Recipes

This fudge pie is a “gooey-on-the-inside, crunchy-on-the-outside, heavenly piece of chocolate wickedness,” and the lemon-curd tarts have a rich filling that can also be used in lemon meringue pie or a layer-cake filling.

This is one of the world's great peasant soups, the emblematic soup of Quebec, in fact. Despite this, with our normal maddening indifference to our 'friendly giant to the north,' Canada, there are no recipes to be found for this great soup in any American cookbook I've seen. I tracked it down through a friend in Montreal.

“Often called 'poor man's meat' and, in one form, 'poor man's caviar,' the eggplant is one of the staple foods of the Middle East. It is extremely versatile." — Claudia Roden, “A Book of Middle Eastern Food”

Corn has ears and we’d all better sneak up on it as rapidly as possible.

“The varieties of plum are legion, and have been at least since Roman times when Pliny spoke of the ingens turba prunorum, the enormous crowd of plums.” — Jane Grigson’s "Fruit Book"

The great menagerie of plums begins now and goes on through August, with this luscious stone fruit ranging from blue-black, through the reds and rubies, and on to yellow and the pale, almost translucent green of greengages. 

"Lake shrimp are always used in making this gumbo, the river shrimp being too small and delicate. Purchase three to four pounds, or about 100 shrimp, for there are always smaller shrimp in the pile which, when cooked, amount to little or nothing.” 
- "The Picayune Creole Cookbook," 1901 edition

I don’t think I’d ever had anything but canned spinach growing up, and it was pretty bad stuff. Nowadays, frozen spinach has taken over from the canned, and fresh leafy green spinach is still not an everyday commodity. The reason for this, besides perishability, is that not many people think that swishing spinach through three changes of water constitutes a fun time.

Weakfish, a.k.a. squeteague or sea trout, has begun its annual migration in large schools up the Atlantic coast. . . . The name, weakfish, is no slur on its character; it refers to the delicate mouth of this fish, which is easily torn by a hook. Otherwise the weak has a lean and flaky white flesh that is delicious when very freshly caught. It tends to become soft and flabby if not cooked right away and its blandness needs some exciting flavor accents to be interesting.

Flowers, with their sweet fragrances and riotous color, are balm for the senses and for the eye. Of late, nouvelle-trendy watering spots have introduced them as stylish garnish and amusing nibbles. Less known is the fact that flowers were a common and popular ingredient in recipes in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

Ham is to Easter what turkey is to Thanksgiving and it’s best not to tamper too much with tradition. Of course, lamb is traditional if you happen to be Greek, but ham for Easter has come to be the unshakable custom in most American households.

That comforting line about Christmas coming “but once a year” might ring hollow in your ears, with Christmas parties and Christmas drop-ins to be dealt with by the genial host. To be always at the ready, there are fortunately some delicious things that can be made in advance and refrigerated and served on several occasions.

Here's a French version of apple pie alleged to have been invented by two spinsters who ran a rustic restaurant in Lamotte-Beauvron, a hamlet not far from Paris.