Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Sweet and Sour Coleslaw

July 1, 2014 by Mary 18 Comments

This recipe is SWEET! It’s both super easy and super delicious! You will LOVE it and get compliments to boot!

The day after I served it, requests for the recipe came rolling in. This Sweet and Sour Coleslaw is a terrific accompaniment to the Amazing BBQ Ribs and Grilled Potato Salad with Scallions recipes that I just published in the June newsletter. If you are not signed up for that, you can do so now by clicking on the blue box on the right hand side here. That will take you to a page to sign up, and I’ll make sure you get one.

This recipe is from a cookbook that was a gift to me from our lovely Bianca, who was visiting from Italy by way of South Carolina, it is a find! Her Italian boyfriend is working for a company based down there and she was visiting him before coming to visit us in NYC. She said she wanted to bring me a little bit of the South so she picked out this Farm Fresh Southern Cooking cookbook, by Tammy Algood. I had never heard of Tammy, but so far I’ve made about eight recipes from this book and they’ve all been terrific! All of them are relatively quick, easy and super delicious! And yes, of course I’ve made changes – just a little though.

I figure that people from the South know coleslaw and from this recipe, they really do. It is perfect for your upcoming July 4^th celebrations. And don’t forget to let me know if you want to receive the newsletter for the best ribs and a really different potato salad recipe.

SWEET AND SOUR COLESLAW – serves 8
(adapted from Tammy Algood and her Farm Fresh Southern Cooking cookbook)

1 medium head of cabbage, shredded
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 tsp. firmly packed light brown sugar
2 tsp. salt
1 rounded tsp. dry mustard
2/3 cup canola oil
1 cup cider vinegar
1 tsp. celery seeds

Remove the 2 – 3 outer leaves from the cabbage, wash and dry with a paper towel. Cut into quarters, and shred on a mandoline, avoiding the core. (I love to munch of the core while making this – something my mother used to do, giving me a piece, while I watched her shred.)

Place the shredded cabbage in a large bowl. Sprinkle with the white sugar and drizzle with honey. Do not stir.

In a small saucepan, over medium–high heat, combine the brown sugar, salt, dry mustard, oil, vinegar and seeds. Bring to a boil and remove from heat. Let cool for 15 minutes. Pour over coleslaw, tossing and mixing well. Cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours before serving.

Delish!

Asparagus Risotto

June 8, 2014 by Mary 48 Comments

With spring finally here and beautiful asparagus plentiful, I always want to make this dish: Asparagus Risotto. Years ago I never liked risotto, I actually never wanted to try it. Soupy rice? No way. My mother used to make this Polish meal of a hot soup made with milk and rice (gag – I hated it), potato pancakes and applesauce. Oh I thought it was AWFUL!!! My father loved it and even one of my brothers, David, asked for the rice soup once for his birthday. Fortunately I had left town by then. So this is why I never ordered risotto in a restaurant, thinking it was too close to that soup. But no, not at all.

And then there are the asparagus stories in my family. My father loved, loved, LOVED asparagus. And in those days when I was young, it was really only available in the spring and early summer. But it was still relatively expensive and we were a family of eight with six kids. So my father would buy two to three bunches, and actually count the spears and divide by eight as to how many spears each person got. This ran between five and eight, depending on how expensive they were. We would always tease him as he counted, while lovingly serving them to each of us. He liked asparagus so much, he even liked the canned white stuff (gag).

My father never cooked much, but he always made the asparagus. He would take each spear, hold it at each end and bend it until it broke at the point of tenderness, all the while, explaining to me what he was doing. Breaking at the point of tenderness was so important to him. After washing, he would then pile them all up with the ends together forming a flat bottom, and tie up the bundle with white kitchen string.

Using the double boiler, he would fill the bottom pan with about an inch and a half of water and stand the bundle of asparagus upright in it and then take the top pan and turn it upside down, covering the top portion and tips. He would then steam them for about 8 – 10 minutes, testing the tenderness of the stems with a fork. When they were done, he would carefully lift out the whole bundle and place it in one of my mom’s square Pyrex pans, cut loose and remove the white string, and proceed to put probably too many pats of butter on top. He would move those pats around, making sure all spears were covered, from stem to tip, and then count to serve. This is how I grew up on asparagus!

But back to risotto, this recipe is based on combination of Mario Batali’s and Mark Bittman’s recipes and was first printed in The New York Times back in 2007. I have changed it a bit. It is a family favorite in our household, the kind of dish you can just sink right into – real comfort food – with the spring accent of asparagus. You can even throw in some peeled raw shrimp at the end, (stir until done) to dress it up even more if you’d like. Serve as a first course or with your meal as shown here with broiled lamb chops. I hope you like this. Maybe it will become a family favorite in your house too!

Asparagus Risotto – Adapted from Mario Batali and Mark Bittman – serves 4 as a main course or 8 as a side

1+ lbs. asparagus, no less than ¼” thick, snapped at the point of tenderness, washed and cut into one-inch-long pieces, tips reserved
5 to 6 cups chicken or vegetable stock, preferably homemade
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 medium red onion, diced
1 1/2 cups Arborio rice
1/2 cup dry white wine
Salt to taste
1/2 cup, heaping, grated Parmesan cheese.

Bring a small pot of water to a boil. Add half the asparagus stalks and cook until quite soft, at least 5 minutes. Rinse quickly under cold water. Drain. Put cooked asparagus in a food processor and add just enough water to allow machine to puree until smooth; set aside.

Put stock in a medium saucepan over low heat. Put oil and 1 tablespoon butter in a large, deep nonstick skillet over medium heat. When it is hot, add onion, stirring occasionally until it softens, 3 to 5 minutes.

Add rice and cook, stirring occasionally, until it is glossy, about 2 to 3 minutes. Add white wine, stir, and let liquid bubble away. Add a large pinch of salt. Add warmed stock, 3/4 cup or so at a time, stirring occasionally. Each time the stock has just about evaporated, add more. You need to stir no more than occasionally. For example, stir after each addition of liquid and then once or twice more before that liquid evaporates.

After about 15 minutes, add remaining asparagus pieces and tips, continuing to add stock when necessary. In 5 minutes, begin tasting rice. You want it to be tender but with a bit of crunch; it could take as long as 30 minutes total to reach this stage. When it does, stir in the asparagus puree. Remove skillet from heat, add remaining butter and stir briskly. Add Parmesan and stir briskly, then taste and adjust seasoning. Risotto should be slightly soupy. Serve immediately.

Snow Peas with Ginger, Garlic, Shallots, Lemon and Mint

May 4, 2014 by Mary 18 Comments

snow peas, ginger, garlic, shallots Photo from Apr 12, 2014

For a vegetable dish bursting with flavors, and a perfect springtime meal accompaniment, try this Snow Peas with Ginger, Garlic, Shallots, Lemon and Mint recipe. Our oldest son’s girlfriend made this for dinner a couple of weeks ago and it was delicious! They paired this with braised short ribs and some good French bread. It was a fresh, crisp antithesis to the tender, melty short ribs.

Here’s what she did:

SNOW PEAS WITH GINGER, GARLIC, SHALLOTS, LEMON AND MINT

2 tbs. olive oil
1 shallot, chopped
2 tbs. minced ginger
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 lb. of snow peas, strings removed
Pinch of sugar
Salt
Pepper
1/2 of a lemon, juiced
Grated zest of a whole lemon
3 tbs. chopped mint

Heat a large sauté pan on high heat for 1 minute. Add the olive oil, shallots and ginger to the hot pan and sauté for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the snow peas to the pan, the pinch of sugar, salt and pepper and toss and cook for another 1.5 – 2 minutes. Then add the lemon juice and zest and cook for 30 seconds more. Off heat, fold in the mint and serve.

We have had so much going on here at LOVE. As perhaps you’ve noticed, we’ve redesigned this site so that you can see more posts at a glance on the home page. This makes more recipes immediately accessible and hopefully will provide additional inspiration for you to cook clean, healthy, delicious food, with LOVE.

Our MARY’s secret ingredients boxes were all mailed on the 25^th of April, as scheduled! They should be in everyone’s hands, including those of you on the west coast, by tomorrow. There has been so much excitement surrounding them! Many of you have already posted your very enthusiastic comments and shared photos on Twitter and Pinterest. I will reveal everything here tomorrow and post recipes and serving suggestions for all of the ingredients in the coming two weeks. I’m very excited about that!

We’ve also had a rush of people coming back and ordering more boxes after receiving this spring box. So if you are interested, I urge you to place your order now for the other seasons as they are selling fast and we will only have 100 boxes each season.

So stayed tuned and visit often or sign up for an email notification (on the right rail here) when I post a new recipe, and remember to cook with LOVE. Your food will always taste better!

Our Easter Dinner

April 24, 2014 by Mary 34 Comments

This year was unusual for us.

We celebrated a lovely Easter Sunday dinner on . . . Saturday night! I was originally planning on having a Sunday dinner, but then my sister-in-law pointed out that people would have to leave so early, or couldn’t be there at all due to the travel time needed to be back home for work on Monday morning. I thought this solution was genius. It accommodated some of our guests and worked out so well. I think I might do this every year! Last year I complained about Easter Monday not being a true holiday so I’ll just go at it from the other end and celebrate our Easter dinner on Saturday!

An added benefit for us hosts was that this left Sunday to be truly a day to relax, take a walk in the park, and enjoy leisure time. It was a gift!

The dinner I made, I must say, turned out really, really well. After a workout in the gym on Saturday, I got started on prepping all the vegetables, enlisting my husband to help. As long as I didn’t balk at listening to the baseball game, he was willing to be an able sous chef.

Vegetables that cooked with the elephant beans.

There were 10 of us. We started with an asparagus soup topped with crème fraiche and snipped chives – a recipe from the HayDay Country Market cookbook. This soup was delicious, however I must confess that when I was pureeing it, I had my doubts, as it smelled just awful – like Del Monte canned asparagus – eew! I was near gagging and then thinking, how could I possibly serve this? And by that time, it was too late to throw it out and make something new. Fortunately, the smell didn’t last and the soup tasted delicious – whew!

Our main course was a delicious 10 lb. organic, free range, no nitrate ham from Herondale Farms in upstate New York and it was amazing!! Just look at this beauty. My glaze was a homemade mustard, honey, rum and cloves number, no sticky pineapple and awful cherries for me! This type of ham almost looks like a fresh ham, because there are no dyes to make it pink, but it is smoked. It is so different and so good!!

Here’s the full dinner plate: the ham, chrzan (our Polish red beets and horseradish dish), Greek elephant beans baked in a tomato sauce that were so creamy and good (I’ll have to make that again and measure, so I can give you the recipe) and sauteed spinach with garlic. It was certainly colorful!

We ended the meal with this totally yummy sour cream topped cheesecake – an Amanda Hesser recipe that was in the New York Times years ago, with fresh figs and raspberries on the side.

A totally satisfying, delicious dinner! But what always happens at these big dinner parties is that I’m rushing and take crappy pictures or forget to take them at all! With all the excitement and all the people, it’s just not foremost in my mind, so I apologize for that.

As I said before, our big bonus was a totally enjoyable, lazy Sunday with a walk down to Central Park drinking in the sunshine and sights.

Aren’t they just so cute?

Pasta with Flounder in a Red Sauce and Roasted Broccoli with Radishes

March 17, 2014 by Mary 28 Comments

I’m so embarrassed, I forgot to mention in my last post that 10% of Mary’s secret ingredients’ annual profits will be donated to Feed the Children, a wonderful, worldwide organization that provides nourishing food, hygiene items, educational books and supplies for boys and girls in need.

I have always said that there is plenty of food in this world. It just needs to be redistributed and to not go to waste. Please take a look at these links and articles. No one should go hungry. I’m very excited to be able to give this non-profit a helping hand with MARY’s secret ingredients. Man, I would love to play a part in eradicating hunger in this world – it’s on my bucket list. You can help. All the more reason to order a box! Feed yourself and your family while feeding the needy children of the world.

This past week, the day after we arrived home from California, at around 5 pm, our youngest son informed me that he and his girlfriend would be home for dinner. That morning, I had taken two flounder fillets out of the freezer and had planned to roast them for Steve and me and make a simple vegetable for dinner. So now I only had a little over 1 lb. of fish for four people. I was tired and crabby from the travel and time change and had no desire to go to the fish store uptown to buy more fish and a decent vegetable. What to do?

Walking to the subway on the way home, while talking out loud to my husband, I decided to make it stretch. I called my son, Zach, and asked him to mince 5 cloves of garlic, pit and chop 15 olives, take the anchovies out of the fridge and make sure the flounder fillets had thawed. (They hadn’t.) I thought, let’s make a pasta dish with the flounder in a red sauce! Add some anchovies and olives for an extra boost of flavor! I stopped in the grocery store downstairs in my building and bought some broccoli and a beautiful bunch of large radishes. I tossed those with some olive oil and salt and pepper, and roasted them at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes, along with the recipe below and we had a super delicious, satisfying dinner for everyone; quick to boot, with everything ready in about 40 minutes. Suddenly I wasn’t crabby anymore! (A little food does wonders – think of what it could do for the world!)

Now, because I only had buccatini in the apartment, which is a big noodle, I did not toss the sauce with the pasta, but served the pasta in a bowl, drizzled a tiny bit of olive oil on top and then ladled the red fish sauce on top. If I would have tossed it all together before serving, I would have broken up all those beautiful little pieces of flounder and made mush out of them. Not a good thing, nor pretty to serve. Now I know the true Italians would disagree with me here but that’s what I did, allowing each individual to mix it up in their own bowl.

PASTA WITH FLOUNDER IN A RED SAUCE – serves 4

2 tbs. olive oil
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1/3 of bunch of parsley leaves, washed, dried and chopped
2 tsp. tomato paste
1 – 28 oz. can of whole San Marzano tomatoes, hand crushed, with the sauce
5 flat anchovy fillets, patted dry with a paper towel, chopped
Salt
Pepper
2 fillets of flounder, about 1.3 lbs., washed, dried, cut down the middle and then cut into 1/2” chunks
15 olives, black and green in oil, pitted and minced
1 lb. pasta – bucatini or fettuccine

Put a large pot on water on to boil for the pasta.

Warm olive oil in a large skillet. Add minced garlic on low heat and stir for 5 minutes. Raise heat to medium – medium high and add the chopped parsley and cook and stir for 1 minute. Add the tomato paste and stir for 1 – 2 minutes. You must always try to brown the tomato paste in order to get the most flavor out of it – this is key!

Then add the hand crushed can of tomatoes with the juice along with the anchovies and let the whole thing vigorously simmer for about 10 minutes to thicken.

Meanwhile your pasta water has probably boiled. Salt with course sea salt to taste like ocean water (you know what that means, do not taste it and burn your tongue) and add your pasta. Stir and cook until al dente.

Salt and pepper the sauce to taste and add the cut up flounder fillets. Lower the heat a bit and stir gently, often. Fold over with a rubber spatula to stir so you don’t break up the pieces of fish. This will take about 7 minutes to cook the fish. Then taste the sauce to adjust salt and pepper and at the very end, add the chopped olives. Remember the olives will add more salt so take that into consideration. Turn your heat off.

Drain the pasta when done. Place pasta in bowls and drizzle a little olive oil on top so the noodles don’t stick together. Then ladle some beautiful sauce on top in the center. Serve immediately, with LOVE.

ROASTED BROCCOLI WITH RADISHES – serves 4

1 head of broccoli, washed, stems trimmed and peeled, each stalk quartered or even cut more
5 large radishes, scrubbed, dried and quartered
2 tbs. olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Toss broccoli and radishes with the olive oil and salt and pepper to taste on a rimmed baking sheet. Roast for 15 – 17 minutes until broccoli stems are fork tender to your liking. The broccoli heads will become a little charred, but I like them that way. They are so tasty. Serve immediately, very hot, on a side plate, with LOVE.

Enjoy!!

Potatoes Mary

March 3, 2014 by Mary 25 Comments

Since our children are no longer home, and as we have gotten older, I try to prevent the weight gain that happens with the slower metabolism by just not making or serving carbs at dinnertime. I try with all my might to keep in shape, (except for the couple of chocolates after dinner on weekends) but you know, I don’t consider myself too successful. I never really lost all the weight from having my boys. And you’re now talking 25 years ago.

Did I tell you I hate to shop for clothes? Seriously, I hate it. I always have. I love it when my husband buys me outfits and he does the work and lately, I guess because I haven’t shopped in so long, he went out and bought me two! The first was one of my Christmas gifts. A pair of really skinny, hip hugger jeans (that’s what we used to call them) and a beautiful navy shirt with sheer sleeves. Honestly, I was afraid to try the jeans on. I waited a few weeks. But miraculously, they fit! And they’re even a size 8 – but I think they’re making all the sizes more generous now – and they really should be a 10. Whatever, I was just so happy they fit and I didn’t have to tell him I had to take them back for a larger size.

I was reminded of a lunch I had some months ago with my friend Sharon, who is just a couple of years younger than me. Sharon is in good shape – don’t get me wrong – but she said she was with another friend who was helping her clean out her closets and her friend told her to throw out all the clothes that were too small because she thought they would constantly depress her. So Sharon decided right then and there that she didn’t have to strive for still being in her twenties. She said she gave it up!

Me? I’d like to think that I’m still nineteen – hell – forget the twenties – I want to be nineteen again! And I’m not giving up – and still striving for the body – not that I’m there – but you know what I mean?

So recently I had lunch with my friend Marie who is a few years older than me and she said she understood me. She was in that frame of mind in the past, but she thought she had moved to Sharon’s camp now. I was wearing the new outfit at that lunch and the jeans are not all that comfortable – but I’ll suffer for fashion every once in a while.

Who’s camp are you in?

We have been entertaining a lot and when we entertain, we do always serve a carb. Lately I’ve been making these potatoes – similar to Potatoes Anna but not done in the oven and not nearly with the amount of butter James Beard would call for. So let’s call these Potatoes Mary. They’re easy to do as long as you have a hand mandoline. Cook them slowly while you’re having cocktails, flip carefully and you’ll turn out a delicious and impressive looking dish for your guests.

POTATOES MARY – serves 6 – 8

6 – 7 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed and sliced thin on a mandoline (you can peel these but I don’t if they’re really fresh – my mother always said the skin was good for you – made your own skin pretty!)
1 tbs. olive oil
2 tbs. unsalted butter, divided
1 tbs. chopped fresh thyme leaves
Salt
Pepper

Slice your potatoes right before using. Warm the olive oil with 1 tbs. of butter on medium heat in a non-stick skillet. When butter is melted, swirl together and start laying the potatoes in the skillet, overlapping them in a round fashion, making sure the overall thickness is even and using 1/2 – 2/3 of them. Then stop and salt and pepper over the top. Sprinkle the thyme leaves evenly over the surface and dot with the remaining tbs. of butter. Layer in evenly the rest of the potatoes, and salt and pepper the final top surface.

Cover the skillet for 15 – 20 minutes. The potatoes will sweat and cook. Check the bottom carefully with a spatula to make sure the bottom is not browning too much. Uncover the skillet after the 15 – 20 minutes to let some of the accumulated moisture dry up as you’re aiming for a crispy bottom, yet all the potatoes must be tender and creamy so check them with a fork in the center, cooking them for 10 – 15 minutes longer on this side, uncovered. When they’re pretty dry on top as the photo shows, slide them out of the skillet onto a plate. Then cover the plate with an unrimmed cookie sheet and flip them over. Now slide the whole potato gallette back into the skillet to brown the other side. Cook for 15 – 20 minutes more to slowly brown the other side. Keep checking with a fork. If they are not getting tender, cover them for a bit but you want to end up with your last 10 minutes or so uncovered to get them crispy. Carefully slide the whole shebang out of the skillet and onto a serving plate.

Cut like a pie into wedges. Serve with LOVE.