Recipes + Ideas

The posts on this page contain a recipe or a “recipette” — an idea that, while not as detailed as a recipe, can be just as useful for spurring inspiration.

Feel good soup

January 19, 2012

Every month media types like to trot out national days or months of significance, particularly during slow news cycles. How else can we explain the ongoing existence of trade association-generated events, such as national potato day, national popcorn day or…. (drum roll please) national horseradish month? There’s another day that also gets attention for all [...]

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Hot Toddy Season

December 8, 2011

Everyone who cooks has comfort zones:  pasta with tomato and basil, roasted chicken with potatoes, soup, chili, fish tacos, Thai curry, whatever. We also have our uncomfort zones, those food-and-beverage subjects that we’ve avoided out of fear, disinterest, distraction, or lack of opportunity to dig deeper. My friend Susie wrote about trying to become a [...]

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Mexican Chocolate Tapioca Pudding

November 11, 2011

Chocolate pudding was a big part of my dessert repertoire, if you could call it that, when I was in elementary school. I’d open up a package of chocolate pudding mix, follow the instructions on the box, and then refrigerate the pudding until set. Sometimes it would develop a skin on top, which I secretly [...]

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Eggplant, Meatball-Style

October 11, 2011

Lately it’s felt like summer in Chicago—probably for the last time this year—and I still want summer flavors. Cue eggplant, presented here in the form of “meatballs.” I usually cede the impulse to use quotations around dishes to the likes of Thomas Keller. But this recipe felt like it needed them. Eggplant balls on their [...]

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Brain Food Part 2: Pitta con Verdura

August 7, 2011

I’m still on deadline for my Italian cookbook project. But after spending the last week writing about Piemonte and Valle d’Aosta, regions in Italy’s northwest corner, I needed a break from the north and decided to cook up something from the south. Specifically, from Calabria, the toe of Italy’s boot. Northern Italy is wonderful, but [...]

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Brain Food: Grilled Sardines

July 19, 2011

When I was in preschool, I ate fish for breakfast. It’s not as strange as it sounds. At the time, my family lived in Davao, the main city on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. The fish in question were small, no bigger than an index finger. They were fried crisp, and you could eat [...]

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Giving Poached Eggs Another Whirl

June 7, 2011

Poaching an egg takes nerve. The first time I attempted it, I thought I was following all the rules: I had an egg and a pot of boiling water spiked with vinegar. But after sliding the egg into the water, I watched, horrified, as the whites dissolved in a web of veins, leaving the yolk [...]

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Asparagus for Lunch

May 31, 2011

Eating asparagus is the culinary equivalent of wearing pastels: it’s a rite of spring, an indication that cold days are behind us. But while I have yet to meet a pastel I like, the same isn’t so for asparagus. I eat asparagus indiscriminately: blanched, roasted, grilled, or raw. I like it in soup, in pasta, [...]

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Fresh Pasta Primer: Tips on Making Dough

May 23, 2011

Last week I talked about finessing a pasta recipe that had failed the first round of testing for the SPQR Cookbook. Then I received a nice comment from Patricia. She asked for tips on making better pasta dough. It’s a good question. Making pasta is as much about practice and feel for the dough as [...]

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Ramp Spaghetti: adventures in recipe testing

May 16, 2011

Fresh pasta recipes are not easy to write. In cookbooks, they demand a lot of real estate. There needs to be explanation on how to mix the dough, how to roll the dough into silky sheets, how to cut the sheets into fettuccine or shape them into agnolotti. Even with all of that information spelled [...]

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