This Stir-Fried Romaine Lettuce with Garlic Chili is a surprisingly crisp and refreshing hot dish that can be served as a side dish with stir-fries, soups, and braises.
This romaine lettuce stir-fry is a quick, easy, and wonderful way to enjoy a light and crispy vegetable side dish, especially when you are bored with salads. Plus, it's a great way to use that "about-to-wilt" extra head of lettuce you bought so you don't let it go to waste.
Serve these buttermilk, herb, and fontina cheese muffins for breakfast, for a snack, or with soup and salad for dinner. They are savory, filled with herbs, and loaded with cheesy goodness.
These muffins are savory, cheesy, and especially fabulous as a substitute for bread with dinner.
These eggnog cookie bars, with a layer of eggnog shortbread topped by a layer of eggnog cheesecake and then sprinkled with more shortbread cookie dough, are a wonderful holiday dessert.
If you have some leftover eggnog, this is a great dessert for using it up. Then again, these eggnog cookie bars are actually worth buying eggnog just to make them.
Fill this delicious French Berry Cake with raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, or a combination of all of these fresh berries.
This Berry Cake, or Gâteau aux Baies, is an easy cake to make, and the resulting dessert is so simple yet elegant (the little black dress of desserts)! With a hint of lemon in the cake along with the fresh berries, it's perfect for an afternoon snack, family dessert, or for a holiday dinner party.
This pear and almond tart is an elegant, sophisticated, and delicious dessert that is also super easy to prepare.
This pear tart begins with an almond flour crust that is par-baked. Then, you spread on a frangipane-style filling, then tuck in some sliced poached or canned pears, brush the pears with butter, and sprinkle everything with sparkling sugar before baking.
This fougasse with herbes de Provence and a sprinkling of Gruyère is a crust lover's dream that you can enjoy warm straight from the oven.
Fougasse is a French-style flatbread. It's similar to Italian focaccia, but is shaped more like pizza dough, in that it is stretched rather than dimpled. Finally, it's slit in sections to resemble an ear of wheat (or even a ladder) before baking.
This croissant bread is crispy and flaky on the outside and light and layered on the inside. You'll love peeling off layers of this amazing bread and spreading them with jam.
You can also just slice this bread and get creative. You don't need any butter because this bread is layered in butter before baking, just like a croissant.
Mofo gasy is a tasty puffy round mini-pancake that is a popular breakfast food sold by street vendors in the island nation of Madagascar.
Mofo gasy are little yeasted pancakes that include rice and sweetened condensed milk. They are typically enjoyed with hot coffee and fruit and are cooked over charcoal at stands along the side of the road by food vendors.
These red, white, and green polvorones are crispy on the outside and soft and crumbly on the inside. They are very similar to a cross between a shortbread cookie and a softer sugar cookie.
Polvorón is a generic name for cookie also used in Spain, the Phillipines, and Latin America. The word in Spanish translates to "powder." It’s pretty much meant to describe the crumbly nature of the cookie!
These biscochos, cookies flavored with oranges, cinnamon, vanilla, and ginger, are a favorite Christmas cookie in El Paso and New Mexico. Plus, they are seriously tasty.
These cinnamon sugar cookies are also the official state cookie of New Mexico, where they are called biscochitos (or bizcochitos).
This Czech Christmas bread, or Vánočka, is a celebration bread made with a lightly sweetened dough filled with raisins and topped with almonds.
I did not grow up with a celebration bread tradition. I had no idea there was a whole world out there of wonderful celebration breads, including Christmas.
These sourdough onion rings, with just three ingredients, will satisfy your craving for one of the best diner or coffee shop sides ever invented.
If you love onion rings as much as I do, this three-ingredient onion ring recipe will satisfy your craving when you can't get to your favorite diner, deli, or coffee shop.
These cinnamon roll muffins have all of the flavors and warmth of your favorite breakfast treat in a muffin form.
If you're not ready for making yeasted cinnamon buns, or don't have time for kneading and monitoring dough, these muffins capture all of the goodness of the traditional cinnamon buns in an easy to make and bake muffin.
This Green Cabbage, Apple, Fennel, Watercress, and Pecan Salad is perfect for fall and winter.
This is a simple salad filled with fresh ingredients and topped with a generous helping of toasted pecans.
You can trace the lineage of this deliciously moist almond rum cake to Nantes, a city in the Loire Valley in the western part of France.
Gâteau de Nantes is a rich cake, made with almonds, flour, sugar, lemon zest, eggs, and lots of butter. It's then soaked in a rum and sugar syrup that is spiced with black pepper and allspice. Finally, it is topped with a sweet rum glaze.
This margarita, made with tequila reposado, orange liqueur, fresh Mandarin juice, jalapeño chiles, and grilled limes, is slightly spicy, a little bit smoky, and totally refreshing.
Plus, the glass for this margarita is rimmed with Tajín, rather than just salt and lime.
These eggnog pots de crème are the perfect way to marry the traditional custardy French dessert with the flavors of an American Christmas tradition.
These little eggnog custardy desserts are the perfect dessert for entertaining. They're simple to make, with just a few ingredients. Plus, you can easily make these ahead of time.
This Shio Pan, 塩パン, or Japanese salt bread, is a super soft, faintly sweet, and totally buttery crescent-style roll. These rolls are super flaky and light as air.
These shio pan rolls are amazingly light, flaky, and most importantly, buttery.
Imagine dinner roll dough tossed in Thanksgiving stuffing and baked to a light golden soft roll. Plus, these stuffing rolls are the perfect vehicle for leftover turkey sandwiches.
Imagine if soft and fluffy pull-apart dinner rolls met traditional Thanksgiving stuffing, fell in love, and got married. The results might just be these rolls.
If you love brownies and cheesecake, why not combine the best of both worlds into one amazing holiday dessert!
These peppermint cheesecake brownies begin with a super rich and fudgy brownie base and then are swirled with a minty cheesecake batter before baking. You will love them for the holidays.
This 100% Whole Wheat Cinnamon Swirl Bread brings the sweetness of cinnamon rolls to whole wheat bread.
This loaf is made with white whole wheat flour. It is a strain of whole wheat that has all of the nutritional value of regular whole wheat, but has a lighter color and a milder taste.
Shoreek - soft, ethereal, fluffy, sweet, light as air... it's hard to choose the best word to best describe these Egyptian sweet rolls!
These spirals of pull-apart bread, sprinkled with sugar, while not well known in the rest of the world, are said to be very popular in Egypt. They're especially enjoyed by Christians in Egypt for Easter, and year-round by everyone else in the country (source: The Kitchn).
This simple baked macaroni and cheese is the perfect side dish for your next holiday dinner. It's super easy to make and totally unfussy.
Plus, I'm sure this macaroni and cheese will make any picky twelve-and-under guest at your table happy.
This recipe for make-ahead mashed potatoes will feed a crowd, perfect for your next holiday gathering.
This recipe for mashed potatoes is perfect for busy holidays or those times when you are feeding a crowd and you don't want to be stuck in the kitchen mashing potatoes for a large crowd at the last minute.
This corn souffle is a family favorite side dish for holiday dinners. It rises perfectly and will impress your guests as you carry it to the dinner table.
This corn soufflé is the real deal. It rises tall and lofty in the oven and is so impressive when you bring it to the table.
These pecan butterscotch muffins are filled with toasted pecans and butterscotch chips.
The batter is sweetened with the rich flavors of maple syrup and dark brown sugar, giving these muffins the faint flavor of toffee.
This big muffaletta sandwich, stacked with deli-style meats and cheeses and spread with an antipasti salad, will feed a crowd.
This sandwich, made with a 14-inch wide round sesame seed-topped soft bread, has its roots in New Orleans. It was first introduced by Sicilian immigrant Salvadore Lupo, the founder of Central Grocery and Deli, which is still located in the French Quarter.
This recipe captures the flavor of graham crackers, but takes them to an entirely new level. Think crispy butter cookies with a cinnamon graham cracker flavor.
You will love these cookies. They are my "go-to" cookie for gift-giving, and every time I give them as gifts, I have been asked for the recipe. Every single time.
This cranberry vinaigrette is a sweet and tangy salad dressing or marinade.
This cranberry vinaigrette, with its bright flavor, is great for fall and winter salads. Serve on your favorite salad for Thanksgiving.
Rum baba, or baba au rhum, along with being a classic French dessert, is a delicious and elegant boozy yeasted cake.
Traditional rum baba is a yeasted cake that is soaked in a rum-based syrup, then brushed with an apricot glaze, and finally topped with crème Chantilly (French whipped cream).
These Sigteboller, or Danish Salty Rye Rolls, with their soft interior and crisp thin crust, are easy to make and are wonderful warm from the oven and spread with butter.
You can serve these rolls for dinner, breakfast, or as a sandwich bun for lunch or a snack. These rye rolls are so versatile.
This cranberry and fudge layered pie is the perfect decadent chocolate dessert for the holidays.
This pie consists of a flaky whole wheat crust filled with a layer of semi-sweet chocolate ganache and then topped with a sweet-tart layer of homemade cranberry sauce.
The Satan's Whiskers Cocktail is a wonderful cocktail for fall. With its orange color and Halloween-themed name, it is perfect for the season.
The Satan's whiskers is a bittersweet cocktail comprised of gin, dry and sweet rouge vermouth, Grand Marnier (a cognac flavored with bitter orange liqueur), orange juice, and orange bitters.
If you love the flavors of pumpkin pie, you will love these pumpkin scones.
After baking, these pumpkin scones are drizzled with a vanilla bean glaze, which balances perfectly with the not-too-sweet scones.
This Pane Francese is the shorter and flatter northern Italian cousin of the French baguette. It still comes with a crispy chewy crust and a soft airy interior, but it is much easier to make.
The shape is pretty rustic, almost like a cross between a French baguette and a ciabatta. Making the dough involves a long fermentation for extra flavor.
You can start making these sourdough poppyseed rolls at noon and they will be warm and ready for dinner.
These sourdough rolls are so flavorful with or without the poppyseeds, but I love the taste and texture that the poppyseeds add.
These cute pumpkin madeleines are tasty little French-style sweet treats with a classic American fall flavor.
Madeleines are adorable little génoise sponge cakes (or are they cookies?) that are baked in a mold that makes them look like sea shells. They are tiny poppable cakes that are perfect for dipping in your morning or afternoon tea or coffee, or drizzled with a sweet sauce for dessert.
This Japanese milk bread with furikake is a wonderfully soft loaf pan bread with added extra umami flavor from furikake, a Japanese seasoning.
This bread recipe is based on an Asian method for creating a super fluffy bread by cooking flour and water together to gelatinize the starches in the flour, making it super moisture absorbent. You can use more water in the dough without ending up with a super sticky, hard to handle dough.
This Halloween cheese ball is a fun and delicious appetizer to serve at a Halloween, Thanksgiving, or game day celebration.
This pumpkin-shaped cheese ball is mildly spicy and delicious on your favorite cracker or crudité, such as celery or carrot sticks. I love this cheese spread on buttery crackers such as Ritz.
These chocolate peanut butter spider bites are a fun, salty-sweet treat to serve at your next Halloween party.
These chocolate and peanut butter pretzel spiders are made with just four ingredients and are great for making with kids. In fact, you could make these as an activity for kids to do during a family gathering.
These breadstick snakes are an easy and tasty snack. Plus, they a fun way to fill your bread basket as a side for dinner.
Serve these breadsticks with a side of hot pizza sauce or marinara sauce on game day for a fun way to ring in fall.
This cauliflower and fennel topped lavash is a quick and simple way to toss together an amazing and nutritious "pizza" in just 30 minutes.
Begin with two store-bought 9 inch by 12 inch lavash breads. Although you can make your own lavash (and it's fun to make), one of the goals (besides total deliciousness) of making this pizza is that it is simple to throw together and e-a-s-y!
These savory pizza muffins have the flavors of pizza in a little handheld muffin.
These muffins are stuffed with two kinds of cheeses, sautéed onions and pepperoni. You can assemble them in minutes and bake them for a tasty treat that any pizza fan would love.
These smashed potatoes are both crispy and creamy, and full of flavor. They are the perfect side dish for a steak or roast beef dinner.
These crispy smashed potatoes are like ulta crispy skin-on French fries with a super creamy interior.
Celebrate fall with this rustic roasted pear and cranberry crostata.
This pear and cranberry crostada begins with a pâte brisée crust filled with frangipane. Next, it's layered with roasted pear halves and cranberries. The crust is brushed with an egg wash and sprinkled generously with sparkling sugar before baking.
This half-baked chocolate cake, or Gâteau au Chocolat Mi-Cuit, just oozes delicious gooey chocolate when you cut it open.
If you're familiar with those little individual molten chocolate cakes, also known as lava cakes, that were all the rage a few years ago, just know that this cake takes the concept to another level.
This fried sweet rice with sausages and shiitake mushrooms is so easy to make and totally tasty.
This fried rice recipe is different than most because it calls for sweet rice (or sticky rice), which is a short grain rice higher in starch, or amylopectin (fancy name for a plant starch).
This Lebanese Morning Bread is a tasty pita-style sourdough bread made with three kinds of flour: all-purpose, whole wheat, and corn meal.
The combination of whole wheat, corn meal, and all purpose flour, along with the sourdough starter, adds so much texture and flavor to this bread.
A thick slice of this apple babka will remind you of both apple pie and cinnamon rolls.
This apple babka is filled with a mixture of grated apple, pecan meal, sugar, and spices. It's kind of like if apple pie and cinnamon rolls got married, this babka would be the happy result.
This is my favorite recipe for chunky guacamole. It's easy, flexible, and totally flavorful.
This guacamole is fabulous with tortilla chips and a margarita or bloody Mary for a summer al fresco dinner party appetizer, or for serving while tailgating during the fall.
