“Soup tastes like dirty water. (So does tea.)”

For some, soup is a paltry imitation of a real dish. Much like how chicken and turkey are a lesser form of protein than beef, pork, lamb, and fish in my eyes. To be fair, those who think soup is simply a waste of a bowl of food, a few vegetables and scraps of meat in a broth that is a few too many steps away from a meal probably are eating the wrong kind of soups, as I had been unfortunately eating the wrong kind of poultry.

The wrong kind of soup. You are all familiar with this sad, clear, liquid broth. The description of ‘dirty water’ is not far off, unfortunately. But here’s the thing, for all the wrong-kinds-of-soup out there in the world, there are four or eight or sixteen right-kinds-of-soup. Most of which are just as healthy, if not healthier than their watered-down counterparts. And on days like today, when Chicago decides to entertain the thought of winter, a hot bowl of thick soup is really the perfect complement to sub-freezing temperatures.

Start with a vegetable puree, and go on from there. Vegetables, once sautéed with a bit of onion, carrot, celery, and spice, simmered down with a bit of broth, turn velvety and luscious when pureed. It’s the flavorful and less-artery-clogging alternative to lapping up a bowl of cream. (The casual bowl of cream.) In the case of this Spicy Cauliflower Soup, it’s the hot, wonderful balance of cumin, coriander, and the savoriness of cauliflower, blended to a creamy finish that make it a meal. Finished off with a drizzle of olive oil and there it is, the absolutely perfect bowl of soup. No dirty water to be found.

Recipe on the following page.

Think of the last taco you consumed. Even if it was a relatively low-end taco, (looking at you Flash Taco), the kind of tacos that come piled up high with everything vaguely Latin in flavor, it was a damn good taco. And it probably only cost $2. (If it cost more, you did something wrong.

Tacos have an air of immediacy about them; they demand to be eaten where ever (whenever!) you may be. Standing up, outside on the sidewalk, sitting down on whatever at the moment constitutes a chair, tacos cannot wait. There is really no point in taking a taco to go as it takes less than three minutes to devour. Take the time, and eat it a couple feet from whence it was given to you. Let the overflowing taco drip down your forearms and coat the sides of your mouth with a slick of taco-grease.

Maybe go back and get another.

In addition to being absolutely irresistible, tacos have the added bonus of being able to contain anything. Carnitas, carne asada, grilled pollo, poached pollo, fried fish, grilled fish, lenuga, or a simple veggie filling like papas. They work with any protein, and can sustain any number of salsas, cremas, cheeses, and condiments. As it turns out, condiments in terms of tacos are more often than not the star of tortilla-enclosed world.

Blasphemy. Not for the above statement, but for this salsa rosa. A creamy (without cream), thick salsa of roasted red peppers and Serrano chilies, salsa rosa is a substantial and spicy sauce that goes perfect with any an all tacos. Breakfast tacos, huevos rancheros (taco-adjacent), chorizo tacos, fish tacos, the list goes on. As a bonus, this salsa is easy to make. Roast, cleans, puree, done. And there you have it, three to four cups of the perfect taco condiment. (To be fair, this would be great on almost anything like sandwiches, pastas, salads, or crostinis…) The thing is, this salsa rosa is from Italian-American Michael Chiarello, not a descendent of the taco-ancestry. Oops.

Never fear. This salsa just speaks to the taco’s versatility. Tacos play well with others (and should be eaten immediately.) What a wonderful food.

Recipe on the following page.

Hummus, the dip that has taken over the world. And the best part is, it can be made out of anything, any-bean, any-spice.

Click here for the recipe, and to read more.

There is always a moment of guilt when, standing in the kitchen, you’re faced with the option of adding bacon. Bacon to breakfast, bacon to that turkey club, bacon to the mashed potatoes, bacon to the salad…bacon, in its salty crispness, plays extremely well with others. Which means, sometimes the only thing keeping bacon off the plate is self-restraint.

Self-restraint in the face of bacon? Almost nonexistent. Why even bother, when the result is a guaranteed success. (Always.)

In making Alice Waters’ Cream Biscuits, there was however, a moment of doubt. Are the bacon and cheddar additions really necessary? After all, these biscuits aren’t called cream biscuits because they’re lacking in lipid goodness. But then something strange happened. The cookbook rationalized the addition of not only bacon, but cheddar too. In its own magic way, the cookbook spoke to me. Or rather, Alice Waters spoke to me, through her Brussels Sprouts gratin.

On page 295, Alice had left a map, a guide, just for these kinds of ‘should I add bacon to this’ situation. There, in the vegetable section, Alice had left clear directions to add bacon where it may otherwise have been thought inappropriate. (Obviously clear directions, my bacon-addicted brain rationalized.) It was as if she was speaking to me, guiding me to continue down the bacon-laden path. If bacon does wonders she said, to one of the most infamous of vegetables, Brussels Sprouts, if it’s acceptable to add bacon and ‘thin shavings of butter’ to vegetables, just imagine what a little bacon and cheese could do to the already lovely Cream Biscuits.

And Alice was right. So right.

Recipe on the following page.

Cucumber kimchi…good enough to get paid in.

Click here for the recipe, and to read more.

The kitchen is a weird place. Sometimes, things get a little crazy. For example, when the parents flee for a couple days, and only the children remain, the kitchen can turn from a place of spotless surfaces and a well-stocked fridge into a cityscape built out of dirty dishes and empty cracker and cookie boxes. Stacked high around the sink, eventually the dishes move out and colonize the other countertops, making their way from wall to wall to island until eventually, there are no dishes left to be used. Talk about a limiting resource.

In the absence of parental supervision, the food that’s been turned out of our kitchen has been a little off kilter too. No vegetable dinners. Solely vegetable dinners. Sandwich meals, of five different sandwiches. Pie meals. All have been odd, it’s true, but they’ve been glorious as well. After all, it’s pie for dinner.

The one substantial meal-that-most-resembled-a-meal included sweet potato cakes a la Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty cookbook, an early holiday gift. (A gift that doubled as an ‘eat less baked goods, for Pete’s sake’ message from my mother. But since the book is so pretty, and offers up so many delectable options, I’ve forgiven it for the lack of pastry.) Coupled with a bit of kielbasa, onions, and peppers, the sweet potato cakes rounded out a full meal. Remarkable, considering we had no clean dishes to start cooking with. The experience was somewhat of a MacGyver cooking endevour.

These cakes take what you love about sweet potatoes—the color, the taste, the natural sugars, the starchy goodness—and add in a few simple seasonings—hints of smoke and chipotle peppers, a blast of fresh green onions. Then, of course, it’s all fried in butter. Voila,  sweet potato cakes. If you follow the recipe and use tablespoon portions of the potato mixture—as I did after creating massive potato cake anomalies with handfuls of the stuff—the result is something wonderfully crispy, starchy, and heartening. The perfect appetizer or accompaniment to any variety of sauces and dips. Warmed up the next day, it’s practically a potato party for lunch. At that point, since they’re leftovers, if you eat with you’re hands, there are no dirty dishes accrued. Win.

 Recipe on the following page.

There is a bakery in Los Angeles, just off La Brea on Beverly. It is called MILK, and as far as I can tell, it is the one of the few bakery havens in the city.

Last year, I went on a cake-tour of Los Angeles, only to conclude that the best cake in Los Angeles is actually in Glendale, and all other cake and cupcakeries in the area suffer from a lack of fat. Or a clientele that doesn’t purchase cake often enough to avoid the unfortunate dry-cake syndrome. Dry cake, no matter how high or how generously schellaced in frosting, is beyond saving. Build a house out of it, burn it for warmth, just don’t eat it.

I was ignorant to the baked good magic at MILK at the time, and worse off for it. There were iced molasses cookies, snow drops, snickerdoodles, rice krispie treats the size of my fist, blue velvet cake, and a whole case full of perfect ice creams waiting for me. All I had to do was find the red milk bottles. Granted, the best at MILK is not the cake. But on the grounds of liberal butter and sugar use, MILK bypasses the cake-category of the cake tour. If you are currently in Los Angeles, go and get one ice molasses cookie and one ice cream sandwich. These ice cream sandwiches contain over an inch of frozen goodness sandwiched between two macaron shells. Macaron shells, which as it turns out, are the superior shell for an ice cream sandwich. Everything crunchy and melty, sweet and crusty about a macaron is a heightened by an ice cream filling. I recommend the coffee toffee.

The second best thing at MILK however, is not a baked or frozen good. It’s their soups. Butternut squash, creamed cauliflower, and most spectacularly, the carrot chipotle. Blended and spiced to perfection, the soups are good enough that a visit to MILK sans the purchase of a baked good is perfectly acceptable. (A little less well-rounded, obviously, but you can’t eat cookies every day. Or…)

Creamed soups are extremely easy to make, as long as you have a blender or immersion blender. For the level of ease, the product is astonishing. The roasted carrot chipotle soup is creamy, spicy, luscious, and vegan, if you so desire. It’s a soup you want to submerse yourself in, curl up on the couch with when it’s cold outside. The chipotle adds a smoky depth that balances the sweetness of the carrot, and the celery adds back notes of a more zesty spice that cuts through an otherwise extremely rich soup. Swirled with a bit of sour cream and chopped fresh herbs, it’s a soup that needs no dessert afterwards.  Considering this is primarily a baking-blog, that’s saying something.

Recipe on the following page.

But it tastes so good. Despite the pangs in the heart muscles, as those poor little arteries try to pump blood after ingesting so much meat—so much fat—producing ‘squish, squish’ oily kind of feeling an internal organ should never get, despite the $20+ cost of a burger, fries, and beer, the Office Burger at Father’s Office (FO) tastes so good. In a true display of addiction, I can never say no. Oftentimes, I’m even the one suggesting Office Time.

Consider, the perfect burger. (And this is a burger to be found in the kingdom of In-n-Out. The ‘perfect burger’ crown is not a headpiece to be taken lightly.)

A patty of perfectly rare—or medium-rare if you’re dainty—dry-aged beef topped with blue cheese, gruyere, caramelized onion, bacon balsamic compote, and a layer of arugala to add a note of spice. Complement that with a wall of beer, a pile of fries, and parsley garlic aioli and you’ve got yourself the perfect burger, in the perfect place. Take a seat outside under the sunken-in heat lamps and enjoy.

Despite its perfection, there is quite possibly, the chance that four trips to Father’s Office is too much of a good thing. The kind of thing that causes a bit of heavy-breathing on a morning run. Oops. And so, the MPBOAT (most-perfect-burger-of-all-time) must be balanced with…kale. Like a magic food eraser, kale banishes all those bad burger side-effects, cleaning up a burger-laden-body for the next trip to FO. (Logic.)

If there is magic in this world, outside of the MPBOAT, then kale chips are certainly some kind of spell. Kale chips are their own kind of wonderful—toasted, nutty, bites of iron-laden, low-cal goodness. They aren’t better than potato chips, but they are just as good. I swear. Love me some burger and fat, but kale chips are delicious. What’s even more amazing is that, when faced with a bowl (kale chips do not come in bags) it’s possible to polish them all off. Which means that you’ve just consumed a head of kale.

Wowza.

My family, myself included, doesn’t often venture into the land of the uber-healthy. It’s a scary place filled with tempeh and vegans. But thanks to our family friend Besty, we had a guide, and she opened the door to kale chips. Not only are they delicious, guilt-free, and crunchy, but boy are they easy to make. The perfect thing to eat when you’re not ingesting a cow and a pig.

Recipe on the following page.

Many tricks in cooking and baking—those two mystical practices that happen in at the Altar of the Kitchen—are less tricky than they would appear, or have been built up to be. Pie crust, biscuits, rice on the stove, the perfect sear; these are all tricks that done correctly once, with just the right timing, temperature, and seasonings, never need be learned again. Granted, all cooking and baking is just the right amount of timing, temperature, and seasonings. However, the big secret is, the simple things are really quite easy. If you spend time mastering the technique at first, you’ll have delicious, homemade goodness forever. (Forever is a long time. Filled with more pie if you start practicing now.)

Risotto, that perfectly creamy, nutty, rich comforting Italian porridge, is just the kind of thing to master early. To whip up a risotto is easy, and it will never fail to impress. There are just a few things you need to make a phenomenal risotto—rice, chicken broth, a shallot, and some parmesan. That’s it. (Butter is a given. Always.) Throw in a crack of pepper and a dash of salt, and an elegant, filling risotto is just a half hour away. Honestly. But in that half hour, many magical things take place.

The broth is warmed, the shallot is minced and sautéed, the rice is toasted, and the parmesan is swirled in. To make risotto, all you have to do is follow a simple recipe. Once you’ve done that, a whole world of wonderful, creamy rice dishes open up. Throw in a leek, a squash, a handful of bacon. Toast up some cauliflower in a little curry powder, chop some roasted pistachios and finish off a pot. Risotto welcomes all additions, and it’s all the more delicious for it.

It’s the kind of recipe you should memorize, internalize, and cook every time by feel. A full recipe is on the following page, but below is a paragraph that, if you really desire a perfect risotto, you should simply take to heart, and repeat over and over.

Bring 4-6 cups of chicken stock to a simmer and then cover, turning off the heat. Mince a shallot and sauté in the bottom of a Dutch oven in a dab of butter until translucent. Throw in a cup of Arborio or Japanese rice to the shallots and toast over medium heat, about 2 minutes. Add one cup of the hot broth and stir with a wooden spoon until the broth is fully absorbed into the rice, about 4-5 minutes. Continue with a cup of hot broth at a time until a creamy emulsion covers each grain, and the rice is cooked with just a bit of bite, about 3-5 more cups of broth. Remove from heat and stir in a bit of parmesan, crack some pepper. 

Note: @kwiezcner pointed out a true gap in this risotto ode: white wine. She recommends splashing in a bit just after toasting the rice, and right before slowly adding the broth. I wholeheartedly agree. 

Recipe on the following page.

For quite some time now, my father, siblings, and I have been trying to convince my mother to make a chicken for Thanksgiving. The main points of our proposal being;

1. a chicken is shaped like a turkey
2. a chicken provides all the same benefits as a turkey i.e. stuffing cavity, drippings for gravy, crispy skin, etc.
3. a chicken cooks faster
4. a chicken tastes better.

But she has refused, year after year. (There was also an attempt, or several really, to convert Thanksgiving into a Feast of Crab, but that argument is a lot easier to shoot down.)

Chicken is a great substitute for turkey, which, in its infamy, is known to be dry, relatively tasteless, and more of a centerpiece for a meal as opposed to the dish people clamor for. Granted, a turkey is iconic. And that’s my mother’s infallible argument. Thanksgiving is not the holiday it is, the holiday everybody loves, without a turkey. Add that to the fact that she cooks Thanksgiving, and my father, siblings, and I have no ground to stand on.

However this year, our turkey was smoked. And for the first time in a long time, it was a truly enjoyable bird to eat. Two hours on the grill over a bed of hickory chips, and that turkey was as close to perfect as a gobble-gobble-wobble-wobble could be. There was just the smallest hint of a smoke ring on the breast meat, and the brine kept the flesh juicy.

Nobody asked for a chicken, not a one of us wanted anything else. It was, as was everything else, (creamed pearl onions, mashed potatoes, green beans with parsleyshallotgarlic butter, rice, herbed stuffing with pecans and sausage, cranberry compote, gallons of gravy, pecan pie, apple pie, and blueberry pie), delicious.

As everybody knows, the best part of Thanksgiving is the piles of leftovers. And magically, just as chicken is a plausible substitute for turkey, that swap can go both ways.

While a sliced turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sandwich is great—nothing wrong with a sandwich—a smoked turkey salad sandwich with the sweet crunch of an apple, the savory spiciness of celery, and just a slick of mayonnaise, is one phenomenal sandwich. On a bed of arugala, there really isn’t any other way to celebrate the Friday after Thanksgiving. (No, not even Black Friday). That hit of smokiness is what takes the turkey salad to the next level. There in the mix, complemented by the apple and spice, hidden in the richness of the mayo, is a subtle bit of smoke that anchors the entire realm of taste. It’s yet another great use for turkey. Now that my family and I have been converted, the only thing we’ll be whining about come Thanksgiving time is, ‘when will the (smoked) turkey be ready?’

Recipe on the following page.