This dish tastes like health and summer.
Even more so than corn on the cob swabbed with butter, when summer comes, I look forward to sweet, nubby corn salads loaded with vegetables and a zesty dressing.
Note: Have everything cut and ready, but mix just before serving.
This is one gorgeous salad: Slivered red and white cabbage tossed with ginger, garlic and orange peel -- pure Asian flavors finished off with white and black sesame seeds.
Pricey Greek yogurt is taking over dairy cases, but there's a puzzle here. Our extra money isn't necessarily buying some marvel imported from Greece or yogurt with special cultures.
Carrots
Our friend Brian Beadle is kind of a finicky eater -- he’s a meat and potatoes man. You could say he is sort of a "spuds specialist." His mashed potato recipe is fairly standard but his trick is to slip tiny pats of cold butter down into and throughout the hot potatoes when they are in their serving dish. The butter melts into hidden pools buried deep in the mashed potatoes to be discovered with each delicious forkful.
We’re cooks who have endless patience for “process.” But when a recipe calls for 5 cups of peeled chestnuts, we know we’re in for some serious labor: scoring their skins with ×’s, roasting them, peeling them while they are still hot, then removing the fuzzy inner skins. Life is too short. We cut ourselves some slack and reach for jars of those nice already peeled French chestnuts—they’re delicious.
Use a good port, red wine or even a Madeira if that’s what you have on hand. Cranberries have so much natural pectin that this sauce will set up even if you don’t refrigerate it.
Collards must boil for at least two hours. Whatever nutritionists might say, collards were not made for quick cooking.