We lit the first Hanukkah candles on Tuesday night and ate latkes and brisket. It’s never been part of my family’s tradition to make?homemade doughnuts for Hanukkah, but the fried sweets, usually filled with jelly and known as sufganiyah–are one of the customary dishes on the Hanukkah table. But frying? At home? Isn’t that to … Read more

If you give me an assortment of ingredients and tell me to make dinner, you’ll likely be eating one of two cuisines, broadly interpreted. I’ll cook greens in tons of olive oil, with lightly sautéed garlic and a pinch of red pepper flakes (let’s call that Italian) and serve them with pasta or eggs or bread. Or, I’ll … Read more

Though this looks like any pretty?fruity, fizzy, cool summer drink, there’s a lot more to it. This organic apple cider vinegar-blueberry soda is made with?Pompeian?s Organic Apple Cider?Vinegar – a bottle?that includes the “mother.” Not all vinegars do.? Vinegar is a fermented product made from wine, fruit, grain, or cider. When you expose alcoholic drinks … Read more

My sourdough starter is nine months old. During the week, it lives in the fridge, but on Thursday nights I move the jar to the counter so I can feed the goo twice to revitalize it so that the natural yeast can leaven the crust on our Friday night pizza. I won’t bore you with the … Read more

To avoid the pre-spring dinner rut, I’ve put our meals on a rotation. It’s not the most creative I’ve ever been in the kitchen. But sometimes it’s more useful to have two weeks’ worth of regulars than to improvise and invent every single night, particularly when winter meals are past their prime but spring produce hasn’t … Read more

Do you know what happens when you put a frozen banana in a high-powered blender with cocoa powder, peanut butter, a little sweetener, and some milk? You make a smoothie that’s as creamy and rich as a chocolate milkshake, satisfying and filling but not indulgent. In general, I abhor fake-y substitutions. If you want a chocolate milkshake, have … Read more

At the end of winter, food seems to need extra flavor. I’ve got lots of tricks for adding that flavor: plenty of aromatics, spoonfuls of spices, intense dried fruit, salty olives, or?rich olive oil. In this chicken tagine, a hearty end-of-winter stew, I use them all. The best part is that the ingredients are?all healthful, … Read more

I had the most idiotic moment in the kitchen a few months ago, when I tried to make the chickpea portion of the puréed Chickpea and Kale Soup from the Franny’s cookbook in my InstantPot. The InstantPot is an electric pressure cooker that’s taken over the nation’s kitchens. Like any pressure cooker, it speeds up … Read more

I work from home, and one way I’ve found to make weeknight dinners part of the routine is to take five minutes here and there throughout the day to do a little prep. That might mean picking up an onion on my way back from a meeting or measuring out the soy sauce and sugar for gyudon in between calls. … Read more

The last-minute gift for your family and friends is a jar of this homemade coconut granola, which hits all the right notes: salty, sweet, crunchy, and rich. I love it. The gift for you (or your favorite baker) is a kitchen scale. Hear me out. 

For the second Sunday in a row, there’s a pot of this stew in the oven. That’s a picture of how colorful it looks when it goes in. When the timer beeps, four hours later, the greens and oranges have caramelized into the height of flavor. It’s based off of the very famous (in my … Read more

Whew, I didn’t mean for my pause to go on quite that long. Three months is the longest period of time I’ve gone without posting on Big Girls, Small Kitchen in eight years, a break in routine that should have seemed shocking – except, it didn’t! It seemed exceptionally natural to take a little break, especially from … Read more

I wanted to get this one down before the big, juicy tomatoes are gone. In fact, we have a bit longer than we think before that happens. They’re usually here til mid-October, and sometimes they’re less expensive then, since the more antsy eaters have moved onto winter squash. By then, a dish called Beach Pasta … Read more

Here’s an uncharacteristic move: I made a Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme. I haven’t eaten a bite of “traditional” fast food in at least 10 years (Shack Shack not included). But when my editors at First We Feast suggested we branch out from classics like roast chicken and chocolate chip cookies to show people how to craft … Read more

The right selection of stuff on top of lettuce makes the difference between a dutiful salad and a professional salad. I say selection, because with salads less really can be more. Often a mediocre salad, edited, would have been a great salad, in my opinion. Especially this time of year when the farmstand abundance practically begs you … Read more