Surprising Ideas

I struggled with this deceptively simple dish for years until I came across this technique.

A forceful kick from behind you sends the chair launching forward. Another blow immediately follows, and somewhere a child starts to scream. You feel the anger swelling inside of you as you start to plot your revenge. The hunger is taking control… This may sound like the beginning of a horror movie, but in reality it’s just another day on a plane. Travel can do a number on anyone’s diet: airports are littered with fast food, pubs, and ice cream stores.

If you’ve ever wanted to relive your childhood memories of churning out cool homemade snow cones, granitas are just the way to do it. With a subtle savory twist from a very unexpected pantry ingredient, you can think of this lime version as an upgraded, more grown-up version of that favorite frozen dessert. What makes this flaky frozen treat sing isn’t the sweetness of the sugar, or the tangy lime juice, or even the fragrant citrus zest.

As the weather gets warmer, I like to do everything I can with cucumbers — including using up the peel. Like any good Southerner, I often make marinated cucumbers, or “refrigerator pickles.” This quick mix of thinly sliced and peeled cucumbers, vinegar, sugar, salt, and chili flakes is a fail-proof and delicious side salad, but it always leaves me with a heaping pile of peels I hate to throw away.

This may be the easiest of this week’s boxed wine pitcher recipes to craft, as it’s based solely on purchased ingredients. If you have a box of light, fruity, or even sweet red wine, this recipe is the one for you. Basing a cocktail on this style of wine assures a vibrant, deeply hued sangria-like flavor profile. Fruity, fresh, and tart, with a swift kick of ginger — this blackberry and pomegranate cocktail may also be the most crowd-pleasing of the pack.

Watch the video to learn how to make this boxed wine cocktail.

I just wiped the dust off my old Classic French Cooking notebook — the rickety old binder they gave me when I started class at The French Culinary Institute (now known as the International Culinary Center) 10 years ago. I still have it. The pages are yellowing, and the recipes are a little stodgy, but I’d figured it was worth keeping. I hoped that someday it would prove to be useful, and I was right. Rice pudding is easy to love.

My kids aren’t used to me saying things like, “Hey, y’all! Come downstairs! I’m making crêpes!” They are used to me cooking odd things at odd hours, because that’s what you do when you write about food and love experimenting in the kitchen. Usually I ask them to try things like radish butter which, while delicious, is no ginger ale crêpe with orange zest and chocolate chips. So they were pretty excited when this happened.

Beets are one of those divisive vegetables — either you love them or hate them. I happen to love them. I’m a sucker for that sweet flesh and gorgeous fuschia color, but I know plenty of people who play for the other team. Beet-haters, I ask that you suspend your disbelief for one moment. Try not to discount the chocolate-beet cupcake based on your feelings for the vegetable alone. Open your heart to beet cake because the final product is far better than the sum of its parts.

I remember spying the loose parsnips at the market years ago and thinking, What are those carrots, sans spray tan? We didn’t grow up eating them in my house, and I had no experience cooking them. They looked a little intimidating. But back then, before I had made cooking my career, I was eager for new culinary adventures. So I scooped them up and hoped for the best. Turns out, parsnips are a little more work than carrots. The skins, which can be saved for stock, must be peeled away.

I was recently flipping through my copy of Deborah Madison’s beautiful book Vegetable Literacy. Besides those tempting Madison-style recipes that can create new cravings for any vegetable, including those you’ve scarcely ever heard of before, this book includes lovely stories of her vegetable adventures and a bit of backstory on each plant. Beyond the recipes, it’s a great read.

If your kids (or you!) don't like eggs, try this technique.