Browning butter is a simple cooking technique that transforms everyday butter into a flavor factory. With just a few minutes of stovetop simmering, you can bring out nutty, toasted notes that take everyday recipes to the next level. Learn how to brown butter properly to make decadent brown butter cookies, cakes, pasta and more. There's...
Search Results for: 2013
Hot German Potato Salad (Kartoffelsalat)
Hot German Potato Salad is the ultimate mayo-free side dish for any time of year. This recipe features a warm bacon vinaigrette, which coats the potatoes and soaks in as it sits for extra flavor. With bacon, onions, broth, and vinegar in the mix, there's no shortage of flavor in this potato salad. Did I...
Magic Mac and Cheese
Magic Mac and Cheese is a no-boil, no-roux, and no-nonsense recipe for the richest and most flavorful baked mac of your life. While its flavor is deliciously complex, its foolproof method is (truly) simple to cook and customize. Consider this my Mac N Cheese Manifesto. This spring I set out to create the easiest, cheesiest,...
Buffalo Chicken Mozzarella Logs
The Super Bowl is in less than two weeks, which means that I'm going to make as many appetizers as possible to pile into my face hole until the big game arrives. Sometimes, I'll even combine appetizers because I just can't choose between them. Who doesn't love a little hybrid hors d'ouevre? Anyway, I'll be sharing...
Thai Cashew Coconut Rice with Ginger Peanut Sauce
I go to barbecues and shovel pasta salad in my mouth like it's going out of style. Seriously, I load up with enough dressing-doused noodles to make my paper plate sag down in the middle, and then I go back for seconds. And thirds. I love the stuff. For obvious reasons, pasta salad has been...
Best Ever No-Knead Pan Pizza
I've been on a bit of a pizza-kick lately.  And by a bit of a pizza kick, I mean that the only thing I've been craving for the past month has been pizza. I'm not even going to tell you how many times I've ordered a pie, or how many dreams I've had involving pizza...
Ruby Red Champagne Punch
It's Monday! Usually that's not an exciting revelation for me, but today happens to be a little different-- I just came back to the office from a nice, relaxing weekend and we're closed for the holiday tomorrow and Wednesday. It's what dreams are made of, really. So, for the first time I can remember, I think...
Cheesy Crab Poppers
It's Christmas Eve and I've got about 20 million things to get done, but I have one very important thing to do before I can go brave the cold and brace myself against the hoards of last minute shoppers-- I've got to share this recipe with you. I made these Cheesy Crab Poppers on...
Easy Cranberry Chipotle Cocktail Meatballs
I've got to be honest here, I didn't come up with this idea entirely.  The recipe is tweaked from another recipe that I'm seeing everywhere lately-- one that is pretty good on its own but doesn't reach the its full potential, in my opinion.  I would absolutely link to the original source if I had any...
Pomegranate Mojito
Am I the only one who is completely blown away by how close to Christmas it is? Where did the time go? What have I been doing for the past month? I feel like Anchorman 2 has gotten more attention than the holidays this year, or maybe I just have selective hearing. Either way, I'm...
Salted and Malted Nutella Caramel Cookies
There are days when everything goes perfectly in my kitchen-- when I'm surprised at how easily a recipe has come together, there are no crazy set-backs, the food tastes great and is insanely photogenic, and the sun has decided to be on my side for the day and the natural lighting is perfect. Those days...
Boozy Raspberry Hot Chocolate
I've never been a huge fan of hot chocolate, but I also never realized that real hot chocolate doesn't come from a powder packet.  In real hot chocolate, you actually melt chocolate and add milk and cream, which probably should be obvious but I never even considered it.  It tastes like liquid happiness.  Or at least...
Spicy Fried Shrimp
The first time I ever ordered Bang Bang Shrimp from Bonefish Grill, I sang "She Bangs" (you know, the song by Ricky Martin-- but I sang it like William Hung) for about a week. It was a silly association, but it was so severely stuck in my head that it was driving me crazy. I...
Tomato Bacon Bisque
Many years of disliking tomatoes and an unfortunate encounter with Campbell's canned tomato soup had me thinking all this time that any variation of the stuff wasn't for me. However, this year I decided that I was going to push myself to try things I usually wouldn't, because taste buds change and yadda yadda, so...
Pretzel Bread
So, I'm well aware that I have kind of done this before. One of my first posts on this blog was for German Pretzel Rolls, which I guess are essentially pretty similar to Pretzel Bread, but I make no apologies. Why? Because pretzels are my favorite things ever, as you may have already known from the...
Cranberry White Wine Punch
I am a heavy proponent of two things at family gatherings: 1) Serving yourself, because the potatoes won't seem to cook, there are kids running around everywhere, Aunt Terry is discussing conspiracy theories, the potatoes still aren't done, you can't remember your third cousin's name and you don't know how much longer you can...
Roasted Honey Balsamic Brussels Sprouts with Bacon and Pomegranate Seeds
Seeing as it's getting to be "that time of the year", I feel like I should let you know about one thing I'm particularly thankful for: the fact that I never was served brussels sprouts as a kid. Â I don't know what it is about parents, but they seem to go through a phase once...
Thyme Brown Butter Mashed Sweet Potatoes
I'm hardly the only person in the country who has a serious smorgasbord sprawled around the dining room table every Thanksgiving. My family always has the traditional staples-- turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce-- and a few oddballs-- Grandma Sandy's steamed pork dumplings, whatever last-minute concoction I come up with, et cetera. However, there has...
Roasted Garlic Gnocchi with Bacon, Spinach, and Smoked Gouda Cream Sauce
Since I started experimenting in the kitchen a few years ago, there hasn't been much that I've been too scared to attempt. Â Most of the time, my eagerness to jump right in to a new technique or use a new ingredient has proved well worth it, although I have to admit that I've had more...
Freezer-Friendly Athenian Chicken Quesadillas
I'm not ashamed to admit that out of all the awesome places I've eaten (and there have been many), my favorite place to frequent has always been a little dive bar just up the road from my mom's house. It's an unassuming spot that's far too small for the amount of locals who crowd in for...
Skillet Pumpkin Cornbread with Cinnamon Maple Butter
As you may or may not remember, I finally made my way down to North Carolina this past summer to visit my cousin Ashley and her fiance Evan. I came back missing my cousin more than ever (isn't it funny how seeing someone after a few years actually makes missing them worse?) and also missing...
Buffalo Chicken Corn Chowder
Depending on how long you've been hangin' 'round here, you may or may not remember my Buffalo Chicken Extravaganza last year. Basically, when the Super Bowl was drawing near, I went absolutely balls-to-the-wall, full-speed-ahead into buffalo chicken territory. Afterwards, I vowed to lay off of the buffalo chicken for about a year, and I almost...
Blue Cheese Garlic Beer Bread
Now that the cold weather has finally kicked in, most people are dreaming about baking up cookies, apple creations, and pumpkin masterpieces. You can definitely lump me in with that bunch-- my kitchen has been smelling like brown sugar and cinnamon for the past several weeks now, and there's no sign of it stopping any...
Apple Butter BBQ Ribs
I have somewhat of a torrid love affair going on this season with the classic pork and apple flavor combination.  Sure, it's been around forever, but for whatever reason, something about the sudden chill in this year's air has got me thinking in one direction.  (Hint: it's a direction that involves an entire apple grove and...
Glazed Doughnut Cocktail
"Doughnuts. Is there anything they can't do?" - Homer Simpson When I was in kindergarten, my mom and my childhood best friend's mom would take turns driving us to school every morning (there were no buses that went to our area), and every time Talia's mom drove, we'd stop to get fresh doughnuts at...
Chili Cheese Dog Dip
For me, football season has always been about the dips. In fact, when I was just getting interested in cooking, I made a few trays of dip for a Super Bowl party at my years-later-to-be-boyfriend's fraternity house, and he even just recently reminded me of how kick-ass it was and how quickly it was devoured. ...
French Onion Soup Sticks
Meet my new favorite fall food. I was looking over my collection of "must make" recipe ideas the other day when I realized I still hadn't tackled the "French Onion Soup, but not soup" request that has been sitting on the top of the list for almost a year now. It's probably been...
Bacon Blue Cheese Burger Skins
For 22 years of my life, I avoided blue cheese like the plague. I don't know why I refused to try it. I don't know what made me decide that I'd despise it. All I know is that, for the large majority of my life, I deprived myself of one of the most enjoyable flavors...
Baked Pulled Pork Egg Rolls
Ever since my trip to North Carolina, I can't get two things out of my head: one, I really miss my cousin and wish we lived closer to each other (cue "d'awww"s), and two, I am developing an unhealthy obsession with pulled pork. When I say "unhealthy obsession", I mean that I've been...
Spicy Pork Bulgogi Sliders
It's not often that you see Asian food gracing tables or tailgates once football season begins. There are hamburgers, hot dogs, wings, pizza, 7 layer dip, and of course, plenty of beer, but nothing to represent the world's largest continent. I, for one, think that this is a tragedy (okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but...
How to Put Together Your Own Italian Wine and Antipasto Spread
I personally don't believe that you can go over-the-top with a meal as long as the taste is worth it in the end. Â I don't find anything wrong with spending hours in the kitchen, or searching high and low for the best ingredients, or meticulously planning out the details of each course. Â Food is something...
Fried Olives Stuffed with Italian Sausage and Goat Cheese
I don't know a single person who feels lukewarm about olives-- my boyfriend, for example, absolutely hates them, and I really love them and always try to sneak them (and artichokes, one of his other many food foes) into Mediterranean dishes without him noticing. There's no fooling him; he always picks them out. My brother loves...
Roasted Red Pepper Salad
While nearly everyone I know is lamenting "the end of summer", I've got to tell you, I'm pretty excited. Not because I'm glad that weather no longer permits us to float in the pool, drink in hand, and take in all of the sunshine, but because we're moving away from hot and humid weather into...
Breaded Italian Sausage Sandwiches with A'moigue and Roasted Red Pepper Relish
When I was of middle-school-age and the last day of school dragged on as though the teachers had unanimously decided to kill us with boredom, I would doodle little depictions of all of the exciting things I had to look forward to in the upcoming summer months.  (I was a notorious side-margin-scribbling doodle-maniac, by the way.  The...
Shrimp Satay Skewer Shooters with Thai Spicy Peanut Sauce
On nights where I can't be bothered to cook, I begin to really miss college. Back then, I was young, impressionable, and a budding future food-fanatic, thanks to the many competing restaurants and extreme cultural diversity in the area. There was cuisine from nearly every country-- from Lebanon to Italy to Ethiopia-- and despite being...
Watermelon Bruschetta with Whipped Feta, Basil, and Balsamic Drizzle
As you might already know, this weekend James and I went to North Carolina to visit my cousin Ashley and her fiancé Evan, and just as I promised, you're going to hear a lot about it in the next few weeks, starting right now. First of all, let me just say that Mother Nature...
Spinach and Artichoke Dip Alfredo
If you were reading last week, you already know about my tendency to eat appetizers for dinner, which is exactly what inspired me to make this meal. Spinach and Artichoke Dip is up there on the all-time-appetizer-favorites list for pretty much everyone I know, including James, who claims to hate artichokes. Side note: I say...
Mexican Stuffed Peppers (Chorizo-Stuffed Poblanos)
I remade these Mexican Stuffed Peppers so that they're better than ever.  Check out the new post, recipe, and photos HERE. This past weekend, James and I went to an awesome little barbecue place in his town and pigged out (see what I did there?).  It was fantastic, and I've definitely been inspired for some future...
Breaking Bad Blue Margarita (with Blue Salt and Blue Ice Chips)
With the Breaking Bad season premiere coming up this Sunday, you probably need something to sip as you and your friends gasp at the TV. If you're looking for drink inspiration for your premiere party, it's about time you break out those bottles and get mixing! You don't need your chemistry set to come up...
Southern Baked Chicken
It's been 2 weeks that I have been hiding this recipe from you and I'll tell you without hesitation that it has been down-right wrong of me to do so. Why? Because this recipe is up there on the list of my favorite things I've ever made. Far up there. Lately, I've been craving Southern...