This heavy pastry is middle-eastern. I have been told it is Armenian, Greek, Lebanese, and Turkish. Whoever invented it deserves a prize!
This is sweet, but not super-sweet. It's great with tea or coffee after a light middle-eastern dinner in the summer.
The original fall classic!
I like this best early in the season with Yellow Transparents, and late in the season with Northern Spy, Golden Russet, and Baldwin apples.
We did it again. The weather forecast was promising, so the VP Engineering surprised us with a shiny new gas grill!
The Software Developers and the QA crew had at it, with a little help from the Technical Writers, Marketing, and two industrious interns. Our CSA share came in that morning, so we had a lot of "raw material" to work with.
This was our biggest pot-luck lunch so far, maybe thanks to the creative energy unleashed by that grill. Some of it was competitive energy, and some was just the joy of sharing something delicious with our friends.
We had:
This is a fine accompaniment to Grilled Scallops.
I had some egg yolks on hand, so I made this Mayonnaise up to accompany a lot of summer dishes, mostly chicken salad, grilled chicken and white fish, and fresh farmers' market vegetables. It's really good!
This is easy to prepare in an electric mixer. This recipe makes quite a lot!
Sous-vide cooking is a technique, not a recipe. The principle is to cook a piece of meat slowly at a carefully controlled temperature no higher than the final cooking temperature of the interior of the meat. This results in supremely tender meat.
The steak cooked in the homemade cooker below reached an internal temperature of 131 degrees Fahrenheit after an hour and 53 minutes in the cooker.
A simple cooler for the summer, the Highball is just any spirit served in a tall glass with ice and soda.
There are many types of highballs, including the venerable Gin and Tonic, the Moscow Mule, the Cuba Libre (and its degenerate cousin the Rum & Coke), all the various Collinses...the list goes on longer than the summer does.
Made properly, this has only a jigger (an ounce-and-a-half) of liquor and the rest is ice and soda, so it's an easy way to relax on a lazy summer afternoon without getting drunk.
It's not illegal to add a touch of triple sec or other liqueur and a dash of bitters, and then you unlock a whole realm of classic cocktails repurposed as summer coolers!
I invented this for my sister at her request on the occasion of a big birthday. Like her, it is three parts Irish to one part Italian, with a little bitters to balance the natural sweetness...
Her friend Lesli called it a blonde Manhattan, and that's a pretty good description. It's a summer-weight cocktail made with Irish Whiskey and Carpano Bianca Vermouth (that's a bianco vermouth, not a dry or a sweet vermouth).
This is a light and refreshing version of the traditional Bread Pudding to enjoy after a summer cookout with family and friends!
This easy and delicious Burgundy-style recipe is no trouble at all to prepare. The chestnuts can come from a jar, so it's just a matter of adding stock and wine and braising for a while.
The dish is a fine accompaniment for beef or some savory roast pork dishes, and it is a classic accompaniment for roast goose.
Of course you could make this with fresh chestnuts, but the chestnuts in a jar work really well. You can get them at Whole Foods and sometimes at Trader Joe's and other high-end grocery stores. I get them at Ed Hyder's Mediterranean Marketplace in Worcester, or at Micucci's in Portland.
We had an excuse for another of our famous potluck lunches at Actifio, so we did it!
This menu was vast, as usual. I think we had 36 contributions, almost all of them home-made or made in the office (we have a pretty good kitchen!)
I don't have all the recipes, but I have a lot of them:
Fiddleheads are an exceptionally simple and exceptionally seasonal dish, great for a spring brunch.
After steaming them and chilling them, you can do all sorts of things with them. They are decorative, but they have enough flavor to be the vegetable accompaniment to a significant spring meal (maybe with shad roe?).
This dish is simple to prepare and delicious!
It takes longer to preheat the oven than it does to cut and prepare the onions for roasting - it really is simple.
These can be served hot or cold, and they are fine served cocktail-party style with toothpicks and small plates. The flavor is rich but complementary to many savories.
I served these at a wine tasting event at the Old Colony Club. They went well with a good Cabernet Sauvignon and a good Merlot.
This tasty treat with an unappetizing moniker is a variation on the old Bronx cocktail, with added bitters... I guess that's where the name comes from!
Try this with a citrusy gin like Plymouth Gin, or else with one of the softer New England-made American Gins like Barr Hill Gin, Karner Blue Gin, or Wire Works Gin
This homey lunchpail classic is really a nice cookie when prepared with good ingredients, and it's a nice change of pace and a welcome addition to many cookie-platters.
The texture is light and crumbly, never tough, and the toasty-peanut flavor is wonderful when they are fresh. In my opinion, this cookie does not store well, but if you make them with good ingredients that should seldom be a problem!
The distinctive look could be trademarked.
