on the fire escape, but for now, indoor oven-braised baby-back ribs are the closest I’m going to get to home-made BBQ.

I’ve had my eye on the Fairway meat counter’s beautiful ribs for a while – I’m always tempted to buy, but never know what the heck I would do with them. So, I was excited when I saw that Alton Brown’s rib recipe, one of the “Top 100” recipes on FoodNetwork.com, is made in the oven. Yay!

[Read more →]

This is one of those stand-by recipes that I’m always craving. I remember devouring this issue of Bon Appétit, way back in February 2005. I had just returned from a trip to Europe, where I ate my way through Paris and completely fell in love with the food. Would I ever taste food like that again, I wondered? This issue gave me hope with a collection of simple French dessert recipes – the traditional ones learned at grandmothers’ elbows in kitchens all over France. These recipes were just the tools I needed to re-capture a little bit of the French food magic in Omaha, Nebraska.

A couple things I love about this cake: subtle lemony flavor; an extremely moist crumb; Is it breakfast, dessert or a snack? All of the above; yogurt instead of butter = the lighter side, as far as cakes go. [Read more →]

I have to admit that I hardly ever make brownies from scratch. I usually make whatever mix is handy, most recently a Betty Crocker version from the local grocery store, bought in a craving-induced after-work stop. They were bad. So now I keep an emergency mix of my favorite variety on hand – Trader Joe’s Truffle Brownies.

When I was invited to bring a dessert to a recent dinner party, I eyed my box of stand-by mix in the cupboard. I knew they were good, but I had a whole Saturday afternoon and a few brownie recipes in my Web site recipe boxes. I decided to go for scratch brownies. [Read more →]

I love meatballs, but I hardly ever make them. Left to my own uninspired devices I’m more likely to quickly brown beef, add a jar of marinara sauce and call it dinner. It’s my Midwestern version of “Pasta Bolognese” – my “again!?” dinner that Geoff is continually forced to veto. So, I decided to put in some extra effort and make meatballs.

Mario Batali is my all-time favorite celebrity chef. I love his restaurants, his cookbooks and, when they were still on-air, I loved his cooking show, Molto Mario.  I remember him saying once that American meatballs were ruined by an over-abundance of wealth. In Italy, meatballs were invented to make meat stretch further when times were tough – cheaper ingredients like eggs and bread were added as fillers. [Read more →]

I first heard the name “Clementine Paddleford” last year, as I uploaded old article to the Gourmet Web site. She wrote a column called “Food Flashes” in the 1940’s. Today, they’re great to read because of the history – the country was a very different place back then. You can check them out here. [Read more →]

The undisputed pancake and waffle king in my family is Grandpa Chuck. Now, Grandpa has been making breakfast feasts using the same tried-and-true pancake recipes for as long as I can remember. So I was amazed when we got into a conversation about pancake recipe experimentation – debating the merits of sour cream vs. buttermilk and whipped egg whites vs. non-whipped.

And I was even more shocked when he recommended a recipe from Gourmet. Grandpa? Grandpa making a different waffle recipe?! My mind reeled! But now, having made these Cardamom Sour-Cream Waffles myself, I have to admit that the recipe was a great find.  [Read more →]

This recipe is a classic in my family, part of long-standing tradition. I don’t know where it came from exactly, but Grandma Lois used to make this Czech dessert a couple times every year. It’s one of my Dad’s and Grandpa Ernie’s favorites. [Read more →]

Okay, I’ll admit it. A steady diet of Christmas cookies and holiday buffets has made my favorite pair of jeans a little snug. So, I decided to start 2009 right, with a healthy bowl of oatmeal and a banana – mixed together! [Read more →]