Meals & Sides

Purple Cabbage Slaw

This purple cabbage slaw is a take on North Woods Inn’s famous Red Cabbage Salad. You’ll find versions of this recipe everywhere, but it’s about more than ingredients.

Sweet Potato Latkes

Good old russet potato latkes will always have a place at our Hanukkah table, but these sweet potato latkes have a salty-sweet kick that makes the lights of Hanukkah shine brighter for all of us.

Turkey Chili Blanco

If you’ve ever been to a chili cook-off that felt more like a death-match, you know that chefs tend to get territorial about their chili. My friend Mia and I usually get along like rice and beans—yet we still can’t agree on who’s chili is better (mine). Like a lot […]

Hungarian Goulash

There are many reasons to make goulash. For Papa, it’s a delicious reminder of the country and culture he grew up in. For the kids — well, they just think it’s yummy and fun to say. For me, goulash has a special place in my heart — and stomach. Making […]

Pasta Puttanesca

This summer I checked one off the bucket list: Taking a cooking class in Rome, Italy! Making (and eating) this pasta puttanesca was definitely one of the highlights of my trip, and while I wish all of you could be transported to the land of wine and olives to take […]

Crispy Salt & Vinegar Potatoes

Which came first, the potato or the chip? A little confusion is understandable. At first this crispy Salt & Vinegar Potato side dish might seem like a fun riff on commercial salt and vinegar chips (or “crisps”), but really, it’s the other way around. Bagged salt and vinegar chips date […]

Everybody’s Favorite Kale Salad

Sometimes it just works. A pretty good recipe gradually transforms into a great one, and after a few hit potlucks, it has a regular seat at every holiday meal and sports event — an unspoken hope that just maybe the Knicks will win this year. This kale salad is one […]

Baked Plantain

Plantains, or cooking bananas, have been delighting palates since the days of Cleopatra. To eat a banana raw, in fact, is a particularly modern phenomenon. And as much as we love a mildly sweet, mutated modern banana, there is something earthy and magical about this ancient bitter fruit that transforms […]

Guacamole 101

Guacamole is a dish that lends itself to experimentation. Creamy, mild avocados are a perfect blank canvas for flavor, and our obsession with them just keeps growing. (Last year alone, the average American consumed about 7 pounds of avocados!) I have fond memories of living in Mexico, eating plain sliced […]

Shell Pasta Chicken Bake

We don’t always agree on what to eat for dinner around here. When one kid suggests sausages, the other cries for quesadillas, and the grown-ups just crave something —anything—that doesn’t pair well with a free plastic toy. On nights like this, we must embrace the one food people of all […]

Easy Flour Tortillas

Flour tortillas don’t typically make the cut when we talk about “authentic” south-of-the-border cuisine, but despite what you may think, corn hasn’t completely cornered the tortilla market in Mexico. For the people of Sonora, a region in northern Mexico, wheat has been a staple crop for hundreds of years. Head […]