Seasons

Vietnamese Grilled Pork Chops (Thit Heo Nuong Xa) with Cold Rice Noodles

by

Vietnamese Grilled Pork Chops (Thit Heo Nuong Xa) with Cold Rice Noodles

Thit heo nuong xa – grilled pork chops – are a staple in Vietnamese restaurants. But they’re so easy to make that there’s no reason why you shouldn’t bring this classic dish home. Traditionally, they’re grilled, so we thought it was the perfect excuse to eschew the burgers and hot dogs for one weekend and kick off our summer grilling season with something a little more flavorful. 

The noodles make it the ultimate refreshing summer dish, almost a noodle salad of sorts. Between the sizzling charred chops, the chilled rice noodles, plenty of fresh and quick-pickled vegetables, and the nuoc cham, a bracing savory-tart dressing, it’s everything you want on a hot day.

Read more

Strawberry-Basil Martini

by
Cocktail with strawberries

Strawberry-Basil Martini

It’s berry season, everyone! Sound the trumpets! Blow your kazoo! Get your strawberry costumes cleaned and pressed! 

After a long, cold winter, spring always feels like a greatest hits album of produce, with one favorite coming into season right after another. Asparagus, boom! Ramps, double boom! Green garlic! Morels! Peas! And then, when we’re all warmed up … berries! 

Just look at this shot of our haul from the Beacon Farmer’s Market last week. I mean, seriously, things are looking up.

Ramps, watermelon radishes, young leeks and pea shoots
Ramps, watermelon radishes, young leeks and pea shoots.

While the berries we’re growing won’t be ready for another week or two, fantastic berries are popping up at the grocery store and farmers market right now and there’s so many things we want to make with them! 

Seriously, you should see my recipe wish-list. It’s one berry dish after another, but this time we decided to kick off the season with a cocktail made with fresh strawberry syrup: a Strawberry-Basil Martini.

Read more

Seriously Lemony Lemon Curd

by

Lemon curd is a delicious sweet, tart condiment that’s really easy to make with just a few ingredients. You’ll never use store-bought curd again!

This is a repost from a few years back, but we make this curd all the time, and in fact just cooked up a double-batch. We make this for friends, and now some of those friends have started making it for their friends, so our lemon curd is now all over Beacon! Read on for our original inspiration…

Read more

Swedish (ish) Meatballs with Cream Gravy

by

Swedish Meatballs

Real, hømemåde Swedish meatballs in a rich, cream gravy is as comforting as dinner gets. Serve it with boiled potatoes, lingonberry preserves and cucumber salad.

Have you ever dragged your a$$ all the way to Ikea supposedly because you desperately need a new Lillnaggen for your bathroom (but really it’s because you can’t live another day without a Swedish meatball). Do you crave meatballs the way a theater kid craves a spotlight? Do you power-walk straight past all those cozy-looking beds and then say, “Oh look, the cafe. Totes forgot they had one. Hmmm, it does happen to be meatballtime, er I mean lunchtime.”

(Five orders of meatballs later…) “What?”

Yeah, I’d have no idea about that (wipes nutmeg-scented gravy off lips with a Guldlök napkin).

Read more

French Onion Strata – a savory bread pudding

by

French onion strata

The flavors of French onion soup transported into a hearty, cheesy strata. The heart of bread pudding paired with the soul of a classic soup – synergy on a plate.

We’re big fans of bread pudding of almost every stripe. With one basic method and either a savory or a sweet set of ingredients, you can throw together a wide variety of dishes with bread, eggs, and milk: the framework. We generally reserve the term “bread pudding” for a sweet variation, and “strata” for the savory version where there’s usually more eggs involved. It works so well, for the last few years we’ve exclusively used a strata as a Thanksgiving-day stuffing. We liked the technique so much, we wanted to find out what else we could do with it.

French Onion Strata - a savory bread pudding
Cheesy, gooey deliciousness.

Note: This recipe is part of our ongoing series with Serious Eats. You can also find this recipe, and many other great ones on their site.

Read more