These are picnic-worthy not just because of their sugar-encrusted goodness, but because you can make them days ahead of time and serve them as soon as you arrive at the picnic site, before the rest of the food is unpacked. Hey, and if you serve them in the car on the way to the picnic, that's okay, too, though technically that's not a picnic. Admittedly, it's a smallish recipe, but there's a reason for that: the almonds are so good that people would fill up on them if given the chance. Feel free to double the amount.
The mild cream-Dijon dressing keeps this salad wine friendly.
This is very rich and sweet, almost more of a pudding than a cake. It first appeared in the Fifties, but was still popular a decade later. My husband, who is not usually a dessert eater, said that it is "extremely good!".
In truth, I came upon this perennial favorite of the Soupies using my most trusted and successful research technique: theft from a grandmother. A good friend named Brigitte, of the Austinite sub-species Priori manhattanitus, sat me down to a bowl of this, her Algerian Jewish grandmother's recipe. At the time, I couldn't afford a commercial immersion blender, so I couldn't produce it in quantity until a year later.
Ingredients
The credit for this delightfully refreshing and extravagantly simple little amuse-bouche, or palate teaser, goes to chef Patrice Barbot at restaurant l'Astrance, in Paris.
Ingredients
This salad is a combination of simple elements: mesclun salad, warm goat cheese, roasted garlic and good, crusty bread: a perfect lunch. The garlic cloves, soft and puree-like from roasting, can be squeezed onto slabs of bread, along with the creamy goat cheese, to make an impromptu open-face sandwich as you eat the greens.
Ingredients
I love risotto, but not as a main dish, unless something has been done to it to give it form. Here, a lemony risotto is formed into ovals, then shallow-fried until golden and crisp and served over a bed of finely slivered spring vegetables. These croquettes make a lovely supper dish for company and can be made vegan if no butter and eggs are used, although the egg does help bind the rice.