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.
A warm, gooey wheel of brie or camembert cheese, topped with sweet fig jam and wrapped in golden brown, flaky puff pastry.
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!
These 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.
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.
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).
