If you eat these warm, they literally melt in your mouth, almost like those meltaway mints. But these are chocolate. Brownies.

Recently I bought a stand mixer for the 2nd home I own with my daughter and her husband in Palm Desert. We’re having the place remodeled; and it’s almost done. We have a new kitchen with a really nice, large island, and even though I didn’t think we were going to need all kinds of baking appliances, I just decided we needed a stand mixer and a small food processor. The stand mixer arrived (bargain price on amazon because of its mint green color, I guess) and I needed to do a quality control check on it. Right? That house doesn’t have everything a baker would need, but we did have a 9×9 ceramic dish, and I had chocolate. And as it happened, I had some mascarpone cheese that needed using up.

Once the batter was mixed properly (and yes, the new stand mixer worked just fine) it was poured into the pan/ceramic dish and baked for about 35-45 minutes, depending on your oven and the size of your pan. I used an instant read thermometer and removed the brownies when the temp in the center reached 195°F. They rested and cooled, then the frosting was spread on top. One thing we don’t have in that kitchen is an offset spatula – makes it a bit difficult to spread the frosting, but I managed with a plastic butter spreader instead. I waited a couple of hours before cutting into them. OM Goodness, were they ever tender. And tasty. I’m a dark chocolate fan, so I used 85% chocolate (Trader Joe’s bars) for both cake and frosting. You can easily lighten it up by using semisweet or lighter. I don’t know that this recipe would work with milk chocolate (it has a different chemistry than other chocolates because of the milk contained in it).

If you’re not a fan of nuts in your brownies, then leave them out. I am a fan, so was happy to add about 1/2 cup into the brownie batter. You could use pecans or almonds too, but I prefer walnuts. Altogether wonderful.

What’s GOOD: the texture of these was sublime. So soft and tender because of the mascarpone cheese in them. Everything you’d ever want in a brownie.

What’s NOT: not a thing.

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Don’t you just want to sink your fork into these?

Recipe from Karen; write-up by Carolyn. Actually, I remember the first time I had a poblano pepper – stuffed similarly to this. Probably around 1990. At a restaurant in Pasadena, called the Parkway Grill. I believe it was a lunch menu special, and I really thought it was one of the most delicious things I’d ever eaten. Of course, I didn’t have their recipe, and back then poblano peppers weren’t commonly at grocery stores, either. Now they are, certainly here in California, where our grocery stores carry a variety of chiles, small and large. A few weeks ago I spent the day with Karen, and family. For lunch she served leftovers, a big favorite of mine, Pasta Puttanesca. If you click back to that story, you can read about Karen and my son Powell’s early dating, when Powell made that pasta. It’s a cute story.

So back to this story – Karen had four beautiful poblano peppers, and she and I worked on this dish together. Karen started from an internet recipe, but made a few changes to it. The poblanos have to be prepped – the tops cut off, the seeds and membranes removed, then gently sliced to open up the peppers kind of like a cup, so you can spoon in that luscious filling. The filling is a combination of fresh tomatoes, onion, garlic, salt, oregano (or marjoram in this case as Karen didn’t have any Mexican oregano – did you know that marjoram is very similar to Mexican oregano? who knew?) and cumin. And cheese, and Mozzarella. (You could also add just a little bit of corn to this too.) Once the peppers are stuffed with that mixture (see picture just above), gently mounded in the pepper so none of it leaks out, the peppers are baked for about half an hour. Then you add cheese to the top. Karen had a package of Mexican blended cheeses, and that was gently mounded on the top and put back into the oven – on broil – until the cheese melted and was golden brown (see picture at top!).

Let the peppers rest for 4-8 minutes until they’ve cooled down enough so you don’t burn  your mouth! Sprinkle with chopped cilantro and serve. Thanks, Karen, for this delicious recipe. If you wanted a slightly different taste, add corn (and remove some of the chopped tomatoes).

What’s GOOD: for me, the poblano chile pepper is the star of the dish – it has a unique flavor. But the combination in the filling is also so delicious with this, and oh, the cheese. Everything’s better with cheese!

What’s NOT: nothing other than there is a bit of prep for this – maybe 30 minutes worth, then they baked for 30. Broiled for 2-3, and it was ready.

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A tart, but not overly so red wine vinegar and lemon juice type, with a tiny bit of honey. And Dijon. And red chile flakes.

Over the years I’ve certainly had my fair share of very tart, puckery Italian and Greek salad dressings – at restaurants always. And haven’t always been a fan. One Italian place I frequented in years past served such a tart red wine vinegar dressing that I couldn’t eat it. Just couldn’t. Literally, I would choke and cough because it had too much vinegar. Ever had that problem? So when I volunteered to make Greek salad dressing for a potluck luncheon recently I was determined no one would erupt in a choking fit. I perused lots of recipes, and settled on one at Simply Recipes. Why that one? Because it had a tiny little bit of honey in it. And I felt that the ratio of acid (red wine vinegar and lemon juice) to oil (EVOO) was better than some.

The other nice thing about this dressing is that you can mix it up in a screw-top jar – no blender required. I minced up the garlic (lots) really well. I used fresh lemon juice (a must) and I used a good EVOO. This recipe has both red wine vinegar AND lemon juice. I liked that also. It had a little jot of Dijon in it, some red pepper flakes too (not necessarily standard). The ONLY thing I did differently was to add more dried oregano. And I doubled the recipe because I was serving a bunch of people. Other people were bringing the Romaine, the Kalamata olives, the cucumbers, Feta, and halved cherry tomatoes.

What’s GOOD: good, garlicky and not too stringent because of the ratio of acid to EVOO, and because of the tiny bit of honey. Love the flavors from the oregano and red chile flakes. Altogether delicious dressing. A keeper.

What’s NOT: nothing at all.

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Such a luscious cake – tender, moist, juicy, and that sweet butter sauce puts it “over the top.”

My friend Linda – I have two Linda’s in my life, both good friends – my friend Linda T has a bunch of recipes on my blog already – but this one is from my other friend Linda I. (She’s quite thrilled to have one of her recipes show up here on my blog!) She made this cake for an event we had at my home a couple of weeks ago. I swooned (again) over this dessert, as she’d made it for some other event we had awhile back. This time she left me with two servings and I had to talk to myself to NOT eat it all in one sitting.

Searching online, I found it – it has an interesting past . . . it was published in a magazine for cross-stitchery in 1988. Looong time ago. It was a winner then, and it’s a winner now.

This cake is just so good. The finely minced apples make the cake so very moist. It’s a dark cake – I don’t understand, really, how/why the cake is dark as there isn’t any brown sugar in it. Perhaps it’s just the amount of regular sugar that helps provide that lovely dark golden color on the top of the cake. Well, anyway, it makes no difference how or why the cake has the dark consistency, what it has going for it is moistness, juiciness and a lovely apple-y taste. But then you pair it with the very simple sauce . ..  it’s just marvelous.

The sauce is nothing but butter, sugar, vanilla and some heavy cream. In the picture at top, you can see the sauce pooled on the left side of the plate – it’s not a creamy looking sauce, even though there is 1/2 cup of heavy cream in it. But oh, you’re going to want to lick the plate to not let any of that sauce go to waste!

Do use Granny Smith apples when making this. Sweet apples will fall apart, and that you don’t want. You can use pecans (what was in the original recipe) but Linda used walnuts on this version. I’m sure either would work just fine. You can easily make this the day before – and I can tell you for sure that it keeps just fine for several days. Do refrigerate the sauce, however, but warm it up when serving. You want the sauce to be WARM. And another must, is the whipped cream. It’s necessary. There’s something about the pillowy foil of whipped cream with some desserts – some just require it. This one does, for sure. Not that the cake wouldn’t be good without it, but it’s just better WITH whipped cream.

My thanks to my friend Linda I for her recipe. She’s been making it for years, so she tells me. Do make it – you won’t be disappointed.

What’s GOOD: love the moist, tender cake, but then the sauce. Oh, the sauce. So good. And adding the whipped cream just makes it. But the sauce is really the part that separates this apple cake from any other I’ve ever had. Do make it.

What’s NOT: not a thing. This is a winner – a keeper.

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Just the simplest of soups – although there are a LOT of vegetables in it, but the more the merrier, and the merrier the taste. I wasn’t expecting it to be so delicious!

A post from Carolyn. I don’t know about you, but after the holidays, of not-so-healthy eating, desserts served more often and just plain eating more than I usually do, I was so ready for some pure foods, healthier. My refrigerator had a bunch of vegetables and some had to be tossed in the trash, but what was there surely was enough to make a delicious soup. As I’m writing this, we’ve had rain – rain – and more rain. It’s so good for our soil as we’ve been in years of drought, so I’m not complaining. A rainy day makes me want to cook, as long as I don’t have other things I have to do. My usual busy routine has started up but I had a free day, and it was raining.

Often, when I look at recipes for vegetable soup, I think eh, veggie soup doesn’t have enough flavor to make me happy. But I decided to try it anyway since I had so many veggies that needed to be used. I’m SO glad I did, as this soup was scrumptious, and well worth making again.

Into a big pot went a sweet onion and leeks, with some olive oil. As that sweated I chopped up all the vegetables (red bells, poblanos, zucchini, yellow squash, a sweet potato, celery, carrots, garlic) and added them all at once.

Last month at the cooking class in San Diego, Phillis Carey mentioned how much she loves the new Better Than Bouillon Seasoned Vegetable Base. Picture at right. She also mentioned the same brand for chicken, the Roasted Chicken Base. I’ve bought both. And I also bought their Chili Base too, since I make more than a fair share of chili-based soups. All of them are available on amazon (use the links to get right to the pages).

All of these concentrates contain a goodly amount of sodium, so I didn’t add a single grain of salt to this soup. I added water, the vegetable paste/base, some oregano and thyme (my go-to herbs). Once the vegetables were done I removed some of it and whizzed it up with my immersion blender and poured it back into the soup (just to give the soup some thickened texture).

Then I added a little tiny can of corn and a big mound of grated Cheddar. Than I added a can of coconut cream. Now, about that. I buy Trader Joe’s coconut cream when I want that creamy texture, but I don’t want to taste coconut. TJ’s brand doesn’t taste like coconut. Neither their coconut cream or coconut milk has much of any taste of coconut. In this case, that’s what I wanted. I wasn’t making a coconut soup with vegetables, I merely wanted the creamy texture. If you want coconut milk that tastes like coconut, do buy Thai Kitchen. I buy it from a Costco that’s not near me at all as not all Costco’s carry it. Or use the link for amazon.

I scooped about a cup of soup into the bowl, added some grated Cheddar on top and a sprig of Italian parsley. Done.

What’s GOOD: altogether delicious. Healthy for sure. Lots of flavor (maybe it’s the broth that did it – but surely all the various veggies contributed too). The soup has some heat from the poblano chiles. If you’re sensitive to heat, use just one, or substitute green bell peppers. I don’t like green bell peppers, so you’ll almost never see them in my cooking repertoire! This recipe is a keeper in my book, and that’s saying something since I’m a bit reluctant to even make vegetable soup since I assume it’ll be blah. Not so with this one.

What’s NOT: really nothing. It’s a very flavorful soup. Relatively low in calorie too. A keeper, and yes, I’ll be making it again. It should freeze well.

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Love those haricot verts. One of my favorite vegetables.

A post from Carolyn. A few  years ago I was enjoying a dinner out with friends, and the waiter came to our table to tell us about the specials. He listed off several, then got to the last one and said the entree was served with harr-eh-cot-vertz. It was like scratching your fingernail on a blackboard. Oof. I quickly told him how to pronounce it – hair-eh-co-vehr. I don’t think he believed me because he gave me a rather blank look. I said, “next time you’re in the kitchen, go ask the chef.” He did, and came back later to say yes, I was correct. He asked me again how to say it and he painstakingly wrote it down on his little waiter notebook. Why exactly we don’t called them “baby green beans” I don’t know. For a long time (years ago) these beans were certainly considered “gourmet,” not ordinary, and were hard to find. I suppose it’s like a lot of French culinary words that have become part of our English speaking – like Bouillabaisse, or fondue, baba au rum, and others. How about boeuf bourgignon. There is no English translation of bourgignon. Hence, haricot verts, friends! I’m not a French speaker, but any good home cook will learn some French as they learn to cook and bake!

Just in case you don’t see them regularly in your market, they’re really just young green beans, plucked before they get big or woody or tough. Trader Joe’s sells them for a very good price in a little 12 ounce package. They’re all cleaned and trimmed. I used 3 packages for this salad/side dish.

The recipe came from David Tanis, the acclaimed chef and author. He worked at Chez Panisse for awhile, and currently writes a weekly column for the New York Times. This recipe came from an article in Food & Wine magazine a few years back.

The green beans are cooked just until bite-tender and cooled. The original recipe had you prepare dried white or cannellini beans, but I’m too lazy – I buy canned. But since there were seasonings in the dried beans as they cooked (onion, bay leaf and thyme) I decided to add onion powder, powdered bay leaf and dried thyme to the salad dressing instead. It was an easy substitution. I made the salad dressing the day before and let it sit out on my kitchen counter overnight, so the flavors would blend. The cannellini beans were drained and rinsed, then I combined just a bit of the dressing in with the beans and they sat in the frig overnight. When I was ready to serve, I scooped the beans down the center of the platter, then the haricot verts around the outside, sort of haphazardly, then drizzled the dressing over everything, using my hands a little bit to distribute the dressing on the beans. If you want to toss the dressing thoroughly with the green beans, do it separately then put them on the platter. I garnished the platter with some halved cherry tomatoes (mostly for color) and a bunch of chopped Italian parsley.

Everything for this was prepped the day before – in this case I was taking it to someone else’s home – so I just put everything into a big tote bag (separately) and composed the salad at serving time.

What’s GOOD: a lovely, different side veg or salad, however you want to think of it. The dressing was really nice. I’d definitely make this again, if only for the color/photo factor. I had several nice comments about the salad when it was served. Certainly there are different textures here – the soft cannellini beans and the just crisp-tender green beans. And the shallot vinaigrette was really delicious.

What’s NOT: only that you need to start a bit ahead, although you certainly could make this and serve it immediately. I wanted the salad dressing to meld a bit; that’s all.

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This has “comfort food” written all over it. First bite to the last.

A post from Carolyn. It’s no secret that I love shepherd’s pie. And traditionally, it’s made with ground lamb. If you make it with beef, it’s considered cottage pie. This version has all the ingredients, but made into a soup instead. I’m not sure when I began making shepherd’s pie – decades ago – maybe I had it on my very first trip to Britain in about 1978. I’ve always made it with beef. Maybe we Americans have adopted the title, but without keeping to the British tradition of lamb. I like it with either. And originally, the “pie” was made with tiny, minced up pieces of leftover roast, not the ground meat we buy at the grocery store. I started with a recipe I found online, but then augmented it with more flavor (mushrooms, celery).

Because I try to limit carbs, I made this with less potatoes. To explain . . . this soup has two quantities of potatoes in it: (1 part) cooked separately, made into mashed potatoes (or use some leftover you have) and added to the finished soup to give it a thick texture; and (2nd part) cubed potatoes added in at the end of cooking and cooked in the soup just until done. You can see a cube right on that spoon in the photograph. Originally this recipe called for a total of 3 pounds of potatoes. I used about 1 1/2 pounds total with half in the mashed potato part and half in the soup. You can change this to suit your wants or your family’s.

Important flavors in this soup: Worcestershire sauce, tomato paste and mushrooms. All umami flavors. Actually, because I didn’t want to have beef, I used Impossible Burger meat in mine. Because it’s mixed into a soup, truly you’d never know the difference. And if you want to eliminate the meat altogether, you’ll have a delicious vegetarian soup. Just make sure the broth you add has lots of flavor.

What’s GOOD: altogether comfort food. Good stick-to-the-ribs winter meal. Serve with some crackers or toasted bread and you have a full meal. This is going onto my favorites list as I’ll be making it again soon.

What’s NOT: nothing at all. This is a keeper.

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Oh so delicious. Served warm – it could be an entree, or a pasta side salad.

A post from Carolyn. Looking at this recipe, I might not have given it much attention. Kind of regular-type ingredients (pasta, sausage, broccolini, tomatoes, cheese). Not exactly ho-hum, but when you put them all together, it’s quite a tasty dish. This came from the December cooking class with Phillis Carey. She’s a Southern Italian (actual Sicilian) and she said this recipe comes from Puglia (pronounced poo-lee-ah). For me, the Italian sausage makes it a stand-out, but the creamy addition of ricotta cheese on top gave it a silky finish too. The grape tomatoes are roasted for 20-25 minutes until they’re just at that peak of plumpness and about to fall apart. Do save a little bit of the pasta water as you’ll want to add some of it at the very end to give the pasta a bit more smoothness.

If you have all the ingredients, you could probably make this in less than 30 minutes, start to finish.

What’s GOOD: the combo is really delicious and filling. For me it’s the Italian sausage that gives it a wonderful taste. The tomatoes add umami flavor too, and you get in some veggies with the broccolini. Altogether wonderful.

What’s NOT: nothing at all – easy to make.

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What a nice dish this was for a leisurely brunch entree. And it’s very easy to make, besides!

A post from Carolyn. Over the Christmas holidays I entertained just once, a group of girlfriends I’ve known for decades. Every December we try to get together to celebrate Christmas and get caught  up on our lives. My friends brought other food to round out the brunch, so this was the only main thing I had to do. I also made some spiced fruit, a recipe I’ve made before, Spiced Peaches which went well with the little croissant sandwiches.

First you need mini-croissants. Some grocery stores carry them; others do not, but I had no difficulty finding them. I purchased some good Boar’s Head smoked ham, had the butcher slice it thinly, though not like those thin see-through shavings called sandwich slices. I cut the ham to approximately fit the shape of the croissant. I also had good imported Swiss cheese, also cut accordingly. I added a nice slice of tomato to these (not in the original recipe). Then you mix up the eggs and heavy cream, with an addition of mustard. The recipe called for Dijon (which I had), but because it was the holidays, I used Brennan’s cranberry mustard instead. I couldn’t really taste the mustard, but perhaps that was the point. It added flavor somehow but not noticeably!

This casserole needs to be assembled the night before, so you pour the custardy mixture over the sandwiches, cover with plastic wrap and let it sit. In the morning I used a big spoon to scoop  up some of the custard and drizzled it over the top of each of the croissants. Ideally, use a casserole dish that is JUST big enough to fit the number of croissants  you’re using. Mine was a little too big. It bakes for 40-45 minutes (do watch that the croissants don’t burn like mine almost did) and serve. The recipe has you put foil over the top during the last 15 minutes of baking (I did, and glad I did so!).

Be prepared to serve it immediately as the dish cools off quickly since it’s not a solid mass.

What’s GOOD: it was easy to make – very easy. Liked that I could make it the night before and nothing more to do except put it in the oven the next morning. This would be a solid breakfast entree for men/boys (although they’d probably eat two apiece) since it’s hearty.

What’s NOT: not a thing. Easy. Delicious.

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Forgot to take a picture once it was out of the oven . . . sorry about that. On top is a nice flavorful layer of Gruyere cheese and buttered bread crumbs.

A post from Carolyn. If any of you are “of a certain age,” you may remember that serving authentic beef stroganoff was a frequent entertaining entree way back in the 60s and 70s. It required copious amounts of sour cream and of course, some kind of tender beef. Whatever type I bought wasn’t ever tender enough. I think tenderloin is the authentic beef recommended – that was way out of my price range, so I used some other substitute (and probably overcooked it, or it was a type that might never get tender) so I wasn’t necessarily thrilled with the results. My other go-to company meal was turkey a la king, served in puff pastry cups – a more inexpensive entree served elegantly in those little buttery vessels. Vaguely I remember when someone decided to make stroganoff with ground beef, but it was considered to be a cheap substitute (and oh, hand up to forehead – gasp – certainly not worthy of a company meal). Over the ensuing years I know I’d made that substitute casserole many times, but it never came into regular rotation. Probably because it was thick, gloopy (is that a word?) and over-the-top too rich.

How times have changed. When I watched Rachael Ray make this on her show, I was intrigued. Why? Because she used a max of 1/2 cup of sour cream (not 1 – 2+ cups as I’d used in my other recipes), it didn’t contain any canned soup (cream of mushroom), and it used sherry wine plus a moderate amount of Worcestershire sauce. Plus it was a much dry-er casserole – no gluey or thick mushy type serving.

Did you know that Worcestershire is an umami flavor? Yup. You can add a little bit to dishes and you’ll not know it’s there, but it adds nice flavor. Mushrooms also have umami, and there are plenty of them in this recipe too. Rachael called for rye or pumpernickel bread crumbs . . . I didn’t have those and wasn’t about to buy a loaf of that bread to garner a cup of breadcrumbs, so I used panko, because that’s what I had on hand. Others who have made this recipe and posted it online mention those rye or pumpernickel bread crumbs as being a real game-changer. I like it just fine with panko crumbs, but agree, the other types might make this casserole even better. The addition of Gruyere cheese also added to the high-flavor profile here.  I buy Costco ground beef – I think it has more flavor than many others, like my local grocery store variety. I keep those Costco cubes in my freezer all the time (they’re 1 1/2 pounds, just what’s called for in this recipe).

If you make this and have leftovers, heat them in servings in the microwave, maybe with a sprinkling of water on the bottom. As I mentioned, this makes a kind of “dry” casserole. I’d reheat them in a bowl rather than a flat plate.

What’s GOOD: really delicious comfort-food casserole. Liked the depth of flavor in this (from the mushrooms, Worcestershire, sherry wine, Gruyere) and will definitely make this again. It should freeze well – I made two small casseroles and one large one. The smaller ones I froze, so I’ll enjoy them in coming months.

What’s NOT: only that it takes about an hour to prepare (plus baking time), with a moderate amount of cutting and chopping; nothing is difficult. You’ll find that the mixture seems quite dry, but it works out fine.

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