All Seasons Recipes
A family favorite, updated, from the recipe archives. Albondigas soup is a traditional Mexican meatball soup ("albondigas" means "meatballs" in Spanish) that my mother has cooked for our family for almost 50 years. It is our version of comfort food...
The best recipes come tried and true from friends who begged them from other friends and so on and so on. That's the wonderful thing about sharing recipes - the more good recipes we share, the better we all get...
According to the Wikipedia, Beef Stroganoff was invented by a chef working for a Russian general, Count Pavel Stroganov, in the 1890s. It became popular in the U.S. in the 1950s from servicemen returning from Europe and China after WWII...
As some of you may be aware, California has been hit with some stormy weather recently. We warm-weather low-landers don't do cold and wet too well and for the last several days of rainy and cold I've been craving some...
My father made the most succulent, tender, "Wow" beef short ribs this week. Yes, it is a 2 day process, but the actual hands-on cooking time is at most two hours, and is broken up over two days. It is...
Carne asada shown wrapped up in a flour tortilla with pico de gallo and avocado Carne asada is the thinly sliced, grilled beef served so often in tacos and burritos. It is also commonly served as is, with rice and...
Enter any Mexican taqueria in California and you'll find carnitas on the menu, usually pork butt (the shoulder roast) braised first, pulled apart, and then roasted on high heat to caramelize. This is my father's favorite recipe for pork carnitas...
I love this curry chicken salad. I made up this recipe 20 years ago after a friend of mine gave me a gift box of curry spices and have been making it ever since. It's quite easy to make. The...
The inspiration for this recipe comes from a West African soup recipe in Nancie McDermott's The Curry Book. With a little less broth and a lot more chicken you have a great peanut curry dish. Control the level of hotness...
Sometimes it amazes me how a simple combination of basic, on-hand ingredients can yield such delightful results. Chicken piccata is nothing more than chicken breast cutlets, dredged in flour, browned, and served with a sauce of butter, lemon juice, capers...
My mother and father make the best chicken salad. It's a joint effort; dad assembles all of the ingredients, mom makes the dressing. There are a few things that distinguish this chicken salad recipe from a standard version. First, we...
Inspiration for good food can be found anywhere, even Starbucks, where I had a delicious chicken salad sandwich recently. The key ingredients other than chicken? Cranberries and tarragon. French tarragon is a distinctive herb, with a slight anise or licorice...
This baked chicken recipe is one of those recipes that every home cook should have in their repertoire. It uses a minimal amount of ingredients - chicken, olive oil, salt and pepper (and if you want gravy, chicken stock or...
Why do I love meatloaf? It reminds me of being a kid. Where does one get meatloaf other than at home or at a school cafeteria? When I lived in San Francisco I bought meatloaf already mixed and seasoned from...
The word "coleslaw" comes from the Dutch word, "koolsla", "kool" meaning cabbage and sla, salad. The word entered our English language from the Dutch in New York in the late 1700s. Since then it has been a featured side dish...
The debate usually begins like this. ME: Dad, how do you make your hash browns turn out so crispy? DAD: Use a potato ricer. It's the only thing I've found that really gets the moisture out of the potatoes. The...
My father has been making this soup for several years now. It is incredibly easy to make, given how tasty the results. The key ingredient is the clam juice, though I have prepared it for people with shellfish allergies substituting...
A classic American dish that one can't easily find in restaurants (unless it is a cafeteria) is stuffed bell peppers. It's essentially meatloaf stuffed into red or green bell peppers and baked in the oven. My mom and dad have...
Shepherd's Pie is an English dish, traditionally made with lamb or mutton. Americans typically make Shepherd's Pie with beef. The English (and Australians and New Zealanders) call the beef dish a "cottage pie". Naming conventions aside, Shepherd's Pie is essentially...
Preparation time: 30 minutes. Enchiladas were a family staple growing up, though thankfully this cheese enchilada recipe has much less fat in it these days. My mother, a fifth generation hispanic Arizonian, learned this recipe from my grandmother. Note that...
A standard and almost necessary accompaniment to most Mexican food is salsa. Salsa (meaning "sauce" in Spanish) comes in many different ways, the most common being chopped tomatoes, onions and chile. Growing up with a Hispanic mom from Tucson, we...
Spaghetti just seems lonely without garlic bread, and it's so easy to make. There are several methods and twists for making garlic bread, the most simple being just rubbing a cut clove of garlic over slices of Italian or French...
This green bean recipe comes from my friend Heidi who loves to prepare green beans this way for holiday and dinner parties. Can't go wrong with butter, garlic salt and toasted almonds!
We had dueling home fries here the other day, a veritable home-fry cook-off between my mother and father. Mom makes her fried potatoes sliced, using raw potatoes, and usually serves them as a side when we have fish for dinner...
What to do when your 8-year old nephew comes to visit? Make pizza, of course! Well, not of course, actually. I didn't think of it until we exhausted Sorry, Monopoly, and gin rummy. But it did turn out to be...
There are two basic ways to make chicken stock. One method uses the leftover bones from a chicken carcass and vegetables, and takes several hours of slow cooking. The second method uses chicken backs and wings, sautéing them first, and...
I love hard boiled eggs. For years I ate one every morning until my doctor told me that you shouldn't eat the same food every single day. So now I eat them only a couple of times a week. Sometimes...
This basic hummus recipe calls for using canned garbanzo beans. I've made hummus using dried beans, soaking them, cooking them, etc. but the results just weren't as good. The canned beans actually mash up pretty well.
My parents have been making spaghetti this way for several years, ever since first learning about this method from watching a Martha Stewart program. Martha apparently got it from some famous chef in New York City. The beauty of this...
Simply Recipes reader Alton Hoover sent me his favorite recipe for lasagna which he has been cooking up since college days. His original recipe created enough lasagna for a small army so I halved it. What is posted here will...
This isn't a quick and easy lasagna. This is a slow and divine lasagna. A memorable lasagna. And we have a reader of Simply Recipes to thank for it. Several months ago a commenter on this site, by the name...
Overheard at the market, "I'm a breast girl." "Really? I'm definitely a thigh girl," pause..."dark meat, so much more flavor." Had to laugh, I'm so so so much a thigh girl myself. Here is the secret to fabulous lemon chicken...
According to the Wikipedia, minestrone is an Italian soup made with fresh seasonal vegetables, often with the addition of pasta or rice. Common ingredients include beans, onions, celery, carrots, stock, and tomatoes. There is no set recipe for minestrone, since...
"London Broil" used to be a way of describing a method for cooking lean beef cuts such as flank or top round, which originally was to pan-fry it quickly on medium high to high heat, cook it only to medium...
Sometimes the best food is really the simplest. We experiment frequently with different ways of preparing pork chops, but the way we have pork chops most regularly is with a simple dry rub and pan frying. My mother's been making...
So, my favorite cookies in the whole wide world are these oatmeal raisin cookies. Could be because my grandmother used to bake them with me when I was little. I got to lick the bowl (they don't let kids do...
I gave my father a subscription to Gourmet as a Christmas present 20 years ago and have been reaping the rewards ever since. This simple oven-fried potatoes recipe came from a 1985 issue. It has been so much part of...
When we were kids, my mother used to make this Parmesan chicken that was so good we would fight for drippings, every last crumb. She would use boneless, skinless chicken (after having de-boned a whole chicken and then used the...
I learned something new today: peanut butter cookies are my mother's favorite cookie. I had no idea. Dad, however, won't eat them. Go figure. Peanut butter cookies are one of my favorite cookies; they remind me of school. They were...
From the archives, ¡Happy Cinco de Mayo! ~Elise Guacamole, a dip made from avocados, is originally from Mexico. The name is derived from two Aztec Nahuatl words - ahuacatl (avocado) and molli (sauce). The trick to perfect guacamole is using...
Everybody knows how to make lemonade, right? Squeeze some lemons, add sugar and water. But how to make lemonade so that it tastes right everytime? Here's a surefire method. Remember the starting proportions - 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup...
The big dilemma for those of us who like to cook but don't always have the time to do everything perfectly is whether to attempt to make our own pie crust or to buy a frozen store bought version. Most...
Making popcorn from scratch can be tricky. Not only do you want as many kernels as possible to pop, but you also want to keep the kernels from burning at the bottom of the pan. Until my mother showed me...
This pineapple upside-down cake is one of my father's favorite recipes (he'll look for almost any excuse to make it). The cake is wonderfully dense, with a slight almond flavor and with sweetness from caramel and pineapple. Dad has recently...
This poached salmon recipe is one of the first recipes my father taught me a few years ago. It's his favorite way to prepare salmon because not only can it be prepared in 10 minutes or less, but it doesn't...
Pot roast was a standard growing up, and still continues to be in my parent's household. It requires slow cooking over low heat to ensure tender, flavorful meat. Pot roasts typically use the tougher cuts of beef - a chuck...
Pulled pork sandwiches can hardly be called sandwiches. The sauce soaks into the buns and if you tried to pick one up with your hands it would completely fall apart. Well, perhaps if you used a sturdier bun, and wrapped...
I grew up making quesadillas, the benefit of having a Hispanic mother who is a great cook. "Queso" is cheese in Spanish. And a quesadilla is a toasted tortilla with melted cheese inside. But in addition to cheese, you can...
Something tells me we're not the only ones who get excited over beans and rice. Do you? Rarely a week goes by that we don't have beans of some sort or another, and my mother's chili beans with rice are...
Frijoles Refritos Pinto beans, prepared Mexican style, are such a staple in our house a week rarely goes by without my mother making up a batch. Although beans have a relatively long shelf life, the older they are the longer...
"Rice pudding is how God intended us to eat rice," my father announced when I mentioned I was thinking about making some. Well that settled it, rice pudding it would be. With a little investigation, I found that there are...
My mom knows a lot about cooking beef. She knows all of the cuts and what to do with them. This must have something to do with growing up at a time where people went to their local butchers for...
Years ago my pal Peter showed me how to roast garlic whole and eat the warm, toasty cloves right out of the head. How wonderfully simple! And perfect for garlic lovers.
There are two basic types of tomato-based salsas - salsa made with fresh tomatoes and salsa made with cooked tomatoes. When cooking salsa, as we do when we make enchiladas, we always use the cooked-tomato version, not the fresh. This...
Just hearing the words "sloppy joe" from my mother used to send us kids into a tizzy. There was something wonderfully fun about getting to eat a burger/sandwich that was messy by design. I've been waiting to make this when...
Spaghetti and meatballs, what's there not to love? Spaghetti and meatballs has to be one of the most fun dishes ever invented, at least from a kid's perspective. Mounds of spaghetti, fork twirling strands in a spoon, tasty meatballs, even...
Can be prepared in 40 minutes or less. One of my mother's signature dishes is her Spanish rice, a delicious accompaniment to steak, chicken, and Mexican entrees such as tacos or enchiladas. Spanish rice is prepared by browning the rice...
Classic Tex Mex, fajitas (pronounced fah-hee-tas) are typically made with grilled strips of skirt steak with onions and bell peppers, and served sizzling hot with fresh tortillas, guacamole, sour cream, and salsa. You can make fajitas with steak or chicken...
Why is it that baked beans are so popular around the Fourth of July, but making them usually requires several hours of baking in a hot oven? Where we live it gets pretty darn sizzling in the summer and the...
One of my favorite desserts growing up was tapioca pudding. You don't see it that much anymore. Kids get pre-made over-sugared puddings from the grocery store. My parents don't make it that often as it requires too much (for them...
Tortilla soup encompasses all the things I love best in Mexican cooking. Do you like salsa? avocado? cilantro? fresh hot tortilla chips? Tortilla soup is like a soup version of my favorite enchilada, with chicken, and tortilla chips. And avocado...
Almost every other Friday growing up my mother would serve the family this tuna macaroni salad. With six kids she loved this standard; it was easy to make, filling, relatively inexpensive, and best, we all gobbled it up.
My parents started making tuna fish salad sandwiches this way years ago, and as far as I'm concerned theirs is the best and only way to make a tunafish sandwich. First it helps to start with high quality canned tuna...
Sometimes deciding what to make for dinner comes starts with the inspiration of just one ingredient. A friend of mine sent us some wonderful blue cheese this week and my father decided that he wanted to make twice baked potatoes...
Vermicelli (*pronounced verm-i-CHELL-ee) is one of my mother's signature dishes. In fact, all one has to do is say the word - vermicelli - around here and eyes light up and hearts warm to the very idea. Also known as...
