No matter what skill level you attain as a cook or what triumphs of culinary complication you manage to master over the course of a lifetime it's a plain simple truth that sometimes simpler is better.
San Francisco chocolatier Michael Recchiuti prepared the gooey marshmallow topping for this exquisite chocolate cake on a porch at Prather Ranch using just a hot plate and a hand-cranked beater. Recchiuti decorated the marshmallow with shards of his own graham crackers, but store-bought ones work just fine.
Growing up, Nilla Wafers were a big hit snack in our house. They went into mom's banana pudding and dad's chocolate pudding. They were smeared with peanut butter and made into sandwich cookies. They were eaten plain, straight from the
The noodles strike a satisfying note thanks to a garlicky Thai-inspired sauce and toppings of warm tofu and vegetables that shift with the seasons. The salad-like garnish is precisely the cool, crunchy counterpoint those chewy noodles need.
This succulent, spicy and just-a-little-sweet Asian beef is almost sinfully easy to prepare in the slow-cooker -no pre-browning, extensive preparation or complicated sauces- yet somehow yields incredibly deep flavours.
I like to make and freeze a big batch of Asian dumplings like these tofu and kimchi-filled Korean mandu. They're easy to heat up as a bite to eat between running to events and make a nice appetizer for guests, too.
I have to admit, a well proportioned, quality vanilla crème brûlée is pretty hard to beat in my book, but the subtlety of the Meyer lemon addition was just enough without being distracting or overwhelming, like many lemon desserts can often times be.
