You should bake this a couple of days in advance and let it stale at room temperature.
When I have no vegetables on hand, I make this soup, which requires only onions and leftover bread. Grated Gruyère, one of my mother’s favorite additions to the soup, is a great flavor enhancer.
You can vary the amount of water in this recipe in accordance with whether you want a proper soup or a more stewlike consistency.
The first time I ate codette was in 1994, at Ristorante Plistia, in the National Park of Abruzzo, during a trip to Italy with my husband and my parents. The word codette translates to “little tails,” but when the restaurant’s proprietor, Cicitto Decina, brought a platter of these emerald green beauties to our table, we thought the plate was piled with steamed green beans! What a delicious surprise when we tasted the tender-chewy strands of spinach pasta freshly made by Cicitto’s wife, Laura del Principe, and demurely dressed with a sauce comprised of local sausages and peas. From that moment, Plistia became my favorite restaurant. It still is.
When raising three rowdy boys, Daisy Kushino often made this classic Japanese American dish: it was a cinch to make and an easy dish to feed them while they were sitting in a highchair or at a picnic. Mochiko chicken is probably adapted from tatsuta age, Japanese marinated fried chicken, and is very versatile: serve small pieces as finger food or cut the chicken into bigger pieces for a main course. Flour made from Japanese sweet rice (which is similar to glutinous rice) is called mochiko flour or sweet rice flour and can be found in the Asian aisle of most supermarkets. Look for Koda Farms Blue Star Brand which comes in a white box.
I adore the deceptive plainness of gingerbread. It is definitively unfancy, and yet the flavor is so rich, and its deep-toned tang so subtle. Here the tang is a little more emphatic, as sour cream and licorice-evocative Guinness give heady lift, but still this is — for all the treacly sugar and pungent spices — gentle and cozy-making, though almost alarmingly addictive.
At the risk of committing heresy, we present this quick and easy update to the venerable Burgundian (and very umami) classic that traditionally calls for bacon, red wine, and a tough old rooster. We have lightened it up with lean smoked ham and your choice of white wine; good matches, we think, for the lighter flavor of thighs from a younger chicken. Make it a day ahead and gently reheat it for even more umami and better-developed flavor. Keep a loaf of good French bread nearby, as the gravy is irresistible to sop up.
The word "revolconas" means tumbled, or rolled over, and here it probably refers to the act of mashing up the potatoes. The dish is a specialty of Extremadura (as well as parts of Castile), where the potatoes are mixed with oil flavored with garlic and the local paprika, pimenton de la Vera. This gives the dish a rusty hue and an addictively dusky taste. Bacon or chorizo bits are sometimes mixed in as well. After being mashed, the potatoes are shaped into a cake and served as an appetizer (or a poor man's main dish), though they definitely make a welcome side dish. Smoked pimenton is essential here; it is available at better food shops and by mail order.
Ingredients