Category Archives: Recipes (Savory)

Ingenious English Muffin Bread — Made In a Microwave

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Yes, I made this bread in a microwave. How cool is that?

Sometimes the best things in life happen by complete accident.

Take my discovery of this amazing recipe for “English Muffin Bread” that’s “baked” in your microwave in mere minutes. I kid you not.

A month ago, Rebecca from New Hampshire, emailed me out of the blue, frantically searching for this recipe by cookbook author Lora Brody. She’d made it before, loved it, but couldn’t for the life of her lay her hands on it again. So, she did what we all do: She Google’d it. The search engine returned a link to where she could find it: FoodGal.com. Trouble is I not only didn’t have that recipe on my blog, but I’d never even heard of it. Go figure.

After she and I exchanged perplexed emails, Rebecca eventually found the recipe again in Brody’s cookbook, “The New England Table” (Chronicle Books), and sent me a copy. It’s adapted from a James Beard recipe.

And it’s a marvel.

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Puff Pastry Part I: Savory Sun-Dried Tomato and Onion Tart

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Mustard cream, sweet onions, Gruyere cheese and sun-dried tomatoes crown this buttery, flaky tart.

This tart is red and white, and sure to chase away any blues.

Perfect for the Fourth of July, isn’t it?

“Sun-Dried Tomato and Onion Tart” is an explosion of flavors on a crisp, buttery foundation of puff pastry. The recipe, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal in March of this year, is by that Quebecois madman, Chef Martin Picard. He’s best known for his outsized personality, his over-the-top interpretations of classic Canadian dishes (poutine with foie gras, anyone?) and for foisting a litany of rich foie dishes on Anthony Bourdain at his Au Pied de Cochon restaurant in Montreal until the “No Reservations” host practically had to cry, “uncle!”

Picard’s tart won’t cause you to do that. Instead, it’s layered with flavors: onions caramelized until they’re nearly as sweet as candy, fragrant thyme, nutty Gruyere, a dash of sharp Dijon, and sun-dried tomatoes to add just enough acid so you don’t feel too weighed down.

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Bi-Rite’s Pork Cutlets with Sweet Bing Cherries

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Cherries for dinner? Oh, yes!

Why just bake galettes, pies and cobblers with fresh cherries when you can enjoy their snappy sweetness in savory sensations, too?

Case in point, “Pan-Fried Pork Cutlets with Bing Cherries.”

It’s a recipe from “Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food” (Ten Speed Press), of which I received a review copy.

The cookbook, written by Bi-Rite Owner Sam Mogannam and food writers Dabney Gough, takes you through the history of San Francisco’s most celebrated grocery store, where you’ll find not only top-notch produce but hard-to-find ingredients that are the darling of chefs.

The book takes you through each store department, teaching you the low-down on how to read labels, discern ingredients and use them at their best in a myriad of recipes.

Fruit takes to pork like peanut butter to chocolate. Cherries are no exception. Yes, you’ll have to pit them, but you use only about 18 of them, which doesn’t take that much time at all.

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A Mother’s Day Care Package

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My Mom's tasty care package.

Tied with ribbons, double-taped or adorned with a wad of stamps, care packages come in all shapes, sizes and forms.

But inside, they really all contain the exact same precious thing — the warm, comforting reminder of: “I’m thinking of you.”

My late Mom always conveyed that message with a rather unusual care package — a dish of Chinese-style chicken and rice.

A simple recipe that she made up years ago, the dish is a supremely savory, one-bowl meal of Jasmine rice cooked with Chinese black mushrooms and chunks of dark meat chicken marinated in soy sauce, oyster sauce and sesame oil. The rice takes on the flavors of the marinade, mushrooms and chicken until they all become fused as one.

It’s a dish my Mom would make regularly for our weeknight family dinners, stir-frying the chicken in a big wok before folding in the rice that had cooked separately in a rice cooker. As a kid, that was my task after school — to wash and measure out the water for the rice, before pushing the button on the rice cooker so the fluffy grains would be ready and waiting for my Mom when she arrived home from work to finish making the dish.

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A Comforting Soup for Mustard Fiends

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Mustard in the soup and mustard on the croutons. What's not to like?

Yes, that would be me.

A mustard fiend. At any one time in my fridge, you might find at least four kinds of mustard lurking on the shelves.

A stone-ground one, a fiery Dijon, a brown deli classic for my husband’s sandwiches, and perhaps a more unusual sweet caramel type.

Mustard has so many uses — stirred into vinaigrettes to help them emulsify; whisked into pan sauces to add that unexpected piquant note; and slathered on chicken before rolling in bread crumbs and baking to a golden crisp.

But leave it to San Francisco uber blogger Heidi Swanson of 101Cookbooks to think of adding mustard not only to a velvety soup but to the croutons that garnish it.

Genius!

“Cauliflower Soup with Aged Cheddar and Mustard Croutons” is from her book, “Super Natural Every Day” (Ten Speed Press), which just won a James Beard Foundation award.

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