These Cheese Enchiladas were our very best seller at the shop, month in and month out. Prep Cook Extraordinaire Todd would come in in the morning, assess the Cheese Enchilada situation in the coolers out front, and get to work. I don’t know exactly how many Cheese...
Vegetarian
Tomato and Artichoke Galette
Everybody I know loves a tomato pie. It’s summertime right now and no one will shut up about it. Tomato pie this, tomato pie that, etc, etc, and then they look at me, and I’m all like . . . What??? I don’t make that kind of tomato pie. Those of you who have been...
Roasted Eggplant Parmesan
Just because a dish has been around for a couple of hundred years, doesn’t mean I can’t fiddle with it, right? The modern version of what we call Eggplant Parmesan appeared in the Italian aristocrat/gourmand Ippolito Cavalcanti's cookbook, Cucina Teorico-Pratica,...
Fresh Roasted Tomato Soup
It’s summertime in Baldwin County, Alabama, and I hope you’re absolutely inundated with fresh local tomatoes. And when it gets too hot for tomatoes on the coast here in a minute, I hope you’ll buy silly amounts of Sand Mountain, Alabama tomatoes, which are the next...
Pineapple Fried Rice
I should warn those of you who are looking for genuine Thai food that this Pineapple Fried Rice isn’t especially authentic. This is a recipe I cobbled together from many different sources, and then adapted it to our US Gulf Coast pantries. It’s delicious, though. We...
Grape Salsa
It’s summertime, y’all! And I have an easy and refreshing summertime snack for you: Grape Salsa. I served this Friday night at the Eastern Shore Art Center, and it seems many people had never heard of Grape Salsa. At first some people were confused. One sweet woman in...
Mexican Street Corn Salad
I served this as a dip at an event on Cinco de Mayo and several people asked for the recipe. It’s a recipe we sometimes had in the catering shop coolers for TexMex Tuesdays, and it was popular there, too. Based on Mexico’s beloved street snack, elote--charred corn on...
Strawberry Cobbler
Strawberry season is in full swing here in Baldwin County, Alabama. I've already made a couple of batches of Tiny Batch Strawberry Preserves, I’ve eaten a fair number of strawberry spinach salads, and I still can’t make myself pass up local strawberries at the...
Strawberry Cream Cheese Baked French Toast
I know you’re planning your holiday menus by now, and that almost certainly means at least one breakfast/brunch if not more. As many of you know, the traditional Christmas brunch at my house is Grillades and Grits, which I continue to heartily recommend. But what if...
Baked Ziti
***Lazy Chef Edition*** I love you, dear reader, I really do, and because I love you so, I have a gift. Below is a Baked Ziti as good as any on The Sopranos, but in a crazy easy one-dish pasta version. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t rat me out. It’s a week before...
Apple Cranberry Salad
Hearty fall salads don’t get enough attention around here. I really enjoy getting to cook heavier, richer dishes after the summer heat breaks, but I don’t like to eat that way exclusively. Chilies, stews, braises, long-cooked cool weather vegetables--I love them, but...
The Best (and Easiest) Homemade Marinara Sauce
Does anybody else have those weeks where you’ve been as busy as the dickens, busier than a one-armed wallpaper hanger, certainly too busy to cram in one more thing (especially laundry), but you still don’t quite know what you’ve managed to accomplish? If anything?...