Sassy Radish

I’ve never been much of a fancy girl. Were it up to me, I’d spend my days in jeans and tank tops. Don’t get me wrong, I clean up rather nicely, but I am at my happiest just hanging out. A dressy look is just not quite me, it never feels natural. Even when I get my hair cut, it feels strange to have my hair blown out looking so sleek and polished. My affinity for the informal is probably why I don’t yet own a single little black dress. Not a single one. I know, it’s shocking and quite odd, even to me. But I will mend my ways, I promise. A wedding I’m in this year asks the bridesmaids to don on such little black dresses, so I will be shopping for one pretty darn soon. So long as I don’t have to wear black shoes with it we should have few problems. I’m not one for matching my shoes to my outfit. Anyhow, dresses are dresses and jeans are jeans and I will forever have a love affair with the latter and regard the former with a bit of distrust and scorn. That’s just the kind of girl I am. Pizza, beer, jeans and tank-tops – and I’m one happy camper.

At least I’m consistent. As unfussy as I am about dress code, I like to apply the same to food. Comforting and soothing is something I’ll take any day over fancy and engineered. I’ve deep respect for fine, jacket-and-tie kind of dining, but were it up to me, were I running a restaurant, mine would be focused on soothing souls and nurturing the senses. Or maybe I would change my tune after awhile. I can’t be certain. It’s just this hunch I have.

I can, however, be certain about rice pudding. I think, and this is only my opinion, that rice pudding is just about one of the loveliest things there is out there. Like cozy wool socks, or homemade marshmallows. It’s my go-to comfort dessert, and one that I welcome this time of year with open arms. It also makes your house smell absolutely divine – sweet, warm, wintry. I prefer my rice pudding slightly warmed, but a friend of mine recently confessed to having an unhealthy addiction to cold rice pudding early in the morning. Sort of a breakfast pudding, if you will. To her it seemed unnatural to have this pudding in the morning, but to me – nothing sounded better because I was reared in morning rice pudding as a child.

Of course, being a kid, and a very picky eater with hardly any appetite (I could go for days without eating, of course, I was never given the opportunity) I gagged on practically everything that was milk-based. Grass-fed cows’ milk, people. Cows that knew not what hormones or antibiotics were. Cows that spent their days in the pasture, calmly, thoughtfully (I’d like to think) chewing on grasses and mulling around. And I gagged on such a thing. I shudder to think of the wasted opportunities to really get my milk groove on. And of course, I grew up in a family that thought (rightly so!) that milk equaled health; and a healthy child was what the zenith of family goals should be. Thus various milk products were force-fed down my through as if I were a foie gras goose being readied for the plumping. In any case, breakfast was almost always a hot grain cereal: sometimes buckwheat, sometimes cream of wheat, sometimes the overcooked, glue-like oatmeal my grandmother loved to serve. And sometimes, when I was lucky, it was rice pudding. Studded with raisins and impossibly rich. I ate that with more enthusiasm than other breakfast foods mostly because the raisins served as a good distraction.

As I grew up, I kind of forgot about rice pudding and it was eating kheer for dessert at my friend’s Indian restaurant a few years back, that jolted my memory. After that, rice pudding was all I could think about. I made it over and over and over. I combined the Indian flavors with the more traditional pudding recipe. And added a bay leaf as it gave the rice a slightly woodsy, herbal fragrance. Sometimes, rice pudding tastes so candy-sweet, it’s almost overwhelming. I liked having a little earthiness to the smell and the bay leaf complements the sweetness rather nicely.

While I typically share my food with friends, I never shared rice pudding. It would vanish from my kitchen with lightening speed; and oddly enough I never wrote about it. Mostly because I was too busy eating it than taking pictures. Last year, I made this pudding, took pictures and then immediately forgot all about it. I do this a lot – forgetting to write about recipes I’ve cooked eons ago. I hope you can forgive me because this is seriously good. And comforting. And warm. And you can have it for breakfast too and not just for dessert. Wearing pajamas. Or jeans and tank tops. Or fancy black dresses. It’s totally up to you!

Continue reading indian-spiced rice pudding.

My mother makes her own farmers cheese. Hers is a simple process, but a lengthy one that takes about a day, with milk and buttermilk slowly simmering together on the lowest heat imaginable until they slowly curdle and form amazing, delicate, tangy cottage cheese. It is a farmers cheese I cannot get enough of when I go home, and if it traveled well, I’d be bringing lots back to New York with me. Unfortunately, I cannot give my cheese experiments twenty-four hours – I have to leave the apartment building for work, gym, errands, and something about an unattended pot makes me anxious.

But ricotta cheese – that’s another story. It takes very little time to make and most of it is hands-off time – letting the milk boil, draining the curds. Simple and quick! And I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to actually make it. So simple, it’s nothing more than a few simple ingredients. When combined, they do something transformative and magical and create delicious, creamy ricotta.

These are the kinds of things in the kitchen that really put a smile on my face. I generally like to putter around in there and find contentment in chopping things and baking and braising. But things like baking bread or making ricotta cheese, or butter, these are things that make me feel closer to the elements. They’re truly simple pleasures: basic, fundamental and true.

Which brings to another basic, fundamental and true thing: love. As I type this, a tiny furry creature is curled up to my right, blissfully asleep. Periodically, he sighs, rolls over and falls back asleep. World – meet Pushkin McLovin’ – a new addition to the Sassy Radish household. He’s mighty pleased meeting you and he’s super playful and very soft and I’m terribly, terribly smitten with him. I’m not sure at what point I fell in love with him, but here I am, a little unsure of what’s next, but very excited to have him. It feels very simple and basic and wonderful.

Back to ricotta – I can’t stress how easy it is to make and how delicious. I’m pretty sure that once you try this at home you may never buy the store version ever again because it is a pale, pale comparison to its homemade cousin. It also has a million uses, from stuffing manicotti, to cannoli filling to something I’ll talk about in my next post. Because I like to keep you guessing.

Which I think is what Pushkin will do as well – keep me guessing for awhile. What kind of cat will he be? Lively or mellow? Affectionate or aloof? Only time will tell, but I can tell you this much – this not knowing, is actually quite nice.

Continue reading homemade ricotta cheese.

Do you know how I finally admit to myself that we’re in the thick of autumn and there’s no turning back? It’s nights like tonight: cold, rainy, windy nights. Nights when I’m going home after a sweat-filled, seriously challenging spin class and standing in the middle of a salad bar only to realize that the last thing I want to be eating tonight is a crunchy salad. Give me something warm and keep the cold vegetables away, please!

Normally, I’m a salad lover, the girl who loves to crunch on the crudite at parties.* In Russia, vegetables were the one thing I would dutifully eat. I would push the meat around my place like it was a soccer ball, secretly hoping that my mother would somehow think I was eating it. But my mother was far too smart for that, having gone through a very similar trick with her own mother and would give me stern looks after which she’d point to my plate with her fork, as if saying, “Don’t even try this wit me! I see right through you. Now eat your chicken cutlet!” My mother held a draconian watch over what I ate and I wasn’t allowed to leave the table until my plate was spotless and sparkling. But the vegetables – those went fast! It was the other stuff I couldn’t bear to eat. Vegetables – I could’ve been eating for weeks and months on end.

In Russia, however, fresh vegetables were only available in the summer. Fall, winter, early spring brought on lots of root vegetables, stews, soups, but not salads. I would have died for a salad back then. But now? With this rainy, drizzly weather, on days like these all I want is something slow-cooked, caramelized, hearty. Like a giant pile of sliced onions slowly and patiently cooked over low low flame for nearly an hour and a half until they’ve succumbed to the kind of perfection only achieved food gets brown and tastes of fall – a heap of fragrant, golden-brown goodness. A bit of sharp cheese doesn’t hurt either and a few slivers of fresh figs accentuate the onions. Add some buttery puff pastry in the mix, bake it until flaky and golden. As a piece de resistance, drizzle a bit of your best honey and bit into it. And then see the magic unfold.

I knew I had a winner on my hands when I saw the main ingredients of this listed in the title. As if I needed another excuse for caramelized onions, Stilton (swoon!) and figs. What I didn’t anticipate is what a hit it was going to be with my guests for a party I threw earlier this month. I don’t think I ever got this many compliments on a single dish, with these two being the continuous crowd-pleasers. This tart vanished in a matter of minutes. I kind of felt bad for guests who arrived late, but I’m sure those who ate a few extra slices didn’t mind their tardiness one bit. Even I snagged a piece and nearly fell over because people, this is good stuff. I mean, really good. The kind of good that makes you want to take the rest of the plate, go to your room, lock the door and not share. Fortunately for others, I like sharing and I prefer not to transition to pants with an elastic waist. But, I could’ve gladly consumed many more slices of this tart if there were any left.

Don’t believe me? Go and and make it for yourself! I dare you to eat only one piece.

*Before you go ahead and think that’s all I eat at parties, let me assure you that I’m an equal opportunity food consumer. If I see it, I will eat it!

Continue reading fig tart with caramelized onions, rosemary and stilton.

Perhaps, I aught to file this under “how to charm me”. Perhaps I should go no further than tell you that should you whisper sweet nothings mentioning such things as sour cream into a Russian’s ear, that they just might be yours forever. Or maybe just enough for you to charm them more. In any case, you are guaranteed to get their undivided attention. Or at least my undivided attention. I stop in my tracks where sour cream is concerned. At the moment, as I write this, two whole tubs of it rest comfortably in my fridge. Judge me if you will, but sour cream, to me, is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Sour cream is the Russia’s answer to pretty much everything. The topping of choice to entrees like stuffed cabbage, the dressing to many a salad, the dollop you whirl in your soup. It’s tangy, irresistibly clean and fresh and, this part I find utterly seductive, it’s sensual and luscious. It’s yogurt, but with a more sophisticated, fuller body. In Russia, if you were lucky enough to get your hands on sour cream that came from a someone’s farm home, you knew what you had on your hands. Thick, cream-yellow, buttery, it was the equivalent of dairy gold. We would spread it on bread and I would eat it with my eyes closed. I know, the way I describe growing up in Russia, you wonder why we ever left. Thick, golden sour cream on thick black bread? If there’s heaven on earth, this was it.

So you have to understand my excitement, when I came upon a recipe that suggested I take my favorite condiment and use it to make ice cream. With eight egg yolks. Yes, my friends. Let’s take that in one more time. Eight. Egg. Yolks. I can feel my knees getting weaker as I type this. Sour cream and egg yolks married together, infused with a whole vanilla bean and cream. It’s as if Gourmet magazine read my innermost thoughts.

And while I think this ice cream is just the bees’ knees just as it is, you could raise it up a notch and try is as a sundae. It’s almost like your traditional vanilla ice cream, except the sour cream gives it that indelible tang, which I find a great deal more refreshing than plain vanilla ice cream – in this summer heat.

Besides, what else is there to do in this heat wave, but to make ice cream? You can see, I’ve been cooling myself off with this stunner and sometimes, even boiling water for pasta is too much. At the rate I’m going, churning batches of ice cream out with regularity, my little ice cream machine is just not cutting it. And I’ve been seriously contemplating graduating myself to a more sophisticated model. Because you know, I totally deserve it. And lest you think I am being totally selfish, I will have you know that I gladly share my ice cream with friends who drop in. Especially friends bearing cookies.

Continue reading sour cream ice cream.

I’ve been a little zucchini obsessed lately. I can’t stop buying them and they disappear as soon as they make it in the kitchen. I’ve sautéed them, I’ve gone back to my favorite feta and dill stuffed ones, and I’ve come across this recipe which I’ve made at least three times. I know, a recipe repeated? Several times at the expense of others? But there’s something soft and comforting and bright and cheery about this meal. And best of all, it lets the seasonal favorites: summer squash and zucchini shine.

I’m also taking a break from the traditional tomato-based pasta sauces – I’ve been craving creamy cheeses like ricotta and goat cheese. And lemon, lots of lemon. I cannot get enough of it. Lemon is my constant water companion; I drizzle it over my salads and fish; and make sorbets out of it. I add it to fruit in pies to make the fruit stand out more. Lucky for me, the local grocer offers lemons in bulk and at the rate I’m buying them, is probably thinking I’m running my own lemonade stand.

A few weeks ago, I once again, brought home my current favorite loot. But I didn’t quite have a plan, and after staring at the contents of my fridge for a few minutes my vegetables, I had a brilliant plan. I first sautéed a shallot with a garlic clove and then added sliced zucchini and summer squash. The whole thing came together quickly, beautifully and I have to say that for a week night meal, after you get home from a crazed day at the office, this is perfection at its best. I even served this to the book club ladies two nights later. Never one to hoard food, I was a little wistful that none was left over for the following night.

Continue reading pasta with goat cheese, zucchini and summer squash.

I remember the first time I had vanilla ice cream infused with peppercorns. I was in France for the first time, backpacking for nearly four weeks as a prelude to moving to New York to start work for a big investment bank. My friend and I have been making our way down from Paris all the way down to the French riviera and were spending a few days in Nice. My first impressions of Nice were less than favorable. I found the city disagreeable especially after traipsing around Nantes, La Rochelle, the Bordeaux region (St. Emilion, be still my heart), Avignon and many others in between. Nice was chalk full of tourists, like a tightly packed can of sardines, and I suddenly felt as if we were no longer in France. I was also a little on the tense side, nearing the end of my traveling funds, every franc carefully considered and measured.

A combination of heat, poverty and an overabundance of Russian tourists made me slightly cranky towards Nice. Also, it was hot, humid, our hotel room didn’t have any air conditioning and when we inquired about a fan, the hotel proprietor yawned and recommended we take frequent showers and sleep au naturel. Yes, he actually said that. So, poor and sweaty, I was in quite a state. Nothing helped – not even the salade Niçoise which was sheer perfection, but it was going to take more to draw me out of my misery. (Even as I write this, I can’t help but roll eyes at myself. My goodness, miserable while on vacation in France? What a spoiled brat I must sound like!) My poor traveling companion had to make do with my grumpy mood and put up with my sulking.

On the third day of skulking about, I decided enough is enough and ventured to check out Vieux Nice, a beautiful, older part of the city with brightly colored buildings and tiny weaving streets. It was there that I discovered this ice cream cafe in the middle of the plaza – now realizing it was the famous Fennochio’s ice cream parlor, which apparently makes over 200 different flavors. If memory serves me right, and I hope I’m not making this up, but the proprietor of the store told me they made around 70 different ice cream flavors on that day alone. I had choice overload. I was smitten with all the flavors available. There is that moment when too much choice makes your decision-making difficult. My travel buddy selected a boule of pistachio and a boule of orange flower. I went with lavender, and also pink-peppercorn vanilla. I know it’s a bit cliche to use Julia Child’s sole meuniere experience as an example here, what with the movie opening in a few days, but that’s sort of the closest I can come to in giving an example that mirrored my own experience. The flavors were magnificent; it was like nothing I expected. I still remember swirling that first spoonful in my mouth, my eyes closed as I tried to take everything in. And in a few moments, and a few spoonfuls later, I was happy, smiling, completely blissful and my misery evaporated instantly.

I realize that the recipe below is for black peppercorn ice cream and what I had in Nice was pink peppercorn, which are totally different flavors. But the point is that the infusions of peppercorns in my vanilla ice cream, woke up my palate. At 22, I hadn’t thought of combining flavors like pepper with a sweet one of ice cream. Even after sampling chili-infused dark chocolate, I hadn’t made the link. That afternoon at the plaza made me reconsider the whole flavor palete and how unexpected notes combine to create something lovely and elegant. While plain vanilla ice cream, done well, is nothing short of spectacular, vanilla ice cream with infused with pepper (black or pink or white) takes vanilla to a whole new level. Think of it as vanilla in fourth dimension. Notes and depth comes out that otherwise you might not have been aware of before. And the nice warm sensation in the back of your throat is an added bonus.

I had filed that experience into the archives of my mind and hadn’t given it much thought until I spied the recipe in David Lebovitz’ ice cream book, The Perfect Scoop. And just like that, the memory came rushing back, and the flavors I remembered tasting returned. Luckily, I managed to find the missing part to my ice cream maker, and felt it my duty to relive the experience that so many years ago changed the way I taste. I prefer the black pepper to the pink pepper flavor, personally, as the latter gives a more flowery aspect to vanilla, whereas the former has an earthier, spicier note.

And I assure you, if you have a case of the grumpies, try this rather holistic remedy. I guarantee smiles and bliss within minutes of consumption, and to save you the trouble of learning the hard way, you might want to make a double batch, in case your guests don’t understand your unwillingness to share.

Continue reading black pepper ice cream.

I cannot believe how long it’s taken me to tell you about these cheesecake squares. I mean, please don’t be mad, but it’s been almost two months. While I thought that this summer will be a leisurely season for me to cook and lounge, I could not have been more wrong. Aside from summers being typically full of parties and picnics, I managed to get myself in a tizzy over a move.

You see, and now that I’m in a fabulous new apartment I can speak freely: my former landlord tried to raise my rent, then lowered it by a laughable (and I mean, laughable amount and then proceeded to ignore my attempts at communication (that’s five unanswered voice mail messages) only to drive me irreversibly annoyed. And once I get annoyed, it is on! I decided that leaving all the power in unresponsive landlord hands was not my style (I am not one to sit and passively observe) and found an apartment that delivered everything that my current one did, and then some: an elevator, built-in air conditioning, ample closet space, laundry on each floor, a dishwasher (swoon!) and a kitchen that made me weak in the knees from the moment I saw it. Not to mention, it was simply bigger. Much bigger. If there was ever love at first sight, this was it.

And so, I spent a good chunk of July packing and then unpacking. In fact, a mere two week after my move, I only have one box sitting by the entrance. I’d say, without giving myself too much credit, I did fairly well. So, while I had all the best intentions to tell you about these amazing cheesecake squares, I didn’t just want to post the recipe along with pictures and a single missive – just go and make these – now; I wanted to tell you the most important part: the crust.

Be warned – making this crust is a dangerous thing, indeed. Dangerous, because as you start melting the butter with the graham cracker crumbs, you will have a formidable urge to take the entire pan, walk over to the couch, and devour the the crumbs alone scrapping the whole cheesecake endeavor. Such were mine temptations and I was strong enough to resist. But I will tell you, it was a tough choice. Of course, seeing as I promised to bring a dessert to a party, and initially promised cheesecake lollipops. But, a week prior I managed to sustain multiple stress fractures in my foot from running, so schlepping to a store a few block away all to find lollipop sticks was challenging. Hell, walking two flights of stairs in my former walk-up of a residence was a challenge, never mind traversing a few blocks. So I negotiated with my friend – cheesecake, but not quite of the lollipop variety.

Apparently, cheesecake seems like an intimidating thing to make. But this recipe – really, couldn’t be easier. The whole thing came together in no time at all. Which was lovely, since I hopped about my kitchen on one foot and longed to sit on the couch instead. I’m pretty certain that it would go even faster should decide to use both feet for this endeavor. Unless, of course, you like a challenge.

Continue reading lemon cheesecake squares with fresh berries.

Strawberry shortcake is a curious thing. When I think of it, I see Fourth of July picnics, clambakes and gingham tablecloths. I envision pitchers of lemonade, potato salad and cole slaw; corn on the cob, hot dogs and kosher pickle spears. Strawberry shortcake is a bona fide summer meal – the kind that comes with 90 degree weather and fireworks. Of all dessert out there, it’s the one that says to me, summer is here, get your picnic blanket out and put on some Joe Cocker. I’m not sure why, but Joe Cocker makes me think of summer and lazy afternoons and tall, tumblers of lemon ice tea covered with tiny beads of moisture.

But strawberry shortcake to me doesn’t just say summer – it says a summer gathering, a party, a congregation of friends and family.

So why, if this is such a thing of summer, did I make strawberry shortcake in the middle of April and for an Easter dinner of all occasions? You’re probably also wondering what on earth I was doing making an Easter dinner to begin with, but bear with me for a moment. There’s a perfectly logical and valid explanation for all this and as usual, my life always offers a bit of a comedy of errors element. You see, over a particular IM chat, I offered to make dinner for a friend the weekend after Easter, but what he heard was “the weekend of Easter holiday”. Better yet, I became aware of this broken telephone mishap while talking to his brother who thanked me for providing his sibling with an Easter feast. By the time I put the pieces together in my head, I figured, why not. And an Easter dinner was on.

For those of you who’ve never made your own shortcake, I implore you – please do. Shortcake is incredibly easy to make, I can’t think of a single way where it might go awry for you, so if you’re a beginner this is a particularly great recipe to start on. I promise you this much – once you have a made-from-scratch strawberry shortcake, you will never go back to the semi-homemade version again. It’s just one of those perfect meals, the kind that makes you involuntarily close your eyes in bliss the second the food touches your tongue. Personally, strawberry shortcake makes me weak in the knees, the same way say, Robert Plant’s “Since I’ve Been Loving You” makes me weak in the knees – a little smiley, woozy, intoxicated, dizzy.

It’s an added bonus that almost no one I know dislikes strawberry shortcake. Besides with the temperatures fluctuating from mid-forties to mid-nineties, when does winter end and summer begin? I figured at this rate I might as well make the strawberry shortcake and just maybe this would help to usher warmer weather in. It’s been wishful thinking thus far, but I’m hopeful.

Continue reading strawberry shortcake.

I have to get something off my chest and judge me if you will, but I can’t hide it much longer. As much as I like Hanukah and eating latkes and rugelach, I just love Christmas, even though my family doesn’t celebrate but I wish we did. I adore everything about it: the decorations, the music, the glittery window displays, the parties, the cookies and candy, the smell of the tree. I just might be the only one without Christmas fatigue, probably because I can’t fully enjoy it; I want it all the more. I’m convinced that I like eggnog more than Christmas revelers do because it’s like the forbidden fruit to me.

And despite the economy and the fact that this has been the single most challenging year of my life, I’ve completely embraced the holiday season and refuse to be sad or fretful or anxious. I’m letting myself soak in whatever the season brings; I’m going with the flow. And the flow hasn’t been at all that bad. I’m happy, I am in good health, I have lovely, caring friends and family. My tiny kitchen makes me deliriously happy and I look forward to weekend afternoons when I can leisurely cook there. I’ve sent out holiday cards and this year – they’re a doozy!

And so in preparation for this month, I’ve dog-eared recipes, purchased extra baking ingredients and even ordered quality cookie baking sheets from Amazon. And then there’s the case of the brittle.

I’ve been dying to make this brittle since Deb made is last month and generously let me sample some of it. Unsurprisingly, Deb’s creation was amazing and I helped myself to quite a few pieces, vowing to make it soon. Soon, of course, in the Sassy Radish kitchen, could take up to a month, or a bit longer, depending on the circumstances, and I was waiting for the holiday season to start with my sugar overload.

Not having to use a candy thermometer here was a huge plus and I was excited to make something with pepitas, otherwise known as raw, hulled pumpkin seeds. Before I got any further, I’m going to tell you something important: if you make this, be sure not to use non-stick cookware as it fails in the caramelization portion of the brittle-making. I will be making this in my Staub next time around in order to recreate the recipe again (and without a doubt, I will) because my brittle did not caramelize properly and I was cooking it for a loooooong time. Regardless, it was still quite yummy, and my coworkers agreed as well, consuming all of the brittle in mere days.

This year, when we are all watching our spending and trying to be frugal in this uncertain economy, the brittle could make for a fine handmade gift. And after a year like this one, everyone could you a little sweet in their life, don’t you think?

Continue reading pepita brittle.

I must first apologize for the ugly picture above. No matter how hard I tried, these sprouts refused to look sexy for me, and instead you get this washed out, glib picture. I’m sorry for that, I really truly am. But as disgusting as this picture looks, that’s how good these sprouts are. Better even, they’re stunning, operatic, grand. Sure, they may not seem like a big deal, but trust me, braised in cream this is a royal dish. One that is perfect on its own, or as as side to some hearty roasted meat. Or maybe even, say turkey?

Everyone is probably counting the days down to Thanksgiving, I know I am. Menus have been planned, dishes have been discussed, shopping lists drawn. And yet, in my emails with friends from here and there, I keep hearing the same sentiment - I just need more sides. Well, if more sides is what you need, here, use this one. Because, let’s face it, the green beans have been overused to the point of delirium. They could use a break from all this pressure to perform on the foodiest of all the food holidays. Here, give Brussels sprouts a go.

Disliked by many a child, I am almost positive that he (or she) will gobble this up in minutes. And maybe even ask you for seconds. I think that the trick here is cream, which in my opinion, makes most things better and elevates them to a status fit for a feast and not just an everyday side. Lemon juice, too, makes it sparkle even more so. And seeing as this is really easy to make (I know, here I go with this easy stuff again!), you won’t even feel taxed adding one more side to your Thanksgiving menu. And it’ll look that much more impressive!

Honestly, whatever yield I give you below, I am lying through my teeth. This was devoured in one sitting by three people and quite honestly, we would all have gone for seconds. Or, in my case, I probably would have had three helpings if that were an option. This recipe, which was adapted from Molly, is a true stunner and one to be made over and over this cold wintry season.

In case this is not an appealing side dish for you – I’ve compiled a few Thanksgiving dishes that should be pleasing to the eye as well as the palate. And will post it tomorrow!

Continue reading cream braised brussels sprouts.