Recipes

Some days require a quick chocolate fix, and these gluten-free cookies are just the ticket.

Deeply fudgy and altogether satisfying, they take just minutes to whip up and don’t require any flour. I think they might be a miracle cookie. With a crispy outside and a brownie-like fudgy interior, there is something for every chocolate lover in these cookies. A glass of milk is almost a required accompaniment. When a midnight craving hits, keep this recipe close at hand. That is, if you don’t memorize it after the first few times making it.

I like to think these are healthy-ish, too, with no butter or egg yolks to speak of. The espresso powder is optional, but if you have it on hand (perhaps from making the Cappuccino Marshmallows), you won’t notice a coffee flavor, but instead a more intensified chocolate flavor. Parchment paper will make taking these delicate-when-hot cookies off the tray much easier. If you wait until they cool, they are prone to fall apart, so grease the cookie sheet well or use parchment paper and slide them onto the cooling tray while still warm. They retain their fudginess when cooled, but are especially delicious warm.

Natalie of Good Girl Style joins us each month to share incredible desserts with Big Girls, Small Kitchen readers–desserts that are entirely gluten-free, but not like obviously gluten-free. That means no specialty flours or hard-to-find ingredients, just lemons, lemons, and more lemons. Want even more GF desserts? Check out Natalie’s Lemon Pudding.

I love beans for a lot of reasons, but my affection definitely derives from their price. Beans are cheap. Even the best beans are cheaper than almost anything else you can buy to eat. And they’re such a great reminder of how inexpensive cooking for yourself is, if you stay aware. Eliminate some of the frou frou trendy ingredients you see in the magazines, and notice, at the grocery store, that quinoa’s price has doubled (!), and you can feast almost every day for a couple of dollars per meal, a price that might allow for an occasional culinary splurge, whether in the kitchen or out.But it wasn’t long before I started loving beans for their taste and easy prep. Cooking up a pot from dried almost doesn’t feel like cooking, your pot’s just simmering there in the background, barely any of your attention needed to make all sorts of meals possible. If you’ve never made hummus from total scratch, that’s a great place to start with bean cookery.

I put a few things in with the beans when I cook them, most importantly olive oil, because it makes the beans creamy. Garlic, onion, and fennel also help add flavor. I’ll eat a bowl of freshly cooked beans with their broth and even more olive oil drizzled on top, and some breadcrumbs if I have them, and that humble bowl is what inspires this far less humble gratin.

That and mac ‘n cheese.

Natalie of Good Girl Style joins us each month to share incredible desserts with Big Girls, Small Kitchen readers–desserts that are entirely gluten-free, but not like obviously gluten-free. That means no specialty flours or hard-to-find elements, just sugary air fluff, aka marshmallow ingredients. Want even more gf desserts? Check out Natalie’s Lemon Pudding.

Cappuccino is such a delight this time of year. Frothy, fluffy, and satisfying, it’s made even more appealing with the addition of these cappuccino marshmallows, which are also frothy and fluffy as well as satisfyingly sweet. The sweet, coffee-y pillows pair equally well with a coffee drink as they do hot chocolate, or as a treat popped in the mouth as you walk by the kitchen. They are sure to go fast!

Just popping in quickly today to share with you some brilliance from somebody else’s oven. Specifically, Molly Gilbert’s. She’s the author of Sheet Pan Suppers, the blogger/cooking instructor/recipe developer behind Dunk and Crumble, and the dreamer-upper of this simple-to-make, indulgent-to-eat biscuit and bacon breakfast.

The premise of Gilbert’s book is that we’ve too readily limited our idea of one-dish cooking to the pot. When I’m thinking up a simple meal, especially one for a dinner party, my mind definitely flies right to stew, chili, or curry. That’s where one-pot creativity tends to end, and for Gilbert, that was a problem. Here’s what happened when she went to cross the ease of the one-pot dinner with the elegance and satisfaction of roasting, baking, and broiling: one-pan cooking.

Well, if you’re going to be a type, you might as well commit to it, is the kind of thing I think a little hesitantly to myself some nights in my Brooklyn kitchen as I turn on the latest This American Life and get down to work turning that jar of kimchi into dinner so that we can eat and I can blog about it.

Other nights, the pairing angles lower on the culture grid: I press grilled cheese sandwiches into browning butter as I catch up on “The Good Wife,” or pretend that nachos are dinner as accompanied by the drama of “The Bachelor.” Because to peel and julienne a whole host of beets and radishes and apples in the name of treating your body to a well-balanced meal even in the middle of the winter, you might like the carrot of some good entertainment, rather than the stick of utter silence. (Carrot would be good in this lettuce-less salad, too.)

Well, now you know. When I’m looking to turn a traditionally vegetable-free meal into a dinner I don’t have to make a side-dish vegetable to serve alongside, I automatically add some kale leaves to the soup or the pasta, or, here, the pizza.

There was an article on the wall in the pizzeria I went to growing up about how you could do worse in a desert island food than pizza. You had the carbs, the vegetable, and the protein. You could eat a pie every day. You could eat a slice at every meal. It was a soft sell-you read …

This is the soup that needs no introduction. The dish that launched (maybe?) the soup and grilled cheese pairing. Plus kale.

The best thing you can do for onion soup is decide yesterday you’ll probably crave a bite today. If you make broth, caramelized onions, and, for this particular rendition, kale when you have that realization, then when you-surprise!-want the soup, you can actually have it in almost no time and with almost no work. Now this is cooking.

I can’t remember a time I didn’t love onion soup. The sweetness of the onions and the richness of homemade broth (usually: beef; here: chicken) is perfect together from the start.

Even more perfect? The way that good bakery sourdough bread absorbs some of that goodness right from its toasty underside. On its crispy top, the final flavor note is rich, nutty alpine-style cheese-I use the aged Wisconsin cheese, Roth Grand Cru. I didn’t invent the combination, but I could easily celebrate it weekly.

Though I’m accustomed to serving a rich, whole-meal soup like this with a green salad alongside, here I added garlicky kale right into the soup, turning classic French Onion Soup into a truly current one-pot/four-crock meal.