sugar-and-spice candied nuts

I am, without a better way to put it, swimming in nuts.* Appalled by the price of nuts everywhere around here but insisting that it wasn’t going to keep me from baking with them, I asked my mother out in the ‘burbs — a place where people are less confident they can get away with swindling $9.99 for 1.25 cups of pecans — to see if she could do better. She came back with fifteen pounds for about $30 from Costco, five of walnuts, five of pecan and five of almonds. It is, in a word, awesome.

Recipe

pizza with broccoli rabe and roasted onions

It’s not even January 1st yet and I already need a break from all of the butter and braising of the last couple months’ cooking. Wait long enough to step up to a more nutritious plate and I think your body will do it for you. In my days off, I have only craved three things: greens, carrots and oranges. Okay, four if you count French toast from LeGrainne Cafe. I’m still human.

Recipe

gramercy tavern’s gingerbread

This is dark and sticky and chewy and heavy and spicy and a zillion other adjectives that end in y that are so overused, they border on hackneyed, but you know what? It is not this cake’s fault. It can’t help being awesome, and fragrant (our living room smells like Christmas), attention-grabbing (nobody puts it in the corner) and totally respecting of your busy schedule (because it tastes even better on days two and three than it did out of the oven).

Recipe

braised beef short ribs

[Braised Beef Short Ribs with Potato Purée, Swiss Chard and Horseradish Cream]

The first time I made short ribs, I freaked out. Lifting their lid after a multi-hour braise just as our guests arrived for dinner, I discovered a mess. “The bones fell out! Help! Did I ruin them?” I cried just as my mother walked into the kitchen, and because she’d never made short ribs before said “I don’t know, maybe?” But then Alex’s mother swooped in and said “That’s a good thing!”

Recipe

potato latkes, even better

Note: Every 15 years, I get to rewrite and overhaul an old post, just because I’m tired of looking at it. It’s true! It’s right there in the bylaws, trust me. Don’t fret: The way I make latkes hasn’t changed. But this post was aggressively overdue for some fresh photos and a bit of crisping up, and just in time for Hanukkah.

Everyone makes latkes, fried potato pancakes that are the star of the traditional Ashkenazi Hanukkah celebration, a little differently. Some are more mashed and thick; some are in smaller bits and very flat. I love them all. But perhaps unsurprisingly, I still think mine are the very best: tangled in a knot, barely tethered with batter, and very crisp.

Recipe

grasshopper brownies

My grandmother was a pretty fly lady, though I am not sure anyone called her “fly” in her lifetime. She loved anything glamorous and I’m pretty sure she saw the point of doing a whole lot in moderation. She’d send my sister and I (beware, frightening New Jersey-in-the-80s references ahead) glittery and puff-painted jaw clips and manes from the flea markets in Florida, she never discouraged the splattered and acid-washed jeans and neon slouch socks I wish someone would have formed an intervention over (shudder) and I specifically remember her finding me a pair of silver moccasins that in my mind couldn’t have been any cooler.

Recipe

sausage-stuffed potatoes + a green salad

I don’t think I need to tell you that sometimes the tastiest food is not the prettiest. Take a real close look at meat sauce, or shiny, oily cheese draped over tuna or a ground up olive paste and you’ll know why it may be tasty, but it’s not pretty. Meanwhile, I am wary of too-pretty food; perfectly smoothed fondant lids on cakes, making them look like rubber, overly glazed tartlets that look like they’re cellophaned.

Recipe

cranberry vanilla coffee cake

I know it would seem that someone who makes as many celebration cakes as I do would dream only in stacked layers, draped ganache and swirled buttercream, but the truth is that I think that the best kind of cake on earth is a coffee cake. They’re simple and cute; they’re alll flavor with minimal flair; they take a third of the time to make. And they may not make people gasp when walked into a room topped with sparklers, but they, without fail, never make it out of said room intact.