Though I don’t have any issues with gluten, I still like to have a handful of gluten-free recipes up my sleeve. When baking for friends who abstain from wheat and other glutinous grains, my typical strategy is to stick with desserts that either omit grains altogether or that contain a small amount, with the hope that it’ll be easier to substitute other ingredients. As we’re in the midst of peak berry and stone fruit season, I recently got it in my head that a crisp would be an ideal candidate for this sort of makeover.
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dinner-party-worthy
Grilled Skirt Steak With Soy-Garlic Marinade
When cooking a thick, well-marbled NY strip or porterhouse, I tend to stick to the adage that less is more, seasoning with salt and not much else; with leaner, thinly-cut steaks like strip, hangar, and flank, it’s a different game altogether. Flavorful, but not terribly rich or tender, these relatively budget-friendly cuts take magnificently to a bold marinade like this soy-garlic situation.
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One-Pan Salmon and Asparagus With Spring Onions
It may not be as apparent as with produce, but seafood has its seasons. With the rise of aquaculture, frozen fish, and globalization in general, it’s possible to buy salmon all year long, but, like berries, wild salmon is at its peak during the spring and summer months. This recipe pairs beautiful salmon fillets with two other seasonal ingredients: asparagus and spring onions.
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One-Pan Roast Chicken With Carrots and Potatoes
What do roasting a chicken, poaching eggs, and cooking a perfectly medium-rare steak have in common? All three are culinary techniques that have a reputation for being far trickier than they actually are; in fact, with a bit of guidance, they’re all quite beginner-friendly. Here, I’m breaking down my basic, but really good, take on roast chicken.
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Roasted Red Onions With Thyme
It feels pretty ridiculous to say, but until relatively recent times (I’m talking the last year or so), I didn’t like onions in most applications. As a background note in soups and stock, sure; diced and lightly cooked, or worse, raw, hell no. Most people have an aversion to a few foods, but most people aren’t food writers, and most people don’t dislike such a fundamental ingredient. (What can I say, I’m an odd one.) So it feels a little funny to now be praising a recipe that has onions at its heart.
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Baked Sweet Potatoes With Miso Butter and Scallions
Sweet-leaning vegetables like beets, butternut squash, and sweet potatoes have always been a tough sell for me. (Truly, it’s the earthy-sweet, vaguely-dirty flavor that I have trouble with, not the brix level of these vegetables.) That is, I had trouble with them before I learned how to treat them right. The secret is a classic flavor pairing principle: pair like with like; in this case, bold with bold. This can mean something acidic (think beets and yogurt), something spicy (think butternut squash and ginger), or, in this case, something deeply-savory, even funky (helloooooo, miso).
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Radicchio Salad With Manchego
There’s much to like about Food52, Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs’ blog, culinary community, and shop, but if I had to choose just one area to highlight, it would be the blog’s aptly-titled Genius Recipes column, written by Kristen Miglore. Every week, Miglore highlights a recipe from a cookbook, restaurant, or other source that earns this title from both being ridiculously-tasty and clever in its preparation.
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One-Pan Sesame Salmon With Shiitake Mushrooms
Over five years, my boyfriend Andrew and I have shared too many meals to count, but this simple, elegant salmon dish is one I’ll always remember. One of the first things I cooked for him, it felt like an unequivocal success, a meal enjoyed by all parties. Years later, when I made it again, Andrew gently revealed that he wasn’t too keen on it that first time; to his tastes the salmon was a bit too rare, something he was far too polite to point out at the time.
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Duck Fat Smashed Potatoes
French fries are tempting, but I’ll take a side of duck fat and thyme smashed potatoes over a pile of fries nine times out of 10. (That 10-percent: duck fat fries or shoestring potatoes.) When earthy duck fat meets crisp potato, magic happens. Add a generous dose of freshly-ground pepper and minced thyme — both classic potato pairings — and it doesn’t get much better.
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Kale Salad With Walnuts, Golden Raisins, and Toasted Breadcrumbs
One of the biggest hurdles I ran into while launching this blog was choosing a name that represents myself and the type of content I’ll be sharing here. Ideas ranged from the completely-ridiculous (e.g. Yuppies Live Here, after a somewhat-accurate spray-painted tag left on our apartment) to the at-least-semi-viable (I Am a Cupcake, because, as my friend Ally says, I look like one). Finally, after weeks of anguish, I narrowed it down to two contenders, and polled my friends for advice. Now, it’s pretty obvious A Modest Feast won out, but as a tribute to the runner-up — Not Only Kale — it seemed fitting to have the first recipe I share here feature that leafy green.
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