©iStockPhoto/MCCAIG

Ingredients

• 4 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup cake flour
• 2 cups sour cream
• 3 tablespoons sugar

Procedures

1. Put the eggs in a mixing bowl and stir until well blended.

2. Add the salt, baking soda, flour, sour cream, and sugar, and mix well. A blender works fine for this step.

3. Heat a griddle or frying pan until it is good and hot, film with grease, and drop spoonfuls of batter onto the griddle--just enough to spread to an approximately 2 1/2-inch round. When a few bubbles form on top of the pancakes, turn them over and cook briefly, no longer than 45 seconds.

4. Serve with warm butter and warm syrup. Try not to eat them all.

One of my guilty secrets as a food person and a word person is that I have never fallen for Elizabeth David. When Summer Cooking and A Book of Mediterranean Food were reissued by NYRB Classics in 2002, I bought them eagerly, expecting to be transported and inspired. Instead I was a little bored by the prose and much confused by the recipes, which assume a basic understanding of cookery I had not yet attained. I felt like a philistine.

But everyone else is enraptured by David, who as a young woman left her posh home to become an actress, took up with a married man with whom she traveled all over the Mediterranean, and worked abroad for the United Kingdom's Ministry of Information during World War II. After the war she introduced England to the frank foods of southern climates and became (inevitable phrase) "the foremost food writer of her day."

I can't help but find her story fascinating, and so recently I dove back into Summer Cooking, originally published in 1955 (when such Mediterranean necessities as olive oil, zucchini, and pasta were hard to come by in England; David suggested looking for olive oil at the pharmacy). Perhaps, I thought, if I start cooking from it, I'll be giving it the proper sort of attention and I'll find what I've been missing. Ratatouille seemed like a good first step.

Although many say the components of ratatouille must be cooked separately so they retain their integrity and individual tastes, this advice has always struck me as too fussy by half. I was pleased to see that David's ratatouille, which is meant to be served cold, is a one-pot affair. It's yummy, too. Maybe I'm coming around.

About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.

Ratatouille en Salade

- very generously serves 4 as a side dish or 8 as part of an hors d'oeuvre -
Adapted from Summer Cooking.

Ingredients

• 2 onions
• Olive oil
• 2 eggplants (I used about 1 1/2 pounds eggplant)
• 2 large red bell peppers
• 4 ripe tomatoes
• 2 cloves garlic
• A dozen coriander seeds
• Parsley or basil

Procedures

1. Chop the onions fairly small and put them to stew in a sauté pan or deep frying pan in half a tumbler of olive oil (I guessed 1/2 cup and was happy with the results). Meanwhile, cut the eggplants, leaving on their skins, into 1/2-inch squares and put them, sprinkled with coarse salt, into a colander, so that some of the water drains away from them.

2. When the onions have cooked about 10 minutes and are beginning to get soft (but not fried), add the eggplants, and then the peppers, also cut into small pieces. Cover the pan and let them simmer for 30 to 40 minutes. Now add the chopped tomatoes, the garlic, and the coriander seeds. Continue cooking until the tomatoes have melted (I called them melted at 10 to 15 minutes). Should the oil dry up, add a little more, remembering that the liquid from the tomatoes will also make the ratatouille more liquid, and the final result must not be too mushy.

3. When cold, garnish it with chopped parsley or basil. Drain off any excess oil before serving.

This weekend I made brisket and realized I’ve developed a new kitchen tic all my own. Whenever I slow-cook or braise a tough piece of meat, I taste it to see if it's tender enough, then announce, “I bet this is going to be so good tomorrow.” Everyone knows that kind of thing improves with a day or two, but saying it aloud reassures and excites me.

Alas, mere hours after I pulled Edna Lewis’s brisket from the oven Saturday night I was on my way to the airport, so I did not get a chance to taste it on the second day. (Yes, Andrew is home alone with several pounds of meat—lucky!) This was particularly upsetting because it was quite good even on the first day—the onions are incredibly rich and sweet and soft, making up for anything the beef might have yet to develop in terms of flavor, texture, or moistness.

The best thing about this recipe, though, is how easy it is. I am a slow cook, but I was able to complete all the prep work (i.e. slicing some onions) while the meat browned, after which everything went into the oven for a few hours. No rubbing with spices and letting sit overnight, no larding, no deglazing. In the spirit of that ease, I neglected to purée the onions into sauce at the end and did not regret it.

About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.

Ingredients

serves 6

• 3 pounds beef brisket or chuck
• Vegetable oil or lard
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 1/2 pounds onions, peeled and sliced
• Fresh-ground black pepper
• 3 or 4 whole allspice
• 1 bay leaf
• Salt

Procedures

1. Wipe the meat with a damp cloth. Heat a skillet, grease lightly with oil or lard, and add the beef, searing well on all sides until well browned. Place the seared meat in a heavy pot or pan. Wipe the skillet out and then add a tablespoon of butter and put in the onions. Stir the onions until they are pretty well browned.

2. Sprinkle the meat over with fresh ground black pepper, then add the browned onions, allspice, and bay leaf. Cover closely and see that the pan is good and hot before placing it in the oven. Set into a preheated 400°F oven until the meat begins to cook. Turn the oven to 225°F and leave to cook undisturbed for 2 1/2 hours.

3. When finished, remove the meat and press the onions through a sieve. Add to pan drippings and season this sauce with salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot with the beef.

4. My modifications: I used a larger brisket and increased the amount of onions. She notes that the weight of the onions should be 1/2 the weight of the meat. I seasoned the meat generously with kosher salt and pepper before browning, and I browned each side for about eight minutes. I sliced my onions about 1/4 inch thick and cooked them until they were a pale caramel color, not truly brown. Instead of using a separate skillet for browning, as she suggests, I browned the meat in a large Dutch oven, removed it to a board while I cooked the onions, and then returned the meat to the pot, scooping most of the onions up and over it. I didn’t see why I should get two things dirty, especially when that might mean losing some cooked-on meat and onion juices. I was not sure how to tell when the meat had started cooking in the oven, so I left it at 400°F for 15 minutes and then turned the oven down and let it go three hours more, which seemed to work out well.

Would you not pledge eternal devotion to someone who brought you coffee, biscuits, peaches, and cookies when you showed up unannounced on a summer afternoon? Easy-peasy cream biscuits tenderly entered my repertoire a few years ago, but biscuits made with lard, butter, or shortening were still in too-challenging territory for me (I have a fear of overworking dough) until The Taste of Country Cooking convinced me that I had to learn to make these ham biscuits, simply regular biscuits with minced ham folded into the dough before baking.

Got the Pork, But Where's the Lard?

Lewis calls ham “the basic black dress” of food: “If you had a ham in the meat house any situation could be faced.” Lacking a meat house I turned to the supermarket, where the closest approximation of Virginia country ham I could find was the Niman Ranch uncured jambon royal. Next, I needed lard. I’ve been hoping to have a cooking adventure with lard for a few years now, but this week it was not to be. Fairway, Whole Foods, and the Amish Market told me over the telephone that they did not have any lard on hand. A Hell’s Kitchen pork store called Esposito & Sons could provide it, but in the heat of the afternoon an hour-long round trip to buy solid animal fat sounded like a bad idea. So, begging Miss Lewis’s forgiveness, I settled for shortening.

As I mixed up the biscuits, I asked Andrew to check on the internet whether vegetable shortening needed to be refrigerated after opening. “No,” he said. A brief silence as he read a little more about shortening, and then he said, “Are you sure shortening is something you want to be cooking with?” Well, not really. I haven’t used shortening in years, but I thought we’d live if we had it just this once.

Shortening and Overworked Dough: Not Recommended

The biscuits were good, but not pure delight—no tender layers, no airy puff. This could be chalked up to the shortening, or to the way I mixed and kneaded the dough, or perhaps my cutting technique, or any number of other factors. (If anyone would like to offer an interpretation of the kneading instructions below I’d be glad to hear it. Should each of the four edges of the circle of dough be folded in once and that’s it? I know overworking is death to this kind of dough, and I think that’s what happened to me.) I’ll keep trying until I get to that “flannel-soft” biscuit, and if I have to eat a lot of good but not great specimens between here and there, so be it.

About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.

Ingredients

serves about 1 1/2 dozen

• 3 cups sifted flour
• 1 scant teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder
• 2/3 cup lard
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk
• 1 cup minced ham (optional, for ham biscuits)

Procedures

1. Take a large bowl, sift into it the measured flour, salt, soda, and baking powder. Add the lard and blend together with a pastry blender or your fingertips until the mixture has the texture of cornmeal. Add the milk all at once by scattering it over the dough. (If you are making ham biscuits, add the minced ham now.) Stir vigorously with a stout wooden spoon. The dough will be very soft in the beginning but will stiffen in 2 or 3 minutes. Continue to stir a few minutes longer.

2. After the dough has stiffened, scrape from sides of bowl into a ball and spoon onto a lightly floured surface for rolling. Dust over lightly with about a tablespoon of flour as the dough will be a bit sticky. Flatten the dough out gently with your hands into a thick, round cake, and knead for a minute by folding the outer edge of the dough into the center of the circle, giving a light knead as you fold the sides in overlapping each other. Turn the folded side face down and dust lightly if needed, being careful not to use too much four and causing the dough to become too stiff.

3. Dust the rolling pin and the rolling surface well. Roll the dough out evenly to a 1/2-inch thickness or a bit less. Pierce the surface of the dough with a table fork. (It was said piercing the dough released the air while baking.) Dust the biscuit cutter in flour first; this will prevent the dough sticking to the cutter and ruining the shape of the biscuit. Dust the cutter as often as needed. An added feature to your light, tender biscuits will be their straight sides. This can be achieved by not wiggling the cutter. Press the cutter into the dough and lift up with a sharp quickness without a wiggle. Cut the biscuits very close together to avoid having big pieces of dough left in between each biscuit. Trying to piece together and rerolling leftover dough will change the texture of the biscuits.

4. Place the biscuits 1/2 inch or more apart on a heavy cookie sheet or baking pan, preferably one with a bright surface. The biscuits brown more beautifully on a bright, shining pan than on a dull one, and a thick bottom helps to keep them from browning too much on the bottom. Set to bake in a preheated 450°F oven for 13 minutes. Remove from the oven and let them rest for 3 to 4 minutes. Serve hot.

I’m not thinking of a mid-century family helmed by a mother whose job description was to help with the PTA and have dinner on the table when father walked through the door at 6 p.m. I’m thinking of pioneers and farmers, men and women, who did hard physical labor all day long and still had to face the dreaded problem: what’s for dinner? I’m not saying I want to return to the era when we all had to grow or make just about everything we ate and wore ourselves—there are definitely days when I’m grateful that I can cop out and order a burrito. But contemplating that time does make me think that most people today, even busy people, could forgo takeout and make dinner two or three times a week if they cared to.

This idea is usually in the back of my mind but lately has been at the forefront because I’ve been reading about the summertime activity in Freetown, Virginia, during Edna Lewis’s youth. Berry-picking, harvesting, canning, gardening, gathering eggs, hunting for nests, mid-season planting, tending livestock, and butchering kept everyone busy all summer long (she doesn’t even mention the laundry and other routine housework that must have been incredibly time-consuming in those days), and yet they were eating the most gorgeous-sounding meals. During busy times, she says, dinner would be started before breakfast, since nobody would be free to watch pots all afternoon.

Here is her steamed chicken in casserole for a prepared-ahead summer dinner; it is quick to get started, doesn’t require much tending, and comes out simple and tasty. Don’t let the “steamed” in the name put you off; at the end there are plenty of buttery juices, delicious on top of white rice.

About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.

Ingredients

serves 4 to 5

• A 2 1/2 pound chicken cut into 8 pieces, with a few extra wings
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
• 2 medium-sized onions, chopped fine
• 1/4 teaspoon thyme
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 cup sliced carrots
• 1/2 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon
• Salt and pepper

Procedures

1. Wash off the chicken pieces and dry with a clean cloth.

2. Into a heavy pot or saucepan put the butter and heat to the foaming stage. Add the onions. When the onions are quite heated through, add in the chicken. Raise the flame and brown the chicken and onions well, without burning.

3. When the chicken is well browned, turn the burner as low as possible, add the thyme, bay leaf, and carrots, cover with a closely fitting lid, and simmer for 1 1/2 hours. Stir by shaking the pot around. (The pot can be set into a preheated 250°F oven. Be sure it’s quite hot when set into the oven. Cook for 45 minutes.)

4. If you have fresh tarragon add 1/2 tablespoon about 15 minutes before the end of cooking, then salt and pepper to taste, and swish the pot around to blend in the herb. Adding the tarragon at the last gives a better flavor than if it is cooked in from the beginning. Don’t use dried tarragon; it is too strong.

5. The chicken wings can be removed if you like; they are added really to give thickness to the sauce, which comes from the two last wing joints.

This week I settled on scalloped salmon, a casserole made with canned salmon, expecting it to be either brilliant or disgusting. (If disgusting it would at least, I thought, give me a taste of the kind of thing my unfortunate mother had to force down on Fridays in the fifties and sixties as a Catholic schoolgirl.) In the end the dish was neither brilliant nor disgusting, but rather a comforting sort of thing I’ll be happy to make again when the larder is looking bare. With its sturdy vegetables and tinned fish, it made me feel economical and housewifely and could be a good end-of-grocery-week standby. The best way to describe it is perhaps as a large fish cake, easier to produce than individual cakes and baked instead of fried (although full of butter, so perhaps no healthier). It might also be interesting to try this with cooked potato flesh standing in for the crumbs.

About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.

Ingredients

serves 6

• 2 cans salmon
• 1 1/2 cups coarse cracker crumbs (I used panko)
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 large onions, chopped
• 1 green pepper, seeded and chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped parsley
• Salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

Procedures

1. He says to remove all skin and bones from the salmon, but I am lazy and the skin and bones are edible and good for you, so I left them in. Flake the salmon and combine with the crumbs and chopped vegetables. Season with salt and pepper and then stir in the melted butter and beaten eggs. Pour into a buttered 9 x 13 inch casserole and dot the top with more butter. Bake in a 375°F oven for 30 minutes.

I decided instead to make spoonbread, which far exceeded my expectations. While I was awaiting something porridgey like grits, or something airy like soufflé (since the recipe is also called cornbread soufflé), this resembled a substantial, sliceable custard. It had all the sweet, buttery, corny taste of cornbread, but even my favorite cornbread recipe has nothing on this spoonbread when it comes to moistness and texture. With no sugar at all and only one egg and one tablespoon of butter per serving (not so bad), it was still wonderfully rich, like dessert posing as part of dinner. I served it with bacony collard greens and was in heaven.

About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.

Ingredients

serves 4 generously or 6 to 8 as a small side

• 2 cups of milk (I used 2%)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 4 tablespoons butter
• Freshly ground pepper (optional)
• 4 eggs, separated
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup milk
• Salt
• Pepper
• 2 finely chopped cloves garlic
• 1 28-ounce can plum tomatoes
• 2 4-ounce cans chopped green chilies
• 1 pound shredded jack cheese

Procedures

1. Bring the milk and salt to a boil, then reduce the heat. Gradually whisk in the cornmeal, stirring constantly until the mixture is smooth. It will also be very, very thick, almost like wet concrete. Stir in the butter and set aside to cool slightly. (I added 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper at this point.)

2. Beat the egg yolks well and stir into the cooled cornmeal mixture. Beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry and slowly fold into the cornmeal mixture in two batches. Pour the batter into a well-buttered casserole (I used a 2-quart soufflé dish) and bake at 375°F for 35 to 40 minutes, or until light, puffy, and browned on top.

3. Serve from the casserole with a spoon. He recommends passing plenty of butter, salt, and pepper on the side, but I found that no extra butter or seasoning was necessary. Spoonbread is edible the second day but much better straight out of the oven.

4. Chili con Queso

5. No yield was provided for this recipe. Seriously, I am dying to hear about it—will someone please make this?

6. Melt the butter and stir in the flour, blending completely. Remove the pan from the heat and slowly whisk in the cream and then the milk, continuing to whisk until the mixture is smooth. Return to the heat and cook slowly, stirring constantly, until the sauce is thickened and smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper. This is the cream sauce.

7. Combine the garlic and tomatoes and cook down over medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the canned chilies and continue to cook until thickened. Stir in the cream sauce and cheese. Taste for seasoning. Do not allow to boil after the cheese has been added. Serve warm as a dip for breadsticks, corn chips, or raw vegetables.

Now that I’ve built up some experience, I feel comfortable winging it but still prefer recipes that are as precise as possible in terms of instructions, visual cues, and possible cooking times. Every recipe in Sunday Suppers at Lucques specifies how long to heat the pan and then the oil before adding food (and it’s a lot longer than I ever would have guessed on my own; now I actually know how to brown meat). Ina Garten tells us how much salt and pepper to add to most dishes, which I love—“seasoning to taste” is hard, and it’s good to know about how much should work. Nevertheless, some people consider such specificity to be the height of culinary philistinism. My husband and in-laws definitely look at me as if I'm insane when I carefully level off a half-teaspoon of baking powder or use my kitchen scale.

The James Beard Cookbook assumes that its readers who are beginners will be able to dog paddle to shore even if they’re tossed into the middle of the lake without floaties. I’m sure this works well for some people (and that those people later become the types who boast, “Oh, I could never follow a recipe without tweaking it. I like to make things mine”); it’s just one of the ways life in the kitchen reveals personality. Some are born to sink while awaiting instruction or contemplating every option, others to swim confidently whether towards success or failure. Even ditherers, though, can learn to jump in and try try again. Me, I might have been intimidated by this recipe for barley casserole seven years ago, but the other night I made it without blinking an eye, even adding extra mushrooms and fiddling with the fat.

You can reduce the amount of butter (I think I used 2 tablespoons butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil). I used vegetable broth made from powdered bouillon. He specifies a “casserole” as the cooking vessel, and I never know exactly what this term means. In my mind, a casserole is a 9 x 13 inch Pyrex baking dish, but in a (more old-fashioned?) usage a casserole is a kind of stove top-to-oven pot. Anyway, the top layer of my barley was still unpleasantly crunchy, so next time I think I will use a 2-quart soufflé dish or similar and perhaps even give it a stir when I add the second dose of broth. And there will be a next time; this was a relatively fast, easy, healthy, tasty side that also makes a nice vegetarian dinner with some sautéed greens.

About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.

Ingredients

serves 4

• 4-5 tablespoons butter
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1/2 pound mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
• 1 cup pearl barley
• Salt
• Pepper
• 2 cups beef or chicken broth

Procedures

1. Melt the butter and sauté the onions and mushrooms until soft. Add the barley and brown it lightly. Pour into a buttered casserole. Before you pour the broth over the barley, taste the broth for seasoning. If it has enough, the casserole will need not additional salt or pepper.

2. Pour 1 cup of broth over the barley in the casserole and cover. Bake in a 350° oven for 25 to 30 minutes and then uncover and add the second cup of broth. Cover and continue cooking until the liquid is absorbed and the barley is done (i.e. soft and a little chewy), about another 30 minutes.

I decided it was about time to try The James Beard Cookbook. Although it has undergone some light revisions in the intervening half century, the edition available today from Marlowe & Company is, for the most part, the same comprehensive and unintimidating collection of recipes that Dell published in 1959 as the first trade paperback cookbook. Since one of Beard’s aims here was to encourage new cooks, I chose something slightly intimidating that I had never made before—soufflé. Spinach soufflé, to be exact: moist and light and, in the end, not tricky at all.

About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.

Ingredients

serves 4 quite generously

• 3 tablespoons butter
• 4 tablespoons flour
• 1 cup scalded milk
• 4 eggs plus 1 additional egg white
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup puréed or finely chopped drained, cooked, spinach (I used frozen)
• 2 teaspoons grated onion

Procedures

1. Melt the butter and blend in the flour. Remove the pan from the heat and gradually stir in the milk, blending it in smoothly. Return to the stove and continue cooking and stirring until thick and smooth. Cool the sauce slightly.

2. Beat the egg yolks until light and lemon-colored.

3. Stir the salt into the white sauce. Stir the beaten yolks into the white sauce. Stir in the spinach and onion. (I added some pepper and a grating of nutmeg, too.)

4. Beat the egg whites until stiff but still moist (not dry as they would be for meringue). Fold half of the whites into the spinach sauce fairly well. Fold in the second half quite lightly.

The first time I really sat down and read Entertaining was when I was planning my wedding. I opened it looking for ideas and closed it thinking, “Yes, I could make all the food for our wedding, wouldn’t that be personal and fun?” Everyone talked some sense into me, thank goodness, and my self-catering ambitions were quietly dropped.

Don’t let this story deter you. Among the delusion-inspiring accounts of “Desserts for Forty: Soirée Dansante” and “Cocktails for Two Hundred: Country Fare,” one can find in this book ideas for relatively simple dinners at home. Last week I made tomato soup and French bread. I was too tired to make the green salad I had planned, but with a piece of Gruyère the soup and bread made a very pleasing meal indeed.

A note about the bread: this was my first attempt at a baguette, so I don’t know all the tricks. What came out of my oven was yummy and homemade, but it was nothing like French bread: no air pockets, no special texture, lost its crustiness overnight. Stewart says her recipe is based on Julia Child’s, and I cut the recipe in half (the quantities given below are for the half-recipe). I look forward to playing around with this. She shows you how to form the bread into baguettes, wreaths, branches, braids, and rolls, which is lots of fun. I made two fat little branches and a baguette and was very impressed with my handiwork, even if it was not-quite-ready-for-prime-time.

About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.

Ingredients

serves 4

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 carrots, peeled and finely diced
• 2 stalks celery, finely diced
• 1 1/2 medium onions, minced
• 2 28-ounce cans whole plum tomatoes, chopped, with their juice, or 7 large ripe tomatoes, peeled and seeded
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• 6 leaves fresh basil (optional)
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1/2 cup cream (optional)
• 1 package active dry yeast
• 1 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons warm water
• 3 1/2 cups unbleached white flour (I used bread flour)
• 2 1/8 teaspoons salt

Procedures

1. Heat the oil and butter in a heavy soup pot. Cook the carrots, celery, and onions for about 20 minutes, or until very tender. Add the tomatoes and continue cooking over moderate heat for 25 to 30 minutes longer. Stir in the parsley and basil, season with salt and pepper, cook a minute or so longer, and serve hot.

2. As a variation, she says you can strain the soup and thin it with cream. I pureed half of my soup and stirred it back into the chunky half. Then I stirred in a half cup of cream because I happened to have it in the refrigerator, and I was pleased with the resulting soup, which was still quite thick.

3. Homemade French Bread

4. - makes 3 baguettes -

5. Adapted from Entertaining by Martha Stewart.

6. Soften the yeast in 1/4 cup warm water. (It isn’t clear to me whether this should come out of the water listed in the ingredients. I used 1/4 cup extra here and the amount listed in the ingredients in the next step.)

7. Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. Add the warm water and mix well. Add the yeast mixture and blend it into the dough.

8. Turn onto floured board and knead until dough is smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. You can also do this in a standing mixer with a dough hook, of course, in which case it will only take about 4 or 5 minutes.

9. Put the kneaded dough in a covered bowl and let rise until doubled in bulk. (I can never tell whether dough has doubled in bulk, so I just wait an hour.) Punch dough down and let rise a second time until doubled. Punch down. Turn onto a floured board and shape as desired per instructions below. (I shaped my loaves right on a parchment-lined baking sheet and had no problem.)

10. After forming the loaves, let rise covered with plastic wrap until doubled in size. Long loaves must be slashed along top with a sharp razor (3 or 4 diagonal slashes should do).

11. Bake in a 400°F oven for 25 minutes. To obtain a fine crust, spray the loaves with water 3 or 4 times during baking. Loaves are done when golden brown and crispy.

12. To shape dough into baguettes: Divide dough into 3 equal pieces. Pat each piece into an oval and press down the middle lengthwise with the edge of your hand. Fold in half and seal edges with the heel of your hand, pressing hard to expel air bubbles. Shape into a long, even cylinder by rolling like a clay snake. Place in bread pan (with no bread pan, I just put mine on a baking sheet) and cover for the final rise (step 5 above). After the final rise, make 3 or 4 long, diagonal cuts in the top of each loaf with a razor. Bake.

13. To shape dough into branches: Use one long, thin baguette for each branch. After the final rise but without slashing the top of the loaf, use sharp scissors to make diagonal cuts 3 inches long into each side of the baguette. You want about 4 cuts per side, and the cuts on each side should be parallel to each other, creating a series of points. Pull the points out from the baguette so that they resemble leaves or an ear of wheat. Spray with water and bake immediately, without leaving the bread to rise again.

[Photograph: Christine Tsai]

When I was five, my mother bought a new kind of cookbook because she was entranced by the pictures within: here were elegant parties and rustic feasts; there was the author working her massive garden, feeding "part of [her] flock of rare and unusual chickens," and tending her honeybees; and finally, sealing the deal (for our family, at least) there was a basket of gingerbread gnomes with red hats patiently awaiting a Christmas party.

The book, of course, was Martha Stewart's Entertaining, and this year it is 25 years old. It is fascinating to look back at the original book to see how much styles in food, flowers, and presentation have changed. (Also how much more honest Stewart is now about her massive staff: the early books make it seem as if she is doing all that cooking, gardening, chicken-rearing, bee-keeping, etc. single-handed.) Some arrangements still look perfectly lovely, and some treats are still worth eating: Alexis's Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies have been among my very favorite cookies since the first time I tasted them.

In my opinion, many of the recipes in Stewart's early books don't work as well as the dependable recipes emerging today from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and that only makes sense: with a huge company on the case, I'm sure they test the dickens out of those recipes now. But these cookies have always worked perfectly. They've only caused me trouble when I've taken a basket of them to a party and been slightly embarrassed by how much more attention they got than the hostess's offerings.

They do not resemble Tollhouse-style cookies in the slightest. They are much more buttery (Andrew was scandalized the first time he saw me make them) and have the most wonderful brown sugar taste and crispy-at-the-edges/chewy-in-the-middle texture. I actually prefer them without chocolate chips, which just get in the way of my butter-brown sugar enjoyment, but I think I'm pretty much alone in that.

About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.

Ingredients

serves 30 4-inch cookies

• 1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter ("at room temperature" is not specified but is presumably meant)
• 3 cups brown sugar
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 cups real chocolate chips

Procedures

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.

2. Cream butter until smooth; add sugars. Beat in eggs and vanilla.

3. Sift flour, salt, and baking soda and beat into above mixture. Add chocolate chips. Drop 2-3 tablespoons of batter onto greased baking sheet, 2 inches apart. Bake 8 minutes.

4. Remove from pans and cool on racks.

5. Note: if cookies become hard while still on the baking sheet, put sheet back into the oven for a few seconds to soften them for easy removal.

Last week I tried two new dishes: sookhe aloo (“dry” potatoes), a deliciously familiar variation on other Indian dishes I have tasted, and karhi, a thick porridge of chickpea flour and buttermilk that I thought would be either a hit or very weird.

I’m still making up my mind about the karhi experiment. I think I like the tangy, daffodil-yellow porridge, but I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to pull off the fried chickpea-flour dumplings that should have been floating in it (deep frying is not a technique I have mastered). I’m curious about karhi: does anybody out there still make this at home? (Jaffrey says her family enjoyed it on Sunday evenings.) Is it served at restaurants in New York? I’m not going to share the recipe, since the sookhe aloo was a hit pure and simple.

Dry potatoes! The spicing was marvelous, but I’m quite sure their delectability owed something to the shocking amount of oil used as well. Although they were meant to be stuffing for samosas, they were so compulsively edible on their own (and the prospect of making samosas was so daunting) that we decided not to mess with perfection.

The book says this serves 6-8, and I suppose it would as a tiny side dish. The two of us ate it with another vegetable and rice, and it made enough only for that dinner and a small lunch the next day (4 servings). Since childhood I have believed that everything good about the potato is in its jacket and so I did not bother to peel. This created some minor sticking problems, and I can see how peeling would yield an even more delightfully decadent dish, but I will probably still skip that step the next time I make this.

Ingredients

serves 6-8

• 7 medium-sized potatoes, boiled in their jackets and cooled, preferably at least 4 hours in advance (I used about 1 3/4 pounds potatoes)
• 10 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon whole fennel seeds
• 1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon whole black mustard seeds
• 12 whole fenugreek seeds
• 3 whole dried hot red peppers
• 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt (or to taste)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Procedures

1. Just before you start, peel the boiled potatoes and dice them into pieces about 1 inch by 1/2 inch.

2. In a wok or a 10-12 inch pot, heat the oil over medium flame. When very hot, put in the fennel and cumin seeds, and then the mustard seeds and fenugreek seeds. As they begin to change color and pop (about 10 seconds), add the red peppers. As soon as the red peppers swell and darken, add the diced potatoes, turmeric, and salt. Keep on medium heat and fry, turning gently so as not to break the potatoes. Fry for 15-20 minutes, until the potatoes are unevenly browned. Squeeze lemon juice over potatoes and taste for salt.

Until last week I never met a mulligatawny soup I liked. It wasn't that I hated the ones I was introduced to; it was more that they were watery, wan, and forgettable. Usually they were included as part of some deal at an Indian restaurant. I was torn between feeling sorry for mulligatawny, clinging to its place on the menu for people scared to order anything else, and vaguely disdaining it as an Anglo imposition on the Indian table.

Madhur Jaffrey's recipe intrigued me, though, because it is made with meat and thickened with chickpea flour. Mulligatawny takes so many different forms that it seems almost silly to group all these soups under one name, but most of them do seem to be chicken based and have nothing to do with chickpea flour. I had to try this version, and I'm very glad I did.

This is a thick and satisfying soup with a wonderful flavor. The best way I can think to describe it is intriguing--each spoonful was delightful in itself but also made me eager to take the next bite for another chance to try to sort out everything I was tasting. The spices are very nicely balanced, a shot of lemon juice perks everything up at the end, and cayenne pepper makes it just spicy enough (for me, at least). I did not have the white poppy seeds she calls for, which worried me since a tablespoon sounds like a lot; but she says to skip them instead of making a replacement, and in the end I didn't miss them. My only complaint is that the recipe makes only a scant four cups of soup, which was barely enough for our dinner (two people, soup and salad). I'll definitely double it next time.

About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.

Ingredients

serves 4 as an appetizer or 2 as a light dinner

• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
• A piece of fresh ginger, about 1/2 inch cube, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 pound boneless lamb (from shoulder or leg), with fat removed and cut into 3/4 inch cubes
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon white poppy seeds, roasted and ground (do not substitute black poppy seeds for white; omit poppy seeds if necessary)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 1/3 teaspoon salt (more if the broth is unsalted)
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons chickpea flour
• 2 cups chicken broth (canned or homemade; I used vegetable broth made from bouillon powder)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 2-3 tablespoons cooked rice, or 1-1 1/2 tablespoons uncooked rice (optional; I used uncooked and really liked how creamy soft it turned in the simmering)

Procedures

2. Pat dry the pieces of lamb. Heat the oil in a 2-3 quart pot over medium flame, and then add the meat. Turn and fry until the pieces are lightly browned on all sides. Remove with slotted spoon and set aside. Turn the heat off.

3. To the same pot, add the garlic-ginger paste, the roasted and ground poppy seeds, the coriander, cumin, and turmeric. Turn the heat to medium and fry, stirring constantly, for about a minute. Turn the heat to low.

4. Now add the browned meat and any juices that have accumulated under it, the salt, cayenne, and black pepper. Stir and leave on low flame.

5. Combine chickpea flour and ¼ cup water in a bowl, mixing thoroughly until you have a smooth paste. Slowly add the chicken broth, stirring as you do so. Pour this mixture over the meat in the pot. Turn the heat to high and bring soup to a boil. Add uncooked rice if you are using it. Cover, lower heat, and simmer gently for half an hour or until meat is tender. Stir in the lemon juice.

6. If you are using cooked rice, add it to soup 5 minutes before serving.

Although I love dried legumes and pulses more than most non-vegetarians, and although I love the vegetables and meat dishes in An Invitation to Indian Cooking, I tend to avoid the chapter on dals. I think this is because the first dal recipe I ever tried was Jaffrey’s moong dal. “This is North India’s most popular dal,” she writes, “and it is eaten with equal relish by toothless toddlers, husky farmers, and effete urban snobs.” That sounds delightful, right? But it calls for a full tablespoon of turmeric, which was definitely not to my taste. I wonder if my American turmeric is not so great or if it’s my American palate. What do you think?

Recently I had much better luck with her chana dal cooked with lamb. . Chana dal is a hulled and split dal whose grains are a little larger than split peas; it is a member of the chick pea family. In this recipe, it is cooked with so much lamb that it seemed more like lamb stew than a dal to me, but I certainly wasn’t complaining.

The technique here is almost identical to the chicken with sliced lemons and fried onions I made last week, but the taste is very different—much more “Indian,” somehow. I used the maximum amount of cayenne pepper and found the result to be just spicy enough, despite the fact that I’m usually kind of a wimp about spicy food. I used a boneless lamb shoulder roast and cut it up myself; the meat was a little tough but tasted delicious. This dish, like many dals, is garnished with crispy fried onions, which are so very good. In fact, I regularly rely on them to convince my husband that a dinner of lentils and rice is not a punishment.

About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.

Ingredients

serves 6

• 2-2 1/2 pounds boned meat from shoulder of lamb, cut into 1-1 1/2 inch cubes (you could also use leg of lamb or stewing beef; in this case, let the meat cook for 1 1/2 hours before you add the dal and complete the recipe)
• 5 medium-sized onions (1 peeled and chopped, 4 halved and sliced into fine half-rings)
• 5 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
• A piece of fresh ginger, about 1 inch cube, peeled and chopped
• 10 tablespoons vegetable oil (I used 8)
• 1 tablespoon ground coriander
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 3 tablespoons tomato sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon ground mace
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt (or as desired)
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4-1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
• 3/4 cup chana dal, cleaned and washed
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 3 tablespoons chopped cilantro
• 1 cucumber
• 16 ounces plain yogurt
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon roasted, ground cumin seeds
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
• 1/8 teaspoon paprika (for garnishing)

Procedures

1. Pat the meat pieces dry with a paper towel. Set aside.

2. Put the 1 chopped onion, garlic, and ginger into the container of a food processor or electric blender. Add 4 tablespoons water and blend at high speed until you have a smooth paste.

3. Heat the oil in a 10-inch heavy bottomed casserole-type pot (I used my Dutch oven) over medium-high flame. Put in the 4 sliced onions and fry them, stirring, for 15 to 20 minutes, or until they are a darkish brown and crisp. (They go from this stage to black and crisp fairly quickly, so be alert.) Remove them with a slotted spoon and spread on a paper towel.

4. Working in batches, brown the meat well on all sides over high heat in the onion-flavored oil. When all the meat has browned, turn off the heat under the pot.

5. When the remaining oil has cooled a bit, pour in the paste from the food processor or blender. Stir it well, mixing it with the juices in the pot. Turn up the heat and fry the paste, stirring all the time, 8-10 minutes or until it has browned (this happened after about 5 minutes for me). Now lower the heat and add, at intervals, frying and stirring, the coriander, cumin and turmeric; after a minute or two, the tomato sauce; and after another minute, the mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves. Finally, after 5 minutes, add 1 1/4 cups water, salt, black pepper, cayenne, the browned meat, and the cleaned and washed chana dal. Bring to a boil. Cover, lower the heat, and simmer for 1 hour, stirring gently every 10 minutes or so. Do not let the grains of dal break.

6. When done, add the lemon juice and stir gently.

7. Serve in a warm bowl, sprinkled with the browned onions and chopped cilantro. Serve with plain rice and at least one relish, such as the cucumber raita below.

8. Cucumber Raita

9. -serves 4-6

10. Adapted from An Invitation to Indian Cooking

11. Peel and grate the cucumber. Empty the yogurt into serving bowl and beat it well with a fork until it is smooth and pastelike. Add the cucumber, salt, black pepper, roasted cumin (reserve a pinch for garnish), and cayenne to the bowl. Sprinkle with paprika and the pinch of roasted cumin. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. This relish goes well with nearly all Indian meals.

One of the first Madhur Jaffrey meat recipes I ever tried was a goat stew. Although she recommends that Americans replace the goat with lamb, I’m open to new meats, and someone at the Greenmarket was actually selling goat for stew, so I thought, why not?

Well, my adventuresomeness was not rewarded. I don’t know if it was the recipe (which included at least 8 tablespoons of oil) or the goat (which gave off a lot of fat), but the stew tasted mostly of grease and gristle.

Presumably much has changed in both India and the United States since An Invitation to Indian Cooking was written more than three decades ago, but Jaffrey tells us that Indian meat is leaner and tougher than what we find in America. (She also vividly recalls the days when you bought chicken live from a barefoot man who brought a basket of “indignant” poultry to your house, and she describes vegetables and gardens that will make you cry if you bring them to mind while shopping for produce at your supermarket.) Until I can find some really lean goat to give that stew another go, I’ll happily stick with chicken, such as chicken with sliced lemon and fried onions. This recipe yields very tender chicken and a thick, delicious onion gravy; it would, I think, be an excellent gateway dish for people who think they don’t like Indian food.

About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.

Ingredients

serves 4-6

• 3-3 1/2 pounds bone-in, skinless chicken pieces (I used all thighs; it’s easy to remove the skin yourself, if you can’t find bone-in, skinless parts)
• 3 medium-sized onions
• A piece of fresh ginger, about 1-inch cube, peeled and coarsely chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
• 8 tablespoons vegetable oil (I used only 6)
• 1 tablespoon ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 2 tablespoons plain yogurt
• 4 tablespoons tomato sauce
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 whole lemon
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Procedures

1. If the chicken pieces are skin-on, remove the skin. Rinse and pat dry.

2. Peel the onions. Chop two of them coarsely and put them into the bowl of a food processor or blender. Cut the third one in half lengthwise, then slice it into thin half-rounds and set aside.

3. Add 6 tablespoons of water, the ginger, and the garlic to the onions in the food processor or blender and blend at high speed until you have a smooth paste.

4. Heat 6 tablespoons of the oil (I used 4) in a 10-12 inch pot over medium-high flame. When hot, put in the sliced onions and fry them, stirring, until they are darkish brown and crisp, though not burned. Remove onions with a slotted spoon and leave them to drain on paper towels.

5. In the same oil, brown the chicken pieces on all sides until they are golden. Do this speedily over high flame so the chicken browns but does not cook through. I did the thighs about 2 minutes per side. You will need to do it in at least 2 batches. Remove the chicken with slotted spoon to a bowl or plate.

6. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil to the pot. Pour in the paste from the blender (turn your face away!). Stirring, fry on medium-high heat for about 10 minutes or until the paste turns a nice golden brown. Now put in the coriander, cumin, and turmeric and fry, stirring continuously; after another 2 minutes add yogurt, a teaspoon at a time; after 2 or 3 minutes, the tomato sauce, a tablespoon at a time, continuing to stir and fry. Finally, add salt, cinnamon, cloves, cayenne pepper, and 1 1/2 cups of water. Bring to a boil. Cover, lower heat, and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

7. Cut the lemon into 4 or 5 slices, discarding the end pieces, and remove the seeds. Add lemon slices along with the chicken pieces, fried onions, sugar, and the ground pepper to the sauce, stir, and bring to a boil. Cover, lower heat, and simmer gently for 20-25 minutes, or until the chicken is tender, turning the pieces every now and then. If chicken sticks to the bottom of pot, add a little more water. You should end up with a very thick sauce. (My sauce was thick but also copious and in no danger of sticking. I don’t know if it was correct, but it tasted good.)