Blood Orange Salad with Shaved Fennel and Pistachios

Blood Orange Salad with Shaved Fennel and Pistachios

Blood orange salad is a colorful, tangy and healthy way to remind yourself that winter will not last forever. As a bonus, it also wards off scurvy!

This is the salad to make when you can barely remember what a real garden tomato tastes like. When you’re so deep in winter that the summer abundance of a few months ago seems like a fever dream.

This is the salad that reminds us that, even in the dead of winter, there are still wonderful things to be found if you know where to look.

Blood Orange Salad with Shaved Fennel and Pistachios Blood Orange Salad with Shaved Fennel and Pistachios

Read more

Hasselback Potatoes with Easy Garlic Confit

Hasselback Potatoes with Easy Garlic Confit
Hasselback Potatoes with Easy Garlic Confit

This post is sponsored by US Potato Board. Thanks for supporting Nerds with Knives’ sponsors!

Get ready for a new holiday tradition: crispy-skinned Hasselback potatoes studded with soft, meltingly tender cloves of confit garlic (like roasted garlic, but even more delicious).

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

One of the things I’ve come to realize is that I’m a bit of a curmudgeon about, well, a lot of things really but especially about food trends. That cronut thing that happened? Easily a 6.5 on the richter scale of Emily eye rolls. And while I like kale as much as the next faux hippie, I’d very much appreciate you keeping it out of my cupcake.

Hasselback Potatoes with Easy Garlic Confit

That’s why no one was more surprised than me when I recently became obsessed with the most Pinterest-y of all potato dishes, the hasselback. Honestly, this is the potato of my dreams. Crispy on top but also pillowy and luscious in the middle. And while it may look like a major project, it’s actually extremely easy to do (especially with our tips listed below) and takes no longer than a regular baked potato.

Read more

Bourbon Pumpkin Mousse Tart with Candied Pecans

A pumpkin tart covered in meringue cones

Bourbon Pumpkin Mousse Pie with Candied Pecans

Light and airy pumpkin mousse, with a good splash of bourbon, in a rich chocolate cookie shell topped with whipped cream swirls and crunchy candied pecans. Yeah, you need to make this. 

Wotcha! Very occasionally we at Nerd HQ rifle back through the posts of this blog and try to find ingredients which haven’t been well-represented. It being autumn, and almost Thanksgiving and all that, we thought – heck it, let’s do pumpkin. It’s been a while, right? And then we looked back through the archives and realized we’d actually never done anything bloggable with pumpkin. (I don’t mean “unbloggable” like we’d done weird, private things with pumpkins, you nutter. I just mean we hadn’t cooked anything and photographed it.)

Bourbon Pumpkin Mousse Pie with Candied Pecans

Read more

Thanksgiving Recipes Round-Up!

Thanksgiving recipes: Apple Tarts with Rosemary-Lime Sugar
Apple Tarts with Rosemary-Lime Sugar

Cooking for a big holiday is hard enough without having to search for and keep track of a million recipes. It’s hard to organize all that stuff! Believe me, I struggle with that too (which is why I have a “Thanksgiving Timing Spreadsheet” that has events on it like, ‘dog probably needs to pee’ and ‘remind Matt that he loves you even though you get extremely stressed out before dinner parties’).

So whether you’re hosting a a feast for 30 or just making a single dish to bring along, you need recipes for Thanksgiving that are simple, look fantastic and are most of all, delicious. That’s why we’ve listed our all time favorites below. Here you’ll find ideas for tasty appetizers, fantastic sides and what we think is the best turkey gravy in the world (seriously, you have to try it).

Thanksgiving recipes: Make-Ahead Turkey Gravy with Calvados (Apple Brandy)
Make Ahead Turkey Gravy with Calvados (Apple Brandy)

And because you’re likely to have a house full of hungry people over the weekend, we’ve included a few next-day breakfast ideas and recipes that make the most of your Thanksgiving recipe leftovers.

Read more

Apple Tarts with Rosemary-Lime Sugar

Apple Tarts with Rosemary-Lime Sugar
Apple Tarts with Rosemary-Lime Sugar

These crisp and tasty apple tarts are a great way to use up your fall bounty; using frozen puff pastry makes the whole process a lot easier, and they’re finished with rosemary-lime sugar.

It happens every year in the Hudson Valley, where we live. As soon as the leaves on the maple trees turn a ridiculous shade of red, we, residents and tourists alike, don our coziest sweaters and follow the scent of hot cider doughnuts to the nearest orchard. Once there we wander the grounds, hopped up on cinnamon sugar and crisp autumn air, filling baskets and gunny sacks with more Empires, Cortlands and Jonagold apples than anyone who doesn’t work in a pie factory would ever need.

Only once when we’re home and realize we need to put an addition on the house in order to store our haul, do we admit that maybe we’ve bought just a few too many. And just when I thought we’d succeeded in using our bounty, one of Matt’s local clients sent him home with a massive box of Golden Delicious apples from the tree in her yard. Oh well, we’ll just have to start working on that Salted Caramel Apple Pie idea I’ve been thinking about. #HudsonValleyProblems #AppleHumbleBrag

Rosemary-Lime Sugar
Rosemary-Lime Sugar

Read more

Grilled Steak with Blue Cheese and Chive Compound Butter

Grilled Steak with Blue Cheese Chive Butter and Balsamic Red Onions

Grilled steak ramped up with a tangy, creamy blue cheese and chive compound butter. Watch out, steak night, the bar just got raised.

Okay folks, strap yourselves in tight because it’s going to be an exciting ride (picture me winking and making a clicking noise while pointing at you). This is a “seal the deal” kind of dinner. The kind of dinner I make for Matt when I really want him to say “Huh? Whatever. I wasn’t listening but ‘yes’ as long as you make this again.” It’s that good.

There’s something about the combination of rich beef and tangy blue cheese that just works (which is why the best burger combination is blue cheese and crispy bacon, in my opinion). Well, this recipe takes that classic pairing to the next level.

We grilled New York Strip steaks and topped them with the most delicious blue cheese and chive compound butter and served it with Balsamic Roasted Red Onions with Thyme. You’re licking your screen, aren’t you? I understand, here’s a tissue.

Grilled Steak with Blue Cheese Chive Butter and Balsamic Red Onions

Read more