I’m a big meatball fan using beef; I especially love meatball recipes which use small pieces of slightly moisten bread cubes folded into the meatball. (That’s how our maid, when I was growing up, cooked her meatballs.) But cooking pork meatballs never occurred to me until I saw recipes in various Chinese cookbooks. Recipes with…
Category: COOKING TIPS
Chinese Char Sui – an American approach
As a young lady, beginning in my 20s in New Jersey, I sometimes ate at Chinese restaurants with friends. These restaurants dotted the landscape at strip malls in small towns across southwestern New Jersey. My best friend Helene and I went to one such place in Irvington, a 20 minute drive from my Maplewood home. …
Sizzling saucy shallots with chicken, sweet potatoes, butternut squash and caramelized shallots
I’m attracted to chicken recipes. I grew up eating chicken, watched my mother, at lunch, pick juicy pieces of chicken off the bone of boiled chicken. For years I ate at KFC, but lately, I know I cook way better. Dishes made with chicken are tasty and they present a multitude of possibilities for the…
Sweet Potato-blueberry-walnut bread-lemon iced
After cooking sweet potato soup, which was delicious, I’ve dug around the extensive sweet potato website based in North Carolina, and learned historical facts and viewed many recipes. Most of the historical information can be found on my recipe for the soup. But personally, I’ve discovered my own small tidbits about sweet potatoes. One, I…
Creamy Sweet potato soup with its skin, plus shallots
For nearly 50 years, I never cooked sweet potato soup or even heard of a recipe for it. But I ate the soup a few weeks ago at a restaurant; and decided to prepare it at home, since I loved its creamy texture with hints of tang and sweetness. The taste of sweet potatoes registers…
Glazed Lemon Pound Cake – a sweet dessert with pucker power
At the beginning of my fora into cooking and baking, which started fifty years ago, I never thought of using real lemons. Unknowingly I bought those plastic bright-yellow lemon containers. Naturally there was lemon juice in them, but who knows what else? It took me many years to discover fresh lemons, and their many benefits…
Rugelach : A Classic, Flaky Dessert Filled with Nuts, Cinnamon and Sugar
I never saw my mother or father cook or bake in the kitchen, ever. Lucky for them, (and us too) my parents were affluent and hired a housekeeper/maid to do all of our cooking. And too, since my father was a baker and owned six bakeries, that enabled us (my three younger siblings and…
(Latkes) Potato Pancakes – A Hanukkah Tradition
The warm crispy potatoes, with its soft center, tasted delicious when dipped in the cool cream…
American Goulash: My Version of a Hamburger Classic
I’m a fan of ground beef. I like it simply prepared as a hamburger, or added in stir fries, mixed in casseroles, and added to so many main dishes. Hamburger meat often comes to the table with assorted ingredients like tomatoes, onion, celery, beans, cheese, plus many vegetable choices. Sauces too are a popular ingredient…
Food Art: A Shortbread Cookie Decorated with Sweet and Salty Treats
This new idea came to me as I was about to bake. At the grocery store earlier I had purchased several bag of mini candies for just this purpose, but at the time I had not realized the extent of the possibilities…