Spicy Shrimp Twice-Baked Potatoes recipe. Cooking Whole30.

January 15, 2021
#MelissaUrban @MelissaUrban #ThisAfricanCooks @ThisAfricanCooks #Whole30 @Whole30 #hmhco @hmhco

I blogged about the updated Whole30 Cookbook, Cooking Whole30, last week. I’m so in love with this book that I wanted to give you one more recipe to try!

Spicy Shrimp Twice-Baked Potatoes. All the yes! The coconut cream instead of the traditional dairy in the twice-baked potatoes made this even more decadent! The shrimp are wonderful! Both of my teenagers proclaimed this to be their favorite shrimp. I’m making the shrimp again with green vegetables. Hope you love it, too!

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Chiles Rellenos with Mexican Picadillo recipe and review: Cooking Whole30

January 9, 2021
#MelissaUrban @MelissaUrban #DashofColorandSpice @DashofColorandSpice #Whole30 @Whole30 #hmhco @hmhco

Do you want delicious food, high energy, great sleep, or to just feel great in general? Why pick just one?! Cooking Whole30. This is the new updated version of the Whole30 Cookbook. I have both, and this one has more cultural information behind the recipes and bonus recipes! I’ve got all of the Whole30 and Whole30-endorsed books with the exception of the slow cooker title, and they are all fabulous. Melissa Hartwig’s dishes are fantastic, and she has a lot of other contributors, which is really nice, because you can taste a bunch of people’s recipes and have a good idea of what works for you. This is filled with easy, healthy, delicious, make you feel oh-so terrific food. Food preppers strapped for time will be excited because there are a few of what I call “Mother recipes” in here. You make the base recipe and use that in a few different ways over the course of the week. Shortcuts without boredom. Ahhhhh. Totally recommend!

I’d love to share Jessica McMullen’s recipe for Chiles Rellenos with Mexican Picadillo with you. Mexican picadillo is a lot like Cuban picadillo, with potatoes and carrots instead of olives and raisins. To keep it Whole30, she uses cloud-like eggs as her coating. The result is souffle-like. It’s just wonderful. I hope you love it, too!

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Dorie Greenspan’s Princeton Gingersnaps recipe from Dorie’s Cookies. Best ever!

December 23, 2020
#DorieGreenspan @DorieGreenspan #DoriesCookies @DoriesCookies #DavideLuciano @DavideLuciano #hmhco @hmhco

We thought 2020 could use a little extra Christmas, so on November 1st, Halloween came down and Christmas went up! We loaded Alexa with a fabulous Christmas playlist, and started watching all our favorite shows. With about a week to go, it was time to make cookies. We have traditional ones for sure, but I love doing family requests. They asked for pecan dreams, gingersnaps, and 7 layer bars. I have favorites for pecan dreams and 7 layer bars, but I didn’t have go-to gingersnap cookies. I decided to consult my very favorite cookie book, Dorie Greenspan’s Dorie’s Cookies. Sure enough, there was a gingersnap recipe in there and it had a triple-threat of ginger in it: fresh, crystalized, and powdered. Ooooo! Best gingersnap ever. Gobs of flavor and that perfect crispness.

She gives a dough chilling range of 2 hours to overnight, and a baking range from 14-19 minutes, depending on where you want to be on the scale from chewy to crisp. I made them once, chilling for 2 hours and once, chilling overnight, and the full spectrum of baking times. If you prefer them to really spread and get crisp, 2 hours chilling and 18 minutes baking hit that. If you prefer a little less spreading and a chewy crisp balance, chilling overnight and 17 minutes baking produced that.

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Chaat Masala Potatoes with Yogurt and Tamarind recipe and cookbook review: Ottolenghi: Flavor

October 29, 2020

#Ottolenghi @Ottolenghi #OttolenghiFlavor #TenSpeedPress @TenSpeedPress

Ottolenghi: Flavor is the third book in Ottolenghi’s vegetarian series: Plenty, Plenty More, and Flavor. This is a gorgeous book filled with more delectable love poems to produce. Yes! If you adore or want to adore produce, you need this! All the dishes we tried were wonderfully complex, balanced, and filled with flavor. While quite a few of the dishes are an hour or two from start to finish, most of it is just an exercise in patience. Do this 5 minute step and come back in an hour to finish everything off. It is all worth it!

I’ll tell you all about all the dishes we tried in a minute. But first, let me share his recipe for Chaat Masala Potatoes with Yogurt and Tamarind with you. Don’t be fooled by their appearance. Two out of four of us think this is the yummiest in the book so far. The cumin, chiles and tamarind give this an amazing flavor. And his dual handling of the potatoes, first boiling, then roasting, gives them a perfectly pillowy interior and a crisp exterior. Perfection. A huge thank you to Ten Speed Press for letting me share them with you! I’ve added links at the bottom to all his books. The holidays are coming up, and these are the ultimate gift for any produce lover that wants to flex a little kitchen muscle. Prepare to crave what you’re supposed to eat!

The recipe calls for nigella seeds. Sometimes they’re called black cumin. If you’re a Penzey’s-head, they sell it as charnushka.

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Jalapeno-Apricot Glazed Chicken Thighs and Cookbook review: Milk Street: Cookish

October 20, 2020

#MilkStreet @MilkStreet #177MilkStreet @177MilkStreet #CPKimball @CPKimball #Cookish @Cookish

If you’re already a Milk Street fan, you are going to adore Cookish!! This is my 4th Milk Street book, and it absolutely delivers. It’s my favorite kind of food – lazy posh. To my delight, it opens with a really extensive vegetable chapter. The ingredients are few, and it’s always just a couple steps between you and a plateful of flavor. The dishes are imaginative and balanced. They give lots of alternatives so it’s easy to make it work with what you have on hand, and you wont feel like you need to have every vinegar and jarred sauce available. I recommend this to anyone who likes lots of global flavor and enjoys minimalism.

I’ve only had the book for a few days and didn’t want to start in with a review until I really cooked the book. I’ll share my thoughts and pics of the dishes we tried in a second, but first I wanted to share a fabulous recipe with you, Jalapeno-apricot glazed chicken thighs. They’ve got tons of flavor and are on the table in 20 minutes, and only 5 of those involve the cook. I made my favorite sweet potatoes to go with them and had to get them started first so everything would finish at the same time. A big thank you to Milk Street for letting me share it with you!

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