Simply Recipes Food and Cooking Blog

We all love quesadillas, and we could all use more leafy greens in our diet, so let’s add some shredded kale to our cheese and tortillas and call it a “kale”sadilla! This could even be a rather clever way to get your kids to eat more greens. Though it’s not exactly “sneaky” as you can clearly see the kale.

Are you familiar with Basque cooking? Basque Country is a region bordering Spain and France at the Western end of the Pyrenees mountains. Basque descendants and communities can be found all over California and Nevada.

Frittatas, as simple as they seem, can be a challenge to pull off well. The secret to a perfect frittata, or almost any egg dish for that matter, is slow cooking. A frittata should be firm enough to have structure, while at the same time, tender to the bite. If you cook the egg mixture too fast, the result will be dry, crumbly, and off-tasting.

The trick to delicious lamb shanks is to brown the shanks first.

Do you like lasagna, but not the fuss? Make baked ziti instead! It’s a lot like a classic lasagna casserole, but easier to make and without lots of layers or broken noodles. It makes for a perfect midweek or weekend meal, or a hot dish to bring to a potluck. Make extra and freeze for later. This recipe is a pretty basic version, but everyone who makes baked ziti has their own unique tricks and twists to it. Some vary the cheeses, some the meat, some make meatless versions, and some people leave out the tomato sauce for a truly cheese-tastic casserole.

Being a quintessential Swiss dish, cheese fondue conjures up images for me of alpine ski huts, deep snow and 20°F weather. Well, we don’t get much snow or cold weather in the California central valley, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a good fondue party.

Every year I consider it my civic duty to create a brussels sprouts recipe that my father will actually eat. Every family has one, right? A sprouts-a-phobe?

The first is the stock. Your soup will only be as good as the stock you are using. This soup traditionally is made with beef stock, though sometimes a good beef stock can be hard to come by and expensive to make. If you use boxed stock, taste it first! If you don’t like the taste, don’t use it. (If you cook a lot of beef or beef roasts, save the scraps and freeze them to make a stock with later.)

This applesauce is delicious either hot or chilled. It pairs well with pork chops for savory dishes, it's terrific with cottage cheese as a snack or light lunch, and it's great with vanilla ice cream or yogurt.

Are you familiar with Cook’s Illustrated? It’s a magazine and a website from the same people who create the PBS show America’s Test Kitchen. It’s the only cooking show we watch with any regularity, and we read each issue of the magazine from cover to cover. What I love about the magazine is that they go into great deal of detail about the how’s and why’s of various cooking methods; I always learn something new. (What I don’t love about the magazine is that they tend to overcomplicate things, just for that n-th degree of perfection.)