Comfort Food

Smoky and Creamy Corn Chowder with Shrimp

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When the cold evenings get you thinking about a warming supper, but there’s still farm fresh corn in the market, corn chowder is our favorite way to ease into autumn. This version combines sweet corn and smoky bacon in a creamy broth, dotted with lightly poached shrimp and  sliced jalapeños to soothe the end-of-summer blues.

What happened to summer? It seems as though the season just started, and its bounty had only yesterday begun to fill the supermarket shelves. Just like that, it’s all done for another year. Fortunately, even the Northeast still has plenty of farm fresh corn to offer – a cornucopia, you might even say – and we’ll take up our supermarket’s “12 corn cobs for $4!” offer as long as we can. This aren’t the tiny, young cobs from July that we could almost eat raw – at the end of the season, while corn is still pretty tasty, but not really at its peak, it’s a fantastic ingredient in a soup or stew. Hence: shrimp and corn chowder.

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Perfect Classic Glazed Meatloaf

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Meatloaf

Meatloaf

I don’t think of us as “fancy” people. To be sure, our pantry is chock-full of ingredients from various parts of the world, but that’s more about variety than any attempt to impress. That being said, I do have a culinary philosophy: if I’m going to take the time to make something, I’m going to try to make it well. With childhood favorites, that’s even more important because they can so easily not live up to our memories of them. Meatloaf, that all-American classic, is no exception — and making a really good one requires a little thinking outside of the box.

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Spinach and Basil Stuffed Shells with Creamy Fontina Sauce

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Stuffed Shells with Fontina Sauce

Pasta shells stuffed with a delicious mix of Swiss chard, fresh basil and ricotta cheese, nestled under a blanket of bubbling, creamy fontina sauce. This is a rich and decadent dish that also happens to be packed with our favorite early summer vegetables. Best eaten outside, with simple roasted tomatoes and crisp white wine. 

Kimchi Pimento Cheese Patty Melts

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Kimchi Pimento Cheese Patty Melts

Even though I grew up in New York, I’d never had a patty melt until just a few years ago. The classic version (a thin ground beef patty topped with either Swiss or cheddar cheese and grilled onions on rye bread, pan fried in butter) was said to have originated in Southern California in the restaurant chain of William “Tiny” Naylor in the 1940s or 1950s. It’s become a staple of diners, bars and dives all over the U.S.

Basically a happy, messy mashup of a grilled onion-topped burger and a grilled cheese sandwich, as soon as we made our first batch of Kimchi Pimento Cheese, we knew what we wanted to do with it.

Kimchi Pimento Cheese Patty Melts

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Creamy Tomato Soup with Roasted Garlic Cheesy Toast

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Our weeknight-friendly Creamy Tomato Soup is a favorite of kids and adults alike. Canned and sun-dried tomatoes give it loads of flavor, along with fresh herbs and a creamy swirl of Mascarpone cheese. Instead of plain old grilled cheese, we’ve paired it with the most delicious and buttery Roasted Garlic Cheesy Toast.

Unapologetically boozy French Onion Soup with Garlic Butter Croutons

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Unapologetically rich, boozy and indulgent, French Onion Soup asks nothing of you but time, but gives back a thousandfold in flavor, warmth and comfort. It may become your new winter BFF.

Sausage, White Bean and Escarole Soup

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Sausage, White Bean and Escarole Soup

The classic combination of spicy sausage, creamy white cannellini beans and bright escarole has never been so satisfying. We go heavy on the garlic and herbs, add more vegetables, and give it a hearty, creamy texture by mashing some of the beans and adding a little cream cheese. 

Every year on the blog about this time we complain about the weather. It’s so cold right now, we’re watching the Hardhome episode of Game of Thrones, where Jon Snow and his pals are as far North as they’ve ever been, and they’re fighting through a vicious blizzard and the cold is literally making people’s hands drop off, and we’re thinking “mmm, that looks like a toasty vacation spot”.

This year, the weather gods have outdone themselves (it’s -16ºF / -27ºC with the wind chill. That’s an incomprehensible amount of cold.). So instead of shaking our fists at the sky and risking instant frostbite, we fight back by making the coziest, heartiest, most fortifying soup we can imagine.

Rare footage of Matt learning we’re out of milk for tea.

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Croque Madames

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Two croquet madames in a frying pan

The croque madame is a quintessential dish in the French culinary canon. Essentially a ham and cheese sandwich, this beauty is elevated by two generous layers of creamy béchamel, broiled until bubbly and golden, and topped with a perfectly fried egg. With a little help from our friends at Le Creuset, we’ve used both their new recipe book and their bakeware to put together a perfect brunch dish.

We’ve mentioned before in the blog that there are certain kitchen items that we can’t do without. We just can’t, we’d be lost and flailing. A microplane for fine grating, a silicone spatula for mixing cake batter: these critical objects are non-negotiable. Another, of course, is a good, heavy, enameled cast iron skillet. You can pre-heat it on the stove to get it to a high temperature for quick cooking, you can transfer it to an oven or broiler for a finishing step, and if you take care of it, it will last forever. Also, if you choose well, it can be beautiful enough to be the centerpiece on your table.

We’re always keen to find new ways of using our pan, and when Le Creuset asked us to make a recipe from their new cookbook (which you can buy from their site through the link) our decision wasn’t hard: we wanted to make our favorite Parisian lunch, croque madame.

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Smoky and Creamy Corn Chowder with Shrimp

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When the cold evenings get you thinking about a warming supper, but there’s still farm fresh corn in the market, corn chowder is our favorite way to ease into autumn. This version combines sweet corn and smoky bacon in a creamy broth, dotted with lightly poached shrimp and  sliced jalapeños to soothe the end-of-summer blues.

What happened to summer? It seems as though the season just started, and its bounty had only yesterday begun to fill the supermarket shelves. Just like that, it’s all done for another year. Fortunately, even the Northeast still has plenty of farm fresh corn to offer – a cornucopia, you might even say – and we’ll take up our supermarket’s “12 corn cobs for $4!” offer as long as we can. This aren’t the tiny, young cobs from July that we could almost eat raw – at the end of the season, while corn is still pretty tasty, but not really at its peak, it’s a fantastic ingredient in a soup or stew. Hence: shrimp and corn chowder.

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Phyllo Pot Pie with Creamy Chicken, Caramelized Onions and Swiss Chard

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Phyllo Pot Pie with Creamy Chicken, Caramelized Onions and Swiss Chard Tender chicken, caramelized onions and Swiss chard in a creamy garlic sauce, topped with a blanket of buttery, flaky, ultra-crisp phyllo dough. This is comfort food pretty enough for the fanciest dinner party, but tasty enough for a relaxed family meal. 

(Note: This would also be a great way to use up leftover Thanksgiving or holiday turkey. Chop or shred the cooked leftovers and fold into the sauce and vegetables before adding the pastry top.)

I think it was probably about 12 years ago that my mom bought us our first piece of really good cookware, a 5-quart Le Creuset dutch oven. At that point, we were still using a cheap, thin-gauge pan set I had bought in college, which burned pretty much anything that got near it, even if the oven wasn’t on. Being the weirdo that I am, I even remember the first thing I made in it, Duck Leg Ragu. I remember it, not because it was particularly amazing, but because while I was cooking it, something miraculous happened … The bottom of the pan didn’t scorch before the duck had browned. There wasn’t a blackened ring of sauce in the exact same shape as the burner. It was a red-sauce miracle!  That’s when I realized that investing in a few items of really special, well-made cookware was much better than having a crappy set of pans in every size. Since then, our special collection has slowly grown, and I love each piece. We cook a lot (I know you’re shocked) and I use these skillets, fry pans, and grill pans almost daily. The great thing is, well-made cookware lasts for generations so if you have kids, tell them whoever helps in the kitchen inherits the good stuff.

Phyllo Pot Pie with Creamy Chicken, Caramelized Onions and Swiss Chard
Super crispy phyllo tops a comforting, creamy chicken stew.

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Crispy Oven-Fried Chicken Tenders with Garlic-Herb Yogurt Dip

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Crispy Oven-baked Chicken Tenders with Herb Yogurt Dip

Crispy, crunchy oven-fried chicken tenders might look like kid food, but these are packed with enough flavor to keep the grown ups just as happy. We serve them with a garlicky, lemony, herb-packed yogurt dip. 

If someone took a quick glance at our blog, they might get the impression that we’re fancy people. We are not. Prime example: Matt’s desert island dish is probably butterscotch pudding (the kind made from a packet, mind you). And mine is probably tater tots. Yes, frozen potato nuggets, baked on a tray. See? Not fancy. 

Yes, we like to cook up some nice grub but it’s mostly simple stuff, just made (hopefully) with good ingredients and a little technique. Same goes for this recipe, our crispy, crunchy baked oven-fried chicken tenders.

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Scotch Eggs with a Perfect Runny Yolk

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A perfect Scotch Egg has a crisp golden shell, flavorful sausage and most importantly, a soft-boiled, runny-yolked egg. This just might be the ideal portable picnic snack – that we’d be happy to eat anywhere, even the dining table.

French Onion Strata – a savory bread pudding

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Strata - French Onion Bread Pudding

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.

Gamush: Easy Weeknight Pasta Bolognese

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A plate of pasta in sauce

Easy Weeknight Pasta Bolognese

It’s been a while since we blogged about a recipe with family history. We’ve been doing quite a bit of commissioned work for Serious Eats, and they’re a professional outfit you know, and you can’t just submit any old tosh on their site (ahem). Their readers are a refined, questing bunch, wanting to get to the nitty gritty of a recipe without having to weed-whack through paragraphs of us arse-ing around talking about our chickens, or what kind of expression our dog is making (bored, if you must know), or that time we tried to juggle seven lemons. As you know, we leave all the old tosh for our own site, so it is with a familiar thud that I dust off the book of Nerds Family History and tell you all about gamush.

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Easy Baked Brie With Honey And Pistachios

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Easy Baked Brie with Honey and Pistachios

Offering maximum impact with minimal effort, a baked Brie turns a mild-mannered cheese into the superhero of a gathering: a warm, gooey communal comfort food. This version keeps things easy and delicious—it’s baked simply, then topped with pistachios and honey.

Serve it with crackers, sliced apples or good bread.

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Baked Brie en Croûte With Apple and Pear Compote

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Baked Brie en Croûte with Spiced Apple and Pear Compote

Offering maximum impact with minimal effort, a baked Brie turns a mild-mannered cheese into the superhero of a gathering: a warm, gooey communal comfort food. This version wraps the cheese in a shell of flaky puff pastry, along with two sweet-tart layers of apple-pear compote.

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Baked Brie – A Primer

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Baked Brie en Croute with Fig Jam
Baked Brie en Croute with Fig Jam

A Baked Brie can turn the standard cheese board into a highlight of a gathering: a warm, gooey communal comfort food.

A party without cheese is like Valentine’s Day without chocolate, and, while a well-curated cheese plate will likely do the job for any occasion, a wheel of baked Brie will deliver maximum impact with a minimum of effort. Especially at a winter party, it can turn the standard cheese board into a highlight of a gathering: a warm, gooey communal comfort food.

Making a baked Brie (or a baked Camembert, Brie’s soft-rind cousin) can be as simple as tossing the cheese in the oven with some kind of drizzled topping, or you can go all out by serving it en croûte—wrapping it up in puff pastry with any number of store-bought or homemade sweet condiments.

Note: This Baked Brie series is also available on Serious Eats!

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Braised Short Ribs with Honey, Soy and Orange

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Braised Beef Short Ribs with Honey, Soy and Orange

Braised Beef Short Ribs with Honey, Soy and OrangeThese braised short ribs are cooked low and slow in a delectable sauce flavored with soy, honey, orange and Chinese 5-spice powder. A hearty cold-weather recipe!

As a cooking couple, we’re aware of a lot of the clichés that link food with romance. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. The couple that braises together…stayses together. You know, the classics.

It is true that if you can work together and communicate well in the kitchen, if you can appreciate each other’s skills and enjoy your combined successes, and if you can laugh at and learn from your culinary failures, your relationship probably has a pretty solid footing. It helps to have a recipe like this braised short ribs dish. There are a few steps to it, but nothing is time-critical, so you can hang out in the kitchen and talk about how your day was while you do the prep and get the ribs in the oven or slow cooker.

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

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Chorizo Quesadillas With Radish and Fennel Salsa

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Chorizo Quesadillas With Radish and Fennel Salsa

There are days when you absolutely crave a quesadilla that is, in food-marketing parlance, “fully loaded.” But the more ingredients you put in your quesadilla, the more prep work and cooking you have to do, and some nights you just don’t have time for that. To keep this version under 20 minutes, we limited ourselves to two main ingredients in the tortilla itself, and paired it with a tart, crunchy chopped salsa that balances the richness of the quesadilla and elevates it from standard sports-TV fare. It may not be fully loaded with ingredients, but it’s definitely fully loaded with flavor.

Chorizo Quesadillas With Radish and Fennel Salsa
Spicy chorizo, gooey cheese and fresh scallions

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Ultimate Fried Chicken Sandwich with Basil Green Goddess Slaw

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A fried chicken sandwich on a board

Ultimate Fried Chicken Sandwich with Basil Green Goddess Slaw

Our version of the ultimate, best-ever fried chicken sandwich: crisp, craggy crust, juicy, tender meat topped with a fresh Basil Green Goddess slaw. It’s unbelievably good. 

As a writer, I die a little inside every time I use an exclamation mark (enough already, Internet. I get it, you’re excited). But if ever a sandwich deserved some un-ironic enthusiasm, it’s this one. It’s crispy! It’s spicy! It’s tender and juicy and slathered with basil mayo!

I know I sound completely, utterly ridiculous but I don’t care! It’s that good.

Okay, I’m done shouting (for now).

Ultimate Fried Chicken Sandwich with Basil Green Goddess Slaw
That slaw though…

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Pizza Chicken (with Pepperoni and Basil)

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Pizza Chicken (with Pepperoni and Basil)

Chicken dinner, meet pizza night. Chicken sautéed until golden brown and baked with marinara sauce, gooey mozzarella cheese, spicy pepperoni and fresh basil.

For the sake of clarity and because I really, really like you guys, I want to acknowledge that this title might be a little misleading.

Say you were googling “chicken pizza,” this post might show up (probably on page 35, but whatevs) and I wouldn’t want you to get halfway through reading it before you realized that this recipe is not, in fact, for pizza with chicken on top of it.

This recipe is for chicken cooked in the style of a pizza. And it’s frigging delicious. It’s cheesy and salty and tangy. Exactly the flavors your tongue expects when your brain has told it you’re having pizza for dinner. It also happens to be gluten free and ready in about 20 minutes.

Pizza Chicken (with Pepperoni and Basil)
The flavors that make pizza so delicious

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Savory Beef Stew with Mustard and Brandy

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I have to say that in general, beef stew is one of those dishes I had always been ‘meh’ about. I never disliked it, but I can’t say I ever craved it either. I think I probably associate it with the gross canned stuff that everybody ate in college. You know, that brownish sludge with chunks of ‘beef’ and … Read more

Spicy Chili Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

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Spicy Chili Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

Chili sweet potatoes are our go-to for a rainy fall weekend – we give you a few meat and meat-free options, but they’re all tasty.

I’m a film editor and several times over the span of my career, I’ve thought about moving from New York City where I was born, to Los Angeles. Many of my friends and colleagues have done it, and most of them love it there.

It’s so beautiful, they say. True, I’ve been and it’s very pretty. There’s a lot more work and for the price of a Brooklyn studio, you can buy a three bedroom house with an avocado tree in the back! All true and, yes, this makes me jealous. And the best part? It’s warm all the time and it never rains! Aaaaaand you’ve lost me. 

For me, one of the great joys of life is feeling the crisp, cool air of Fall. When the weather turns it feels like a shock, every time. Even better if that cool air comes with a blustery rain storm. The type of weather that practically forces you to cook something warm and comforting. To stay home and watch movies or play video games all day. (Nerd note: Matt and I are re-playing “The Last of Us” and, oh my god, it’s so good).

When I heard it was going to turn cold and rainy last weekend, I knew right away what I wanted to make; spicy chili with all sorts of yummy toppings stuffed inside a baked sweet potato.

Chili Spices
The chili is flavored with cumin, two types of chili powder, jalapeños, garlic and dark chocolate. Also maple syrup and beer, not shown.

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Xi’an-style Smashed Cumin Lamb Burgers with Creamy Herb Sauce

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Xi’an-style Smashed Cumin Lamb Burgers with Creamy Herb Sauce

If delicious Szechuan-style lamb burgers weren’t enough, we also present to you in this post Simon Adebisi’s tiny hat. No extra charge!

I’m aware that there’s a very good chance you’re thinking, ‘Okay, fine. That’s a decent looking burger but what the bloody hell is this ‘Xi’an-style-smashed-cumin’ business all about? Can’t anything just be normal anymore? And I want to drink out of a GLASS, not a damn jelly jar, dangit!’

I’m not sure why I’m imagining you as a crotchety old man but let’s just roll with it, Grampa. I know this burger might sound a little … fancy-pants but honestly, it’s really just plain, old tasty.

For a little background, Xi’an is the capital city of Shaanxi province in northwestern China and dishes called ‘Xi’an-style’ are usually lamb-based and heavily seasoned with cumin and other spices. A few years ago, one of the most popular dishes in New York City was the Cumin Lamb with Noodles from a  restaurant called Xi’an Famous Foods in Flushing, Queens. I never had a chance to try it so when I saw this recipe for lamb burgers by Peter Meehan from Lucky Peach in the New York Times, I knew I wanted to make a version of it.

I changed the recipe just a little, adding a bit of mustard and brown sugar to give a bit of extra savoriness and added a fresh, bright herb sauce to go on top. In the burger, the main flavor components are what you’ll find in just about all Xi’an-style recipes, whether it’s a stir fry, noodle dish or burger: ground cumin, Sichuan peppercorns and dried chili.

Sichuan peppercorns, Cumin and Red Chili Flakes
Sichuan Peppercorns, cumin and red chili flakes add tons of flavor and a little heat.

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Jalapeño Popper Stuffed Chicken Breasts

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Jalapeño Popper Stuffed Chicken BreastsWith the exception of East Williamsburg, just about every apartment I rented in New York City had at least one bodega on the corner. In fact most blocks had several bodegas, a couple of Korean fruit & vegetable markets and possibly a Whole Foods/Trader Joes.

Now that we live in the Hudson Valley that’s just not the case any more (though now we own a house and have a garden and a dog and a bunch of chickens*, so okay, fair trade). But the truth is that, even three years later, I’m still adjusting to the idea that I can’t yell out my window and have someone throw a jalapeño at me.

*I didn’t include cats in this list because I always had cats in the city.

So the other day, I’m walking around the grocery store and find that organic, thin-sliced chicken cutlets are on sale. “Awesome!” I say to myself, because I am literally that much of a dork.

Now if you follow this blog at all, you might have noticed that I almost always use thighs for baking and roasting because I think they have much more flavor. But the one thing you can’t do (easily) with chicken thighs? Stuff them.

So now I’m imagining some kind of crispy, panko-crusted chicken stuffed with some sort of cheesy, creamy, spicy deliciousness. Sounds good right? I thought so too, until I got home and realized that I had completely forgotten to get jalapeños which, surprisingly enough, happen to be a rather important ingredient in jalapeño-popper stuffed chicken.

I hemmed and hawed about it for about four seconds before I decided that, yup, nothing else would do. Back to the store for three dollars worth of chiles.

I don’t regret a thing.

Jalapeño Popper Stuffed Chicken Breasts

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Basic Risotto

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Shrimp and Lobster Risotto with Peas
Short-grain arborio rice

This is a basic recipe for one of the best comfort food dishes of all time, Risotto. You could flavor this recipe a hundred different ways but I love using it to make Crispy Risotto Cakes with Taleggio Cheese.

Honestly, I’m not sure why people make a big deal about making risotto. I mean, you do have to stir it, but only for 18 minutes or so and it’s not like if you stop for a sec to answer the phone or  look at a picture of a dog in glasses, the whole thing will be ruined.

Arya in glasses

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Shrimp and Lobster Risotto with Peas

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Shrimp and Lobster Risotto with Peas

You don’t need to break the bank to make a luxurious dinner. Shrimp and Lobster Risotto packs a ton of flavor into a comforting rice dish.  

For years my best friend, Heather, and I would hang out on New Years Eve at one of our apartments (usually on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where we grew up), where we would drink champagne and sigh about how nice it was to not be in an over-priced bar annoyingly packed with drunk frat boys and tourists. We’d watch the Times Square shenanigans on TV and chuckle about how cold and miserable everyone looked when they didn’t think the cameras were on them.

10 pm would roll around and we’d be jolly and happy, in a warm apartment, wondering if we’d even stay up until midnight. By 11, we would get a bit antsy and one or the other of us would start looking out the window at the revelers below, wondering if they were having more fun than they  seemed to be earlier in the evening. “That girl across the street sure seems to be laughing a lot.” “Yeah, hmmm… and it doesn’t even sound like it’s that cold out.”

Inevitably, by 11:30 we’d be in full blown panic mode, convinced that we were missing out on the most amazing time ever, so, wild-eyed and twitchy, we’d race down Amsterdam Avenue, pressing our faces up against every bar window, cursing ourselves that we didn’t pay the $65 cover charge earlier because now they’re full and everyone inside seems so happy—why are they so happy—how come we’re not in there—let’s check that bar across the street!

By 11:55 we’d be pounding our frozen fists against the door of some random dump like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, begging anyone to take pity and sell us a $25 glass of supermarket champagne. Happy new year!

What I’m trying to say is GOING OUT ON NEW YEARS EVE IS FOR SUCKERS.

Luckily, Matt agrees with me so we’ve developed our own tradition (stolen from my dad and step-mom) of steaming lobsters, getting the best French fries we can find and eating everything as messily as possible on a table covered with newspapers and butter drips. Heaven.

I should add that we always steam an extra lobster in case a hungry stranger shows up at our door so we can make something with it the next day. So what to do with leftover lobster? Of course you could make lobster rolls but why not make risotto! Obviously you could also cook lobsters specifically for this recipe (tips for steaming lobsters below). We also added shrimp because we only had one small lobster left. One of the great things about this recipe is that, though it seems really decadent, two lobsters will feed six people, and nothing is wasted since you use the shells to make a flavorful broth to cook the rice with. Fancy and thrifty!

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