Chimichurri sauce served with polenta and tostones
Chimichurri (also spelled chimmichurri) is the quintessential sauce of Argentina, and deserves to be better known in the northerly climes. It is somewhat like an Italian pesto, but made from parsley, and without the cheese or nuts to thicken it. Like pesto, it comes together in a food processor …
Huevos Ahogados
This simple Mexican egg dish has a picturesque name: Huevos Ahogados, which means the eggs have been drowned. The reality isn't so violent, they have actually just been poached directly in a thin salsa.
Let me go ahead and state the obvious: this is great hangover food.
I'm pretty much a sucker for anything involving poached …
Swiss Chard, Onion and Monterey Jack Enchiladas in a Tomatillo Salsa
I'm not going to front, these vegetarian enchiladas were really damn good. My brother described them as "firing on all cylinders". I can't take full credit though, they were roughly based on a Rick Bayless recipe, from his terrific Mexican Everyday cookbook. I changed the …
When I was a sophomore in college, a woman in my class named Katherine Brodsky died because she never imagined that a bowl of chili at a local pub would have peanut butter as a “secret ingredient”. She had the most severe form of food allergy, known as anaphylaxis. Her airway closed, and she died …
Ilan Hall's Top Chef Fideos
I'm an avid fan of Top Chef. Our family has a standing date to watch it on TiVO every week. Of the cooking reality shows (Next Food Network Star, Hell's Kitchen and so on), it is the only one that features people who can really cook, and spends most of the …
Apple-Celery Sorbet
I was trying to decide on a sorbet flavor for an upcoming dinner party, and I ran across this Apple-Celery combination from Michael Laiskonis. That sounded like a good fit with the other flavors I had planned, and the apples are both seasonally appropriate (from storage) and local here in the Pacific Northwest. Read …
The luxurious quality of this dish belies how simple it is to make. Really you do most of the work at the market, acquiring great fresh pasta, ricotta, and mushrooms. Come dinner time, all you have to do is boil the noodles and saute the fungi.
I made this dish with hedgehog mushrooms, which taste …
