Recipes Archives - Page 45 of 63

Three Layer Chocolate Cake with Salted Caramel Buttercream

July 5, 2024February 20, 2015 by Emily

Three Layer Chocolate Cake with Salted Caramel Buttercream

Guys.

Guuuuuuuuuuys.

I just can’t with this cake.

LOOK AT IT!

Is this not the most delightfully bonkers looking cake you’ve ever seen? Hello? Are you listening to me? You’re hypnotized, aren’t you? It’s okay, I get it.

*SNAP*

Welcome back. You can put your shoes back on now and I’ll just hand you back your wallet. Ahem.

Last week, when my oldest and dearest friend Heather decided to come up and hang out with us for her birthday, Matt and I knew we wanted to make something really special for her. Her birthday also happens to fall on Valentines Day so instead of going out to an overpriced restaurant, we decided to Nerd it up at home and go ALL OUT.

Caramelized Green Beans with Soy and Lemon

June 15, 2024February 6, 2015 by Emily

Caramelized green beans is a quick, healthy dish that would be an ideal vegan (and optionally gluten free) side for an Asian-style dinner.

Caramelized Green Beans with Soy and Lemon — …with a little extra chili sauce on top for spice.

We all have our little quirks and one of mine is that I am… let’s just say ambivalent about green beans unless they are cooked one, very specific way. (But when they are cooked this way, I’m adore them and want them all the time). In fact, prepared this way, I find them colossally addictive. I’m odd, I know. I’ve accepted it (and more importantly, so has Matt, who I’m sure would enjoy green beans prepared any number of ways but somehow never complains when they show up tasting exactly the same, time after time).

It’s not like green beans are evil and must be destroyed. I mean, they’re not celery. It’s just that they’re often rather…meh. A bit bland and, even worse, rubbery. And they make a little squeaky sound against your teeth when you chew them (I already admitted to being weird so stop making that face).

Yes, I know those little haricots vert you can sometimes find are tender and perfect (especially steamed and coated with a sharp, mustardy dressing) but, at least around these parts, they are often diabolically expensive. And I like to save my dollars for important things like hats for boiled eggs and gifs of Benedict Cumberbatch being licked by kittens. Like I said, important.

Benedict Cumberbatch being licked by a kitten is what the internet was made for,

Pasta with Sausage, Broccoli Rabe and White Beans

June 15, 2024January 30, 2015 by Matt

Pasta with sausage, broccoli rabe and white beans is a classic combination that needs its own name. While you’re thinking of one, check out our recipe.

Neither one of us grew up in an Italian family. We didn’t have childhoods where there was always a lasagne baking away in the kitchen, twenty people crammed into a dining room, cheerfully shouting at one another to pass the meatballs, Dad sitting at the head of the table with his slicked-back hair, pencil moustache, eating slices of orange, two bodyguards at the door … you know what, I’m thinking of “The Godfather” there, that’s what that is.

Of course, it’s easy to get inspiration from Italian cuisine – there are are a handful of classic pasta dishes that we fall back on for dinner parties or quick weeknight meals, and I think this might be one of our favorites – it’s cheap, easy and phenomenally delicious. We make it all the time.

Pan-Seared Pork Chops with Apples and Onions

June 15, 2024January 23, 2015 by Emily

Pork chops marinated in a spice brine, cooked to perfection and served with garlic-sauteed broccoli rabe and an apple-onion sauce. Chops don’t get much better than this.

One of the things I love about living in Beacon is that it really feels like a community that is growing and changing in an interesting way. For a long time I felt this way about Brooklyn (where I had lived since the early 1990’s) but as wonderful as Brooklyn is, it’s just too damn expensive now for artists and creative people to do anything but hustle every day to make rent.

I know I’m the bazillionth person to complain about how amazing Brooklyn used to be, but I was incredibly lucky to be one of the crazy, hearty few who lived in East Williamsburg back when it was practically deserted. It was a startling, magical, bizarre, occasionally terrifying place back then, and my roommates and I had absolutely no idea what it would become.

In 1995, if you would have told me that one of the hippest restaurants in NYC was going to open two blocks away from my house, I would have laughed loudly enough to startle the poodle-sized rats that lived in the burned-out minivan abandoned outside my front door. All we knew at the time was that you could rent a 3,000 square foot loft for a few hundred dollars, but you had to install your own toilet and either evict or adopt any animals you found on the premises (I love you Special Ed).

So Beacon may not be able to boast quite the same level of grittiness (thankfully), but it does have a bit of that creatively experimental spirit. Case in point, on a rough-looking corner lot, quite a ways off Main Street, has opened one of the coolest new businesses in town, Barb’s Butchery. Run by a former math professor named Barbara Fisher, it’s exactly the kind of butcher shop you dream would open up in your neighborhood. She sources as much as possible directly from local farms and so far, everything we’ve cooked from there has been fantastic.

Lobster Mac and Cheese (with Garlic & Lemon Breadcrumbs)

June 12, 2024January 16, 2015 by Emily

Are there people in the world (who are neither lactose or gluten intolerant) who don’t like mac and cheese? If there are, I certainly haven’t met them. Not liking mac and cheese is basically like not liking trees, or kittens. You may not be obsessed with trees or kittens but if someone showed you a few nice ones, you wouldn’t go, “Blech. Ew. No thanks. I despise trees. And that kitten is hideous.”

I think I may have gotten slightly off-topic. What I’m saying is, for most people, good quality, home-made mac and cheese is a real treat so adding a bit of luxury to it just makes it even better. There’s something irresistibly compelling about a highbrow/lowbrow combination, right? The cozy thing becomes elevated, and the fancy thing becomes accessible.

Blood Orange Margaritas

July 2, 2024January 9, 2015 by Emily

We ring in the new year with blood orange margaritas, combining the winter citrus with tequila, lime and triple sec to create damn tasty cocktails.

I know it’s a teeny bit late to say this but… Happy New Year’s Nerds! (Insert obligatory “I can’t believe it’s 2015 already and where the hell’s my hovercraft!”)

I think I’ve mentioned before that Matt and I have our New Year’s Eve ritual down to a science. Or an art. An art sounds better, doesn’t it? We make a fancy appetizer, steam lobsters, buy the crispiest french fries we can find and eat it all on a messy table lined with newspapers and butter drips. Heaven.

But this year we wanted to mix it up a little (imagine a middle-aged person doing jazz-hands when I say “mix it up” so you won’t be disappointed by what I mean). We still made lobsters and fries, of course (why mess with perfection?), but we went totally off-script with our beverage (that’s one of Matt’s hated words so I must use it as often as possible).