crispy cabbage and cauliflower salad

This salad is not cute. You don’t need to tell it; it’s sensitive about these things. But like any wallflower about to be revealed as the babe it always was in a teen movie, it’s going to prove your skepticism unwarranted when you stand in the kitchen and eat an entire sheet pan of crispy vegetables. I cannot stop making it. And I cannot stop finishing the whole thing when I do. It’s been like this since I first made it in December, which means I’m about 7 weeks overdue to share it here. I’d spotted a roasted cabbage salad on one of Justine Snack’s delicious Reels. I’ve made roasted cabbage wedge salads, but I loved that this was already in bite-sized pieces and a tahini dressing is perfection here. In my kitchen, I used a less sweet, more lemony tahini dressing with garlic that’s my go-to and added bite-sized pieces cauliflower for more bulk.

Recipes

lemon sorbet

I realize that in a week where the most public spaces part sludge, part abyss, you might not have frozen desserts on your mind, but I cannot hide what we are: year-round ice cream people. Maybe it’s just the peculiarity of a steam-heated apartment, keeping it a balmy 78 degrees in here all winter, but snow on the ground has never kept us from cold treats, especially lemon sorbet, which tastes the way beams of sunlight feel on your skin.

Recipes

spanakopita

I finally conquered my fear of making spanakopita, the Greek savory spinach and feta pie, and yes, this means I’m going to tell you all about it. It took me so long because, however pathetically, I find filo/phyllo, the thin dough used to produce the flaky layers in many Middle Eastern and Balkan pastries, stressful: the tissue-like sheets can dry into crumbles in what feels like seconds. Having to brush each layer with butter or oil before using it is challenging in a small kitchen, and a lot of work in any size. Over the years, I’ve auditioned many spanakopitaish pies that allowed me to hedge a bit on the phyllo — triangles (only one sheet at a time made it less scary), spirals (ditto with one sheet; this recipe is in Smitten Kitchen Every Day), galettes (using a pie-like dough), and even “skillets” where I just messily crumbled some phyllo on top. All were good. None were this. This is exact spanakopita I crave, more doable than I thought possible.

Recipes

my favorite lentil salad

My friend Olga makes a lentil salad that nobody can stop eating. Yes, lentils. A salad. I can feel your skepticism through this computer screen (it’s my single superpower) but please feel assured that I would never lie to you, about lentils especially. Her recipe is one of the greatest Trader Joe’s “hacks” of all time: 1 package of their prepared lentils, 1 jar of their bruschetta topping, and then Olga always adds more chopped tomatoes, cilantro, and avocado.

Recipes

russian napoleon

This cake is a Russian New Year’s Eve tradition, and therefore no, this recipe I’ve been promising to share for 15 years isn’t late, rolling up here with a mere 36 hours left in the year, it’s exactly on time. The Napolyeon Tort is inspired by a classic mille-feuille (French for “thousand leaves”) which is made with layers of puffed pastry filled with pastry cream. The Russian version has far more layers and, like the Russian Honey Cake, is coated with crumbs made from extra cake. It was created in 1912, when it was created to honor the 100th anniversary of Russia’s defeat of Napoleon’s invasion — initially it was shaped to resemble his triangular bicorne (hat); the crumbs are said to represent the snow that did the French troops in. Due to ingredient limitations, margarine often replaces butter, the cream is sometimes made without eggs, and the cake layers are more brittle than a traditional pâte feuilletée, but as each family makes it their own way, you’d be pressed to find two recipes that agree on what makes a perfect one.

Recipes

short rib onion soup

A couple months ago, I was out with friends and we stopped briefly back at a friend’s place (hi Jocelyn!). It smelled amazing and it turned out she had chicken chili going in the crockpot. Despite not planning to stay, we inhaled a bowl in her yard before heading back out again and I have not stopped thinking about it since, hospitality on a you-never-know level. Stews and hearty soups are already wired with this energy — they keep well, are easily reheated, and if nobody else eats it, you’re happy to have it for yourself. But if it’s already ready, it means you can have impromptu drop-ins, and they are unquestionably the best kind. The table isn’t set, the toys aren’t put away, you’re still in sloppy clothes, and everyone has more fun.

Recipes

new york sour

If you created a mood board that accumulated all of my cocktail interests — whiskey, lemon juice, succinctness, and some kind of niche New York spin [see: Fairytale of New York, Perfect Manhattan] — you might also wonder why it’s taken 15 years for us to talk about the wonder that is the New York Sour. Let’s waste no more time without it. The New York Sour is, in fact, a classic whiskey sour — whiskey, lemon juice, simple syrup, and an egg white, if you wish, for a more dramatic texture — with dash of red wine that, ideally, should float atop creating distinct layers that integrate as you sip. I had thought that rye is more common than bourbon, because rye can come from New York, but have yet to find that corroborated. Regardless, you can use what you have, as I did.

Recipes

cranberry pecan bread

Last week, in a continued effort to get my fridge back to inbox zero after it was groaning under the weight of the extraneous contents of a few shoots here this fall, I decided to take my surplus of cranberries, oranges, and pecans and turn them into a cranberry bread. Except — wait — I don’t have a recipe for cranberry bread. Why did you guys let me go 15 years without a cranberry bread recipe on this site? How did I go 1300 recipes deep in the archives and never find my forever version of one of most classic late fall recipes everyone deserves in their repertoire? Let’s fix this right now.