Category

side dishes

  • Shaved Brussels Sprout Salad with Pears, Toasted Almonds, and Parmesan

    Shaved Brussels Sprout Salad with Pears, Toasted Almonds, and Parmesan

    There’s been some debate about whether or not you should serve salad at Thanksgiving. My stance? A traditional salad — with wan lettuce leaves from a bag, dried cranberries (the most clichéd Thanksgiving salad ingredient), and toasted pecans — is a pretty depressing thing to see on the table, TBH. But, as I get older,…

  • How To Cook Fingerling Potatoes

    How To Cook Fingerling Potatoes

    I get so annoyed, sometimes, watching America’s Test Kitchen. As I’ve mentioned before, my Saturday ritual is to watch all of the PBS cooking shows and America’s Test Kitchen is the one that took me the longest to warm up to. Whereas Lidia’s Italy lets you peer over the shoulder of a real Italian grandmother…

  • Toss Your Beans in Pesto

    Toss Your Beans in Pesto

    There’s a lot of treachery when it comes to substitutions in recipes. “Hide sweet potatoes in the brownies, your kids will never notice!” “These zucchini noodles taste just as good as real noodles but with half the calories!” Me? I’m all for transparency when it comes to the things that I cook. And that’s why…

  • Sweet Summer Corn with Bacon and Balsamic Onions

    Sweet Summer Corn with Bacon and Balsamic Onions

    Becoming a good cook is a little bit like becoming a good musician: at a certain point, you can glance at a recipe–the way a pianist might glance at a piece of sheet music–and know what it’s going to taste like, just like the pianist knows what it’s going to sound like. That’s a real…

  • Diana’s Butter-Roasted Potatoes

    Diana’s Butter-Roasted Potatoes

    Now we all know the concept of the student beating the master and I don’t want to imply that my friend Diana was ever my student or that I was ever her master (though I was her roommate, which is kind of the same thing with me); what I’d like to imply, however, is that…

  • Sexy Cabbage Sexytime

    Sexy Cabbage Sexytime

    Let’s face it, cabbage is a tough sell. Even though it’s what makes coleslaw coleslaw and it’s a crunchy companion to a fish taco, most people associate it with their grandmother’s boiled cabbage fouling up the air with its death-like aroma. That’s why I’m titling this post Sexy Cabbage Sexytime because the other night, I…

  • Maple-Roasted Butternut Squash and Apples

    Maple-Roasted Butternut Squash and Apples

    If there’s a time of year to break out Molly Stevens’s new Roasting book, this is it. Thanksgiving dinner is all about roasting. If you deep-fry your bird, you’re missing out on one of the great aspects of Thanksgiving–the lovely aroma of a slow-roasting bird wafting through your house or apartment. Keeping in the spirit…