Cranberry Cheddar Shortbread

Holiday cookie season is definitely upon us, and I’m sure a lot of you have your favorite traditional recipes. In my family, we always have Mexican Wedding Cakes and peanut brittle, and the holidays just wouldn’t feel right without them. I’ve made them so many times I almost have the recipes memorized. But every year I like to add something new and unique to the mix. A few years ago I made these Cranberry Cheddar Shortbread cookies, and they are so good they are quickly becoming part of the yearly cookie tradition.

These cookies are buttery and crumbly and dense, like good shortbread should be, but the aged cheddar gives them a certain depth of flavor that takes them into another realm entirely. They aren’t your expected holiday cookies. In fact, I’m not even sure I want to call them cookies. They are somewhere between cracker and cookie, both savory and sweet and altogether special. The cranberries add sweetness and brightness, and the pecans give these cookies crunch and add to the buttery, rich flavor. Every time I’ve brought these cookies to a holiday party or given them as a gift, people rave. So if you’re looking for something new to add to your cookie rotation, I highly recommend giving them a try. They’ll probably become part of your must-have cookie plate every year. … Continue Reading

Split Pea and Potato Soup

Split pea soup is like the dowager aunt of soups. Something in the name sounds drab and outdated. It always makes me remember driving home from college in California and passing through Buellton, the home of Pea Soup Anderson’s, whose sign looked like it hadn’t been updated since the mid-1960s. It wasn’t particularly appealing to me. Until, that is, I came across a bulging bag of split peas at the Farmers’ Market last summer. In my endless quest to stock up on locally produced foods for the non-growing months of winter, I figured I had to give them a try. I bought them, and that lovely green bag sat in my pantry for a few months, just waiting for soup weather. … Continue Reading

Curried Cauliflower and Potatoes

A few years ago, an acquaintance found out I like to cook and decided to share some of her favorite low-calories recipes with me. At the time, I wasn’t very interested in low-calorie cooking, so I tucked the piece of notebook paper into my battered blue recipe folder and promptly forgot all about it. Months later I stumbled across that paper and found that I had everything I needed to make one of her recipes, Roasted Curried Cauliflower. It didn’t sound half bad, so I decided to make it for dinner that evening. I was blown away. It didn’t take very long to prepare, and was full of flavor, warmth, and spice, perfect for a cold November night. … Continue Reading

Chicken Florentine with Fettuccine

I think it’s all the Popeye I watched as a kid that lead me to believe that anything with spinach in it is health food. Cheesy, buttery spinach quiche? Of course! Spinach salad with loads of bacon and creamy dressing? No question. This decadent Chicken Florentine on a bed of pasta? Absolutely. All health-related guilt one might feel after eating a rich, heavy meal can clearly be absolved by adding spinach.

Ok, ok, I’m willing to admit that the mere addition of spinach does not make this plate of cream and butter good for you. However, I firmly believe that you should eat it anyway. … Continue Reading

Creamy Potato Leek Soup

The Walla Walla Farmers Market will be open for one final weekend of the season, and this time of year, the leeks are piled high. Last weekend, I picked up a bundle so big the green tops were trailing to the ground, and their faint onion-y scent filled my car instantly. The whole way home, all I could think of was potato leek soup. And when the wind was howling outside, and the rain knocked all the leaves to the lawn, a warm bowl of potato soup made it feel extra cozy inside. This soup makes it easy to believe that the wet, windy, dark, cold days ahead will be perfectly bearable. … Continue Reading

Cranberry Buttermilk Scones

Last Saturday morning I woke up way earlier than I wanted to. As I lay in bed, trying to fall back to sleep, cursing the existence of 6:30 am, I realized the only thing that would save the day was scones. So I rolled out of bed, made some coffee, and got mixing. Scones do have a magical ability to make 6:30 on a Saturday morning seem far less terrible, and they’re easy enough that you can even make them before coffee with very little chance of disaster. … Continue Reading

Braised Chicken with Scarlet Runner Beans

The slow cooker is a miraculous invention. It allows me to come home on a cold, damp October evening to a house that feels warm and inviting, full of the smells of spices and braised chicken and wine-soaked beans. And it allows me to sit down to a warm meal with almost no effort. Every time I use my slow cooker I think, “Why don’t I do this every day?” Then I stow it away in a cupboard again and forget about it. Well, this recipe might be just the thing to bring that slow cooker out and give it a permanent place on my kitchen counter.
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Kitchen Basics: Making Polenta

When most people think of Italian food, they think of pasta, in all its various shapes and textures and varieties. Pasta is, truly, an excellent food: on its own it’s filling and delicious, but even better, it’s a wonderful vehicle for any number of sauces and toppings. It’s a perfect blank slate. But sometimes, maybe, you want a different kind of blank slate. Sometimes you might want to mix it up, and serve something else with your sauces and vegetables and braised meats. Those are the times I often turn to polenta.

You may have heard that polenta, like risotto, is difficult. Finicky. Time consuming. Well, much like risotto, it’s really not all that difficult, and it doesn’t even have to take that long. And it’s a great dish to add to your repertoire, as it tends to look far more impressive than it is, and is very versatile. It’s also pretty fantastic for winter: warm and … Continue Reading

Recipe – Sunday Supper Bolognese

Bolognese, or ragu, comes from the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, a region known for its … Continue Reading

Beautiful summer tomatoes make for tasty rosemary ketchup

It may be officially fall, but the Walla Walla farmers’ market is still loaded with beautiful summer tomatoes. This week alone my CSA box came laden with several pounds of Romas, some variously colored salad tomatoes, and a few wonderfully lumpy heirlooms. It can be a little overwhelming figuring out what to do with all those tomatoes, especially for someone like me without a big family to cook for. I’ve canned simple whole tomatoes, and I’ve gone the oven-drying route, but I wanted to try something new, and for some reason, I hit on ketchup.

I’ve never been a big fan of ketchup. I don’t dip my French fries in it, I don’t smear it on hamburgers and hot dogs. It’s practically un-American, right? But I’ve always found the stuff too sticky sweet for my taste. And the manufactured stuff is overloaded with sugar and who knows what else. However, a few years ago I visited a restaurant in Boston that made their own tomato compote and … Continue Reading

Recipe – Paul Freeman’s “Everybody Wants Some Shrimp”

Next time you warm up the grill, try out this quick and zesty grilled shrimp recipe from Freeman’s personal vault (literally). … Continue Reading