Snack Bar

Homemade Potato Chips with Green Goddess Dip

November 12, 2025

On a snack run for friends before a recent movie night, I was aghast to find prices for standard bags of chips priced so high(!) No way was I paying that, especially when it takes just two good-sized Idaho russets to make 8 cups of chips. And these without the additives and preservatives that come with packaged snacks. So here’s how to make them, along with our delicious dip version of Green Goddess dressing.

A little history on the dip! First created by Chef Phillip Roemer of San Francisco’s Palace Hotel in 1923, Green Goddess dressing is a blend of parsley, chives, anchovy, and sour cream, with a splash of vinegar and lemon. Roemer whipped the first batch up for a banquet honoring actor George Arliss, who was starring in William Archer’s “The Green Goddess,” play.  Although few still remember the play, the dressing is an enduring classic. Finding a 1940s Red Dot Potato Chips flyer with a dip version of Green Goddess, I thought to adapt it for you here, along with steps to make your own thin and crispy chips. Continue Reading…

Tea Cakes

Lamingtons

November 7, 2025

“Poofy, woolly biscuits.” That’s what Baron Lamington, Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901, purportedly called the chocolate glazed, coconut-covered vanilla tea cakes that bear his name. First created and served to Lamington sometime during his tenure, the cakes would take Australia by storm, becoming as culinarily iconic there as Weet-Bix and Vegemite.

Affectionately called “lammos” by Australian natives, classic Lamingtons are made from either vanilla sponge or butter cake that’s been allowed to rest for a day before being cubed, dunked in chocolate sauce and rolled in finely grated unsweetened coconut.  But fancy “glamington” renditions by bakers eager to gild the Lamington lily include everything from caramel tres leche versions to banana, chocolate raspberry and even pandan cakes.

Some bakers cut the cubes in half, adding a layer of jam or frosting in the middle. This hews to the earliest known printed version of the recipe, published in the December 17, 1900 edition of the Queensland Country Life, but the tiny cakes are very good, filling or not.

Our Lamingtons are made with Genoese sponge cake, baked in an 8-inch square pan, and finished as 1-inch cubes. To make them, you’ll bake and cool the sponge cake, storing it covered overnight, and then will prepare and cool the chocolate glaze until it has thickened a bit. To get perfect cubes, I cut off and discarded the dome of the baked cake and then flipped it over to expose the perfectly flat bottom side. Using a metal ruler I measured a grid and cut the cake into 1-inch squares. (Because 8-inch tins are tapered a bit, you’ll end up with a 7-inch grid and 35 finished cubes.) To glaze, I skewered each with a fork, fully dunked them into the chocolate, allowed excess to drip off and then rolled them in the coconut. Continue Reading…

Veggielicious

All-the-Good-Stuff Broccoli Salad

October 10, 2025

 When the local grocer puts an enormous box of gorgeous broccoli out front for 69 cents a head, you put your brainstorm beanie on & hope for florets of inspiration!

This composed salad recipe is my best broccoli effort to date.

To make it, you’ll  1) roast the florets.

 

2) oven-crisp + maple-glaze chickpeas

3) mix in chopped nuts, dates and red onion, and 4) toss everything together with a creamy lemon tahini dressing. For best texture, be sure to eat the salad right after adding the chickpeas.  And for more stalk-starring deliciousness, try our Creamy Broccoli Cheddar and Ham Soup. So good!

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Soup's On!

Creamy Broccoli, Ham + Cheddar Soup

October 9, 2025

If there’s a nice, big, spiral-sliced ham in your autumn-meal-planning future, that means you’ll also be trying to figure out how best to use the meaty bone.  When I’m in that situation, first thoughts go to split pea soup. But, since nobody in my household likes split peas, I shift to ham-enhanced dishes they do like: Broccoli, ham and cheddar quiche for example. So, then I think, “Why not make a soup with those delicious flavors?”

This, then, is the tasty result–even better in my opinion, than the quiche that inspired it.  I did add one special ingredient: half a pound of mushrooms. Blended with caramelized onion, the mushrooms add even more depth and creaminess to the finished soup. Served with a nice loaf of crusty bread for dunking, this makes a very satisfying meal. Continue Reading…

Soup's On!

Butternut Bisque

September 26, 2025

Matching the golden hues and spicy scents of autumn, this velvety-smooth butternut bisque makes a nice start to a meal or works well for a light lunch. As with other traditional bisques, ours includes shallots, garlic, and vermouth for depth of flavor. A swirl of crème fraiche adds richness. And for textural contrast, we’ve finished the soup with a crunchy topping of roasted squash seeds and quick fried sage leaves.  You can either peel and cube the squash for slightly quicker roasting or simply slice the butternut in half and invert it.

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American Classics

Italian Apple Cake (Torta di Mele)

September 25, 2025

“Eight Red Astrakan, two Wilton Twig, three Hubbardston Nonsuch, one Keswick Codlin…” The orchard plan from a page in Joseph Gundry’s 1869 daybook reads like a fantasy of heritage apples–and all with such whimsical names!  But if you visit Gundry’s former estate in Mineral Point, WI, the apples no longer exist, gone along with three quarters of the 17,000 apple varieties that used to thrive in the United States. In ongoing efforts to turn this around, orchardists and plant geneticists have succeeded in bringing tasty heritage apple varieties back from the brink. That means you’re more likely to find them at farmers markets this season!  This beautiful, easy-to-make vintage apple cake is the perfect way to showcase the best of them. Made with simple ingredients that allow the apple flavors to stand out, the cake is tall and tender.

Known as Torta di Mele in Italy, the cake goes back centuries, with all sorts of regional variations. Some mix in nuts or dried fruit. Others add cinnamon or a fancy spiral of sliced fruit on top. But all versions keep apples at the cake’s core. 

Our delicious version requires just one mixing bowl and a handful of ingredients: butter, flour, sugar, eggs, milk, yeast, lemon zest and plenty of fresh chopped apples. (So, a vintage “dump cake!” ) To make sure the recipe worked with both heirloom and easily obtainable apples, we baked it both ways: The cake shown in the main photo was made with Honeycrisp. Another was made with heirloom Discovery apples from Nichols Farm in Marengo, IL (shown in the ingredient photo) which originated in Essex, England in 1949 and are a cross between Worcester Pearmain and Beauty of Bath apples.  Both cakes were delicious!

If you want to make your cake look fancier, you can spiral slices of some of the apple on the top of the cake before baking, but we opted to simply chop the apples into bite-sized pieces and stir them all in. Not too sweet, this cake works well for coffee or tea, or—with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert. NOTE: My springform pans are old, so I usually wrap the base in aluminum foil and line the baking rack with a sheet of it to ensure no drips escape from the pan while baking. For more delicious apple recipes, try our Classic Apple Pie, our tall and tempting Melting Apple Cake, our  Hubba Hubba Cake , our savory Choucroute with Pork Chops & Apples, or our Deep Dish Cranberry Apple Pie 

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Veggielicious

Cabbage & Walnut Parmesan with Panko Gremolata

September 24, 2025

Who knew that simple, homey cabbage could be transformed into such a delicious dish? I have Chef Joshua McFadden to thank for the building blocks of this recipe: Fresh cabbage, quick roasted at high heat and then tossed with breadcrumbs, toasted walnuts, olive oil, lemon, garlic and parmigiano. Oh—and a splash of balsamic vinegar!

I’ve adapted the recipe it a bit, slicing the cabbage into ribbons before roasting, rather than cutting it into large wedges, and adding parsley to the ingredient list to make a gremolata that’s then made crunchy with the addition of gluten-free panko and toasted walnuts.

I’ve prepared this dish using regular green cabbage and I’ve also made it with savoy. Both are good, and each have their benefits:  The regular cabbage yields a slightly juicier result while the savoy, with its thin ruffled leaves, cooks faster.  Either way, this dish is great on its own for a light lunch or paired with a main course as a side. Continue Reading…

Southern Favorites

Shrimp & Grits

September 23, 2025

The marriage of shrimp with grits in this classic Lowcountry dish goes back generations. Grits as we know them here originated in the South with the Native American Muscogee, who stone ground dent corn, which has a softer and starchier kernel than other corn varieties, and boiled it into a soft, creamy porridge. Over the years, spooning buttery shrimp over the grits became a popular breakfast made in Lowcountry home kitchens. Recipes for it started appearing in newspapers in the 1890s and then in Two Hundred Years of Charleston Cooking in 1930. But the dish didn’t become a nationwide restaurant phenomenon until 1985 when North Carolina chef Bill Neal put it on menus at his Crooks Corner restaurant, and Craig Claiborne wrote about it in the NYTimes.

Neal added bacon, garlic and green onions to the simple original recipe, and in the years that followed, chefs riffed even more, adding tomatoes, peppers, hot sauce and other ingredients. Our recipe adapts The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen recipe for the shrimp to include peppers and onions. (We think the extra veg helps balance the flavors in the dish.)

Also of note:  Stone ground grits (also called old-fashioned grits) are ground with the germ intact, preserving nutrients and giving the cooked result more flavor than instant grits. So, do use stone-ground—either white, or yellow, in the recipe.  While many modern shrimp and grits recipes include cheese, (and you can stir some in if you like) since the grits already have butter mixed in and the shrimp sauce is studded with bacon, the dish is plenty rich without it. Continue Reading…

Meaty Mainstays

Choucroute with Pork Chops & Apples

September 19, 2025

Whether it’s ‘kraut on a Reuben sandwich, or an elaborate choucroute garnie, pork with fermented cabbage is an enduring pairing. This delicious one-dish meal: Thick pork chops in apple studded Bavarian sauerkraut with dumpling-like pillows of soaked bread and a sprinkling of caraway, is a play on the best of those traditions.

Appreciation for such dishes is long-lived in my family. When my Dad was a young boy in the 1930s, transforming a big barrel of slivered, salted cabbage into naturally fermented sauerkraut was an annual family endeavor.  Grandma Lydia and Grandpa Al sliced big heads of the fresh, green chou into the barrel, and scattered salt in measured handfuls while Dad and his brother Emil mashed it all down with a huge wooden pestle. Weighted down, the mixture would mellow in its juices over time, to be paired with pork in one or another family meal preparations.

When I received a reader request from a woman trying to replicate a dish her great aunt Caroline used to make with bread, pork chops, sauerkraut, and apples, I set to work to create this dish. I use Bavarian sauerkraut because it’s more mild other varieties I’ve tried and doesn’t require rinsing. That, plus thick-cut pork chops with a nice fat cap on them, a fresh onion, good crusty bread (I like ciabatta or pugliese), and firm, tart-sweet apples (I used Michigan Evercrisp.) The sprinkling of caraway seeds is optional but adds a wonderful flavor accent. Continue Reading…

Gluten Free

Basil Gnocchi with Sheet Pan Tomato Garlic Sauce

August 25, 2025

There have been a bunch of recipes for gnocchi circulating lately that take ready-made, store-bought versions of the potato dumplings and roast them in the oven or sear them in a skillet to golden crispness. The added texture makes the dumplings almost like tater tots– more appealing than the simply boiled gnocchi favored in the past. Our homemade gluten-free gnocchi are paired with a simple sheet pan sauce that cooks while you made the dumpling dough.  Once you’ve boiled the gnocchi, you’ve got lots of options: You can go the traditional route and stir and serve them with the sauce right away. You can quick fry them in a skillet with a drizzle of olive oil for the crispy-on-the-outside, tender inside modern version. Or you can cool or freeze them for service on another day.  

For best results, the key in preparing gnocchi is to handle the dough as little as possible, folding and scraping the ingredients together, and kneading very little.  Also? Have lots of fresh basil leaves on hand for service, and if you like, a bit of Parmigiano Reggiano. Continue Reading…