• Waffle Cheese Sticks

    Like what happens often to me, I thought I had an original idea with this recipe, but then I looked online and it had been widely done. I think I did mine a bit different though, making these as more of a cheese stick or dipper, instead of a full blown calzone. These make for a really tasty and super easy app, just buy some pizza dough, roll it out thin, add the cheese and salami, and press it in the waffle maker for a few minutes. The pizza dough gives you a totally different texture and flavor than what you expect from something waffle shaped.  

  • Squid and Sausage Fusilli

    Seafood and sausage is always a tasty pairing. After playing around with squid cooking times and noticing that it can be tender after 3 minutes or 40 minutes, but nowhere in between, I really wanted to make a hearty tomato sauce with chopped up squid that was cooked slow and low. I decided to mix in sausage, but otherwise make it like a normal tomato sauce. I loved how this came out. The squid had a perfect texture that was super tender with just a slight rubbery bite that gave the whole dish a nice chew. The flavor combo of tomato sausage and squid with a little banana pepper thrown in is really something special and some chopped up hazelnut and meyer lemon zest on top brought everything together in a nice way.

  • Mac and Cheese Fries

    Crispy french fries smothered in creamy cheesy mac and cheese and topped with lots of crispy bacon and scallions.

  • Mussel Tacos

    I guess it is a little bit gratuitous to remove mussels from their shells for a recipe. I mean, they taste amazing in the shell and it is sort of a fun game to eat them, and on top of that the broth with a nice crusty piece of bread can be nectar of the gods when done right. While it was fun to try this recipe, I probably won’t be taking mussels out of their shells for a recipe again. These tacos were really great, don’t get me wrong, but it is just a lot of pointless added effort when I would be happy to just crack a beer and go to town on a pile of mussels. If you made these on a smaller scale as mini taco apps I think it would be more worth the effort.

  • Mango Habanero Mustard

    Making mustard is really easy, cheap, and a lot of fun. I like to do a lot of trial and error when I make mustard and I have made a lot of batches that I never posted because of this (meaning they came out awful). Over the weekend I made a killer mango based mustard that I just had to post because I seriously have eaten like a cup of it in the past two days it’s THAT good. The mango adds a nice sweetness that gives the whole thing a honey-mustard essence, but a couple habaneros and a cold-mix process give it the intensity you guys can expect from one of my recipes.

  • Hummus Quinoa Cakes

    I wanted to use hummus to make something that was falafel-like and very easy to make. I knew I would have trouble achieving that toothsome crunchiness of a true falafel, so I thought of using cooked quinoa as the main ingredient to get that desired texture. It actually worked even better than I thought! The quinoa on the edges that got browned up were perfectly crunchy, and the insides of these patties were creamy and juicy with just enough bite. I served these falafel style in a fresh pita with cucumber salsa, lettuce, and tzatziki.

  • Bacon Noodle Soup

    I wouldn’t exactly say that I was snowed in, but after being out all day in the gross snow/rain mixture, when it was time to finally be home I didn’t want to leave. I decided to try and make a soup based off things I only had in the house. The soup came out amazing and really warming on such a cold night, and I think it was mainly because of a slab of delicious bacon I was able to grab on a recent trip to the Culinary Institute of America with Jones Dairy Farm. The smokey bacon really gave the soup a deep warming flavor. Homemade stock, a can of tomatoes, and noodles from a package of ramen (without the flavor packet) rounded things out. Honestly there was nothing I would have rather eaten that night.

  • Persian Chicken Burritos

    You guys know I love to make twists on the burrito from all over the world. There are even some good versions in Stuffed! The key to making this work is not just slapping a bunch of exotic ingredients into a tortilla, you really have to take the time to replace all of the burrito staples like rice, beans, meat, and salsa. This week Mandi and I made an incredibly tasty Persian take on the burrito. For the rice, we used a sour cherry rice complete with the crispy bits Persian rice is famous for. In place of beans, we used lentils. The meat was a classic marinaded chicken, salsa was a Persian tomato-cucumber salad, and for sour cream, we made a yogurt sauce.

  • Veggie Loaded Meatloaf

    I was craving meatloaf. This is a sentence I have said as many as never times in my life, but it was the case the other night. If you are following along, you probably noticed the trend of healthy, mostly meatless, and pretty inexpensive dishes recently, because that is how I try to cook this time of year. Plus I keep having to make mac and cheese stuffed burgers for the cookbook publicity so I am trying to counteract some of that. That all being said, I wanted to make a vegetarian or mostly vegetarian “loaf”. I did some research, but most veggie loafs were loaded with grains and tofu, and not actual veggies like I wanted. I decided to just wing it and do mostly veg with a little beef and some cheese, sort of like a veggie heavy lightened version of a regular meatloaf.