Tag Archives: snack recipes

Recipe: Orange Bread

food recipes January 28, 2014

My aunt recently gave me a whole trove of recipes from my late grandmother. Hand-written on index cards, they contain some midcentury curiosities we would probably never want to eat again (deviled egg casserole, anyone?), but also a few gems that might otherwise be forgotten.

As soon as I came across this recipe for orange bread, I remembered eating it as a child in her kitchen, though that was a long time ago now. My grandmother had a meat grinder bolted to the kitchen table for grinding her own hamburger meat. This recipe used that grinder on orange rind to mince it into small pieces. (Now everyone would freak out about E. coli before doing that.) You can do the same with a food processor. Whether or not you want to “test for doneness with broom straw,” as her original recipe suggests, is up to you. (more…)

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Recipe: Banana Buckwheat Bread

food recipes September 22, 2011

Like a lot of culinary inventions, this recipe for banana bread came about by accident. I had enough white flour to make half a recipe originally given to me by my college friend California Girl, but not enough to make the whole thing. Rather than make a sad, small loaf of banana bread, I decided to substitute 1/2 cup of buckwheat flour for the missing white flour.

The results were surprisingly good, since buckwheat flour adds a slight edge of bitterness to balance out the sweet bananas and sugar – I often find banana bread to be too sweet. This banana bread is like the ideal banana pancakes, in loaf form. (more…)

Posted in food, recipes | Tagged American recipes, breakfast recipes, snack recipes, the copycat chef | 1 Comment

Something Natural’s Hummus and Sprouts Sandwich

food recipes July 19, 2010

Once you make hummus at home, you may be disappointed you haven’t been making it yourself all along. This Middle Eastern standard is incredibly easy to whip up in a food processor, and it lasts for about two weeks in the fridge. The best recipe I’ve found is Mark Bittman’s from his excellent cookbook The Best Recipes in the World. Using the Bittman recipe as a basis, you can customize hummus to your taste with more garlic, lemon, etc., as I have here. Keep the ingredients on hand and you’ll never want mass-market hummus again.

One of the best uses for homemade hummus is this sandwich, based on the delicious version from Something Natural in Nantucket. Though you’ll be hard-pressed to find the same wonderful Portuguese bread off the island, you can use fresh multi-grain bread for a healthy lunch that fits into a low-cal, low-salt diet. This sandwich almost like a salad between two pieces of bread, and as such, it’s a lot easier to take to the beach or the park. You may want to wrap the sandwich in waxed paper and cut it in half – or just enjoy the messiness. (more…)

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The Copycat Chef: Fried Polenta (Scagluzzoli)

food recipes June 30, 2009

It’s thrilling to find that the addictive Italian street snack scagluzzoli, or fried polenta, is finally hitting restaurants in New York. The Standard Grill, Tonda, and several other places now have fried polenta on the menu, but unfortunately, New York versions are often too fancified to be considered a snack of the people. Unlike the plain fried polenta in Florence, here it’s often cut into fancy wedges or gussied up with extraneous ingredients like basil and artisanal cheese. This is bad enough, but to fry polenta so that it’s limp, not crispy? Utter blasphemy. (more…)

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The Copycat Chef: Tia Pol’s Deviled Eggs with Smoked Paprika

food recipes June 10, 2009

As mentioned, one of the best things at crazy-popular tapas spot Tia Pol is their deviled eggs sprinkled with smoked paprika, or pimenton. This secret ingredient of many Spanish dishes is made of peppers from the La Vera, Extremadura region of Spain. The peppers are slowly smoked over an oak fire, sometimes for weeks, then stone ground to a fine powder. Smoked paprika gives that signature rusty red color to chorizo and spicy paellas. It’s not a knock-you-in-the-face kind of hot pepper, though: it morphs from sweet to slow burn.

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Posted in food, recipes | Tagged appetizer recipes, snack recipes, Spanish recipes, tapas, the copycat chef | 3 Comments

Paul Love's Potato Chips

food recipes April 27, 2009

No, that’s not an accidental apostrophe – we actually do know a guy named Paul Love, and this weekend he made the most amazing potato chips for the first BBQ of the season. NYC restaurants have been making their own potato chips for a while now, but many either cut them too thick, so the resulting chip texture is like cardboard, or burn them a little, which ruins the taste.

It took three bags of russet potatoes and a lot of experimentation, but this home chef eventually got the recipe just right. Unlike the packaged kind, these homemade potato chips have the intense flavor of fresh potatoes, and they’re cut so thin, they’re incredibly airy and addictive. Here’s the recipe, after the jump.