Julia Child once famously said, “A party without cake is just a meeting.” I agree, and since today is my birthday, my gift to you is the recipe for my favorite cake of all time. It is my mother’s recipe, from the recipe book she made for me as a wedding gift many years ago. This cake is similar to an Italian vanilla meringue cake, and has a lot of sugar in it. I hesitated initially to post the recipe […]
Serves: 4 Horseradish Dipping Sauce I’m a little embarrassed to be typing this up because cocktail sauce is such a common thing, but in the interest of thoroughness: take a cup of ketchup and combine with a tablespoon of fresh, finely-grated horseradish. You can adjust the horseradish to your own taste – a tablespoon is a lot of heat, so start with less and add more until your eyes are watering at the appropriate level. If you’re using horseradish from […]
In keeping with the summer hors d’oeuvres theme, here is an American classic presented as an hors d’oeuvre. When I was 12, we took a family car trip to California. I ate fried shrimp everywhere they had it for three weeks straight. And then I didn’t eat it again for about thirty years, because fried shrimp in Amarillo or Dubuque in 1968 was not an informed menu choice. But the memory of the shrimp binge has faded and I’m back […]
Serves: 6 Prep time:
Every recipe is a journey, passed from hand to hand, sometimes around the globe. Here’s the story of this recipe: a young woman leaves Australia at the beginning of World War II, on a shop bound for England. She finds herself in Istanbul, out of money, and hears about a position at the British Embassy in Moscow. She goes to Moscow and is interviewed by the man she later marries, and thus begins her life as the wife of a […]
