Fresh Tart

What to bake when you prefer the salty over the sweet? And you're busy? (And you can't eat gluten?) These easy beauties, which have become everyone's favorite Christmas cookie, including mine.

The original recipe caught my eye a few years ago as the Minneapolis Star Tribune's 2009 Cookie Contest Winner. If you love almonds and caramel and butter and Christmas, you'll be as smitten by these decadent cookies as the Strib'stasting panel clearly was (their verdict: "love" and "beautiful").

As a gift to the baker, these are bar cookies, which Minnesotans know are the most magical (and easy!) of all. Other than allowing time for the shortbread crust to chill before baking, they come together in minutes. After they cool for awhile, cut them into tidy triangles, pour yourself a glass of milk, and dig in.

Despite their simplicity, the triangles are elegant on a cookie plate AND disappear blessedly quickly. You can focus on how nutritious almonds are to lull yourself into cookie complacency, but a cookie isn't Christmas without a hearty dose of butter and sugar, and these are no exception.

Thank goodness!

Recipe for Almond Triangles at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

I couldn't eat much of anything this terrible, sad weekend, but as my desire to cook has slowly returned, I'm turning to comfort foods. I made pan-seared steaks with a dried-and-fresh-mushroom pan sauce and it was just really nice to serve John and Nathan one of their favorite meals.

I made a good amount of the mushroom sauce with savory French toast in the back of my mind. If you only enjoy French toast for breakfast, you're missing out on a terrific and fast lunch or dinner. I used gluten-free bread for the pic (and my stomach), but if I could eat gluten I'd use challah. Any type of bread works nicely, though, really what you have on hand. Because that's the point - savory French toast is a filling, comforting base for leftovers of almost any type, on the table quickly.

If you're not a mushroom fan, try spinach sauteed with garlic, perhaps with a spot of sausage in the mix as well, perhaps with a pinch of red pepper flakes. Or thin slices of ham and a spoonful of braised beans. Or roasted squash and fried sage leaves. Or in the summer, slices of ripe tomato and crispy bacon. (Best. Thing. Ever.) French toast is rich, so a touch of acid and a shower of black pepper strike a delicious balance.

In case you ARE a mushroom fan, the sauce below is a terrific finish for any pan-seared meat that leaves lovely, crusty drippings behind: chicken, steaks, lamb, venison, veal, pork. Just stir the completed sauce into the hot pan juices, scraping the pan while simmering for a couple of minutes. That's it. However, the sauce is also rich and flavorful on its own, thanks to the beauty of dried wild mushrooms. And sherry. And butter.

Yes.

Savory French Toast with Mushrooms
Serves 2

Mushrooms
1/3 c. dry sherry
2/3 c. water
1 oz. dried porcini mushrooms
6 oz. fresh mushrooms, quartered
4 Tbsp. butter
salt
1 clove garlic, minced
squeeze of fresh lemon juice
few gratings of fresh nutmeg (optional)
1 Tbsp. minced fresh herbs (thyme or tarragon or whichever you like best; optional)
1 Tbsp. heavy cream or sour cream (optional)
freshly ground black pepper

French toast
2 eggs
2/3 c. milk or half-and-half
pinch of salt
4 slices bread (challah, country bread, sandwich bread, gluten-free, any type works)
2 Tbsp. high heat oil (sunflower or safflower)
2 Tbsp. butter

For the mushrooms:
Combine sherry and water in a medium saucepan and heat over medium heat until hot (steaming). Add dried porcini mushrooms to the pan and remove from heat. Let sit for 30 minutes, stirring the mushrooms a couple of times, until mushrooms are soft. Using your hands, scoop mushrooms from the liquid and squeeze excess liquid back into the pan, reserving the liquid. Coarsely chop mushrooms and set aside.

Heat a large skillet over medium high heat. Add fresh mushrooms to the pan, along with a generous pinch of salt. Stir around so the mushrooms are coated with butter, then let them be for a few minutes until they start to brown. Give them another stir, add the porcini mushrooms and garlic, and saute for another 5-7 minutes until the whole pan is browned and glaze-y.

Pour the porcini soaking liquid into the skillet of mushrooms, leaving the sediment that will have settled to the bottom of the saucepan behind. Simmer for 3-4 minutes to thicken the sauce a bit. Stir in the squeeze of fresh lemon juice (to taste). Stir in optional nutmeg and/or fresh herbs and/or cream or sour cream and season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Set aside and keep warm.

For the French toast:
In a pie plate, beat together the eggs, milk, and pinch of salt. Heat oil and butter in a large skillet over medium high heat. When hot, dip both sides of the bread in the egg/milk mixture and add to the hot pan. Fry bread until golden brown, then flip and brown the second side. Transfer French toast to plates and serve immediately with warm mushrooms.

As a kid, I loved eggnog so much I could down a carton all by myself. I thought it was truly insane that anyone would blemish its creamy dreamy nutmeginess with stupid booze. Do not mess with perfection!

I no longer feel that way. I read this recipe in the December/January issue of (the fabulous!) Garden & Gun Magazine and it jumped right out at me 1) because the accompanying article is fantastic, and 2) because THIS is recipe writing: decadent, hysterical, and easy to follow.

So if you too are charmed by the idea of a blast of bourbon in your eggnog, this recipe is for you. Two sips in, my tree sparkled magically, my family looked perfect, and The Little Drummer Boy didn't make me want to gouge my eyes out. Suffice it to say this is a bracing ratio of bourbon to cream, so depending on the tolerance of your guests, adjust accordingly. (I think you could start with half the recommended bourbon and add more to taste. Kablam.)

Cheers!

Recipe for World's Greatest Eggnog via Julia Reed, Garden & Gun Magazine at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

Braise a pot of beans one day, eat well for the next several. It's the laziest, most delicious way to fill a week with food that I can imagine.

Day 1 eat a bowlful of beans, on their own or alongside a roast or spooned over rice.

Day 2 fry some beans until crispy and top with sauteed greens and a poached egg.

Day 3 puree some of the cold beans with garlic, fresh lemon juice, and olive oil and eat the spread with chips or smeared generously on grilled bread.

Day 4 puree some of the warm beans with chicken or vegetable stock and eat piping hot as soup, topped with crispy Brussels sprouts and toasted walnuts (fry sliced Brussels in hot olive oil/butter combination).

Your ideas? Share them!

The soup pictured is made with chickpeas, although the foolproof recipe - via Cafe Levain chef Adam Vickerman - is written for white beans. His technique works for whatever beans you like, so experiment away! (Leftover beans freeze beautifully, by the way.)

Original recipe for Braised White Beans at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

You're home from work, starving, standing in front of the fridge with your coat still on. You spy a couple of eggs, a spot of bacon...breakfast for dinner is sounding fast and fine. And it IS fine, of course, given bacon and eggs is one of the best food combinations on the planet. But if you're wanting something a bit more dinner-y, with a hit of carb comfort to chase away the day, remember carbonara, aka bacon-and-egg pasta.

Carbonara purists will be annoyed with the suggestion of bacon over the classic pancetta, but my goal here is a fast, satisfying bowl of pasta with ingredients you're likely to have on hand. If you have pancetta - use it! But if bacon is what you keep on hand, it's perfectly fantastic in this dish.

Your evening will basically play out like this: Set a pot of water on to boil. Hang up your coat. Pour a glass of wine.

Brown some bacon and garlic. Cook the pasta. Grate some cheese. Beat an egg. Toss it all together. That's pretty much it. What emerges is creamy, chewy, decadent heaven, topped with plenty of freshly ground black pepper to balance the richness, ending a long, cold day with a warm, full belly.

Read a book. Go to bed.

Sleep well.

Recipe for Spaghetti Carbonara for One (or More) at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

While you're busy baking holiday sweets, don't forget a nod to the savory. Homemade crackers are a thousand times tastier than their boxed counterparts (just like cookies!) and are a breeze to whip up. The cheesy, nutty crunch of these almond-meal cheese crackers needs no topping, just a measure of discipline to not inhale a panful in one serving. A salty corner here, a browned edge there, and snip, snap, gone.

This recipe is a terrific base recipe, delicious as is as well as highly customizable. The best part of cooking is making a dish your own, right? If you're new to cooking, it's important to follow recipes exactly while you get a feel for how things work. But as you taste and learn and understand the basic science, I'm all for playing around with seasonings, experimenting, whether to use the ingredients you happen to have on hand or to try something completely new. I happened to be feeling nostalgic about the rosemary in my fridge, as it's the last taste of my garden, so I added minced rosemary - and several grinds of black pepper - to the mix.

Lovely.

Recipe for gluten-free/grain-free Cheese Crackers with Rosemary & Black Pepper at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

Happy Almost Thanksgiving! If you're searching for a refreshing, flavorful salad for the holiday table, I've got just the dish. This wild rice salad has been a Meyer family favorite for years and I'm always happy to see it on my plate. Right when the richness of buttery stuffing, buttery mashed potatoes, and buttery gravy threatens to tank your palate, slide your fork over for a bite of this salad, snappy and downright refreshing with orange zest and the crunch of toasted pumpkin seeds.

Bonus 1: It tastes even better the next day, which makes it a perfect do-ahead dish as well as a leftovers treat.
Bonus 2: It can easily be made vegan.
Bonus 3: You can play with the ingredients to your heart's content. Pine nuts instead of pumpkin seeds. Pomegranate seeds instead of golden raisins. Add cubes of roasted squash. Add cubes of apple. Just don't add marshmallows...

Enjoy a lovely meal, everyone!

Recipe for Crunchy Wild Rice Salad with Citrus Dressing at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

As we head into holiday entertaining and craziness, don't forget about popcorn! I am NOT talking about microwave popcorn, I'm talking about the real deal, popped in a pan, which takes about 5 minutes to make and tastes 50 million times - maybe 100 million times - better. When you're done, you have a bowlful of fragrant crunchiness ready to be tarted up for a party (or plopped in front of the TV with a glass of wine aka dinner).

When I was a kid, we were butter-and-salt purists, preferring plenty of both. Don't get me wrong - browned butter with sea salt to this day makes up 80% of my popcorn consumption. I make it for my son's friends, I set it out at our pool for swim parties, I make a batch after a night out with the girls. But it's great fun, and almost as easy, to play around a bit with creative flavor combinations, which are both addictive and gorgeous, and tend to blow guests away for very little effort.

Recipe(s) for Pumpkin Seed/Brown Butter/Crispy Sage, Bacon/Caraway Seed/Bay Leaf, and Curry Powder/Honey/Lime Zest popcorn (and other ideas too) at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

One of my favorite New York food treats is to inhale pork in many forms at Momofuku Ssam Bar. The Bo Ssam pork shoulder is particularly delightful, served whole and fall-apart-glistening for the table to share. Everyone grabs tongs and snaps at the meat like a pack of well-dressed wolves, filling lettuce leaves with slabs of silky shoulder topped with sticky rice, raw oysters (!), kimchi, and a bright blast of ginger scallion sauce. As gorgeous as that pork shoulder is - and it is a stunner, not to be missed - this last trip it was the addictive ginger scallion sauce that I couldn't stop thinking about.

Luckily, I possess the Momofuku Cookbook and just looked the dang stuff up when I got home. It's a snap to make and I am not exaggerating when I say that its sparkle belongs on everything: noodles, all vegetables, scrambled eggs, rice, tofu, soups, all meats, your finger. So. Good. (After a little googling, I find I'm not the only one obsessed with the stuff: Sarah Gim's take on Tastespotting blog and Francis Lam's "explosive" version on Gilt Taste, which I also can't wait to make.)

For the photo, I tossed the sauce with hot rice noodles, ladled a bit of rich chicken stock into the bowl, and added a few pickles and crushed peanuts for crunch. Let's call that dish Five-Minute Comfort, because that's exactly how long it took to make (given already prepared sauce and a stash of chicken stock in the freezer). The other dish is chopped Brussels sprouts stir-fried with some of the sauce, topped with cubes of crispy fried tofu, topped with more sauce and a few dashes of toasted sesame oil. I dub that dish 15-Minute Comfort.

I ate them both right after the pic (separately and then tossed together, yes!)...snip, snap, gone.

Recipe for David Chang's Momofuku Ginger Scallion Sauce at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

Do you invite people to your home for dinner or do you break into a January-in-Minnesota sweat at the thought? I love eating in restaurants, but the nights spent with friends and family in our home, or in theirs, are the best of all. When I was a newlywed, I was so excited to be a grown up that I almost killed myself preparing elaborate dinner parties in tiny kitchens. I don't regret those experiences one bit, but these busy days, I prefer to keep it simple. I think my guests have more fun and I know that I do.

Especially when the dinner party is spontaneous! I just love a last-minute dinner party, when guests pitch in with the chopping, and setting the table, and we all sit around chatting and relaxed. Hear this Minnesotans - there is no need for fancy appetizers before dinner! Sometimes I think the pressure of fussy appetizers kills a party more than the dinner itself. Pop some bubbles and set out some salty nuts, raw vegetables, and a slab of good butter. Delicious. Done.

Or make frico! If you keep a block of Parmesan cheese in your fridge, you're ready to impress in mere minutes. Frico is basically fried grated cheese, toasted in a pan to a crisp wafer of whoa, ready in five minutes or less. Slide the golden crunchy cheese onto a plate and let your guests break off pieces to devour between sips of wine.

It's lovely to fry a bit of sage in the pan before sprinkling in the cheese. Ditto stirring around a bit of garlic. This Melissa Clark version from the New York Times jumped right out at me a couple of weeks ago. Isn't the scorched zucchini pretty? It's also a nice foil for the richness of all that toasted cheese. Clark's introduction didn't put me off either: WHY there is no cult devoted to crunchy fried cheese is beyond me. It’s as rich as bacon or pork belly, as crisp as chicken wings, and as tempting as a foie gras doughnut.

I couldn't agree more!

Recipe for Melissa Clark's Zucchini Frico at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.