Recipes

Northstar Café salad

23 January 2013 Food
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All restaurants have salads, but very few have good ones. Maybe it’s the low expectations: plenty of people would send back a disappointing appetizer, or main dish, or dessert, but no one sends back a salad for being limp, overdressed, or uninteresting. With so much creative talent in restaurant kitchens, too little of it makes [...]

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Buttermilk scones with chocolate chips and citrus zest

20 December 2012 Breakfast
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I’m a cream scone evangelist (I’ve written about them twice!), but whenever I have extra buttermilk on hand I like to make these classic buttermilk scones. I love buttermilk for baking – it brings great moistness without the heaviness of butter or cream. The original scones from Scotland were made of unleavened oats and cooked [...]

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Banana nog

12 December 2012 Beverages
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Some of my kids can’t get over the idea of drinking raw egg in eggnog, even after I tell them that eggnog is like ice cream in liquid form. I would love to make fresh eggnog with them, as I did with my mom’s rotary metal eggbeater when I was a kid, but bacterial contamination [...]

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Cranberry tea

29 November 2012 Beverages
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There was something familiar about the ruby, warming cranberry tea my little brother made for Thanksgiving. As I sipped it, I could picture it being made – fresh cranberries simmering in water with cinnamon sticks, cloves, orange and lemon juice. For an instant I imagined I’d developed magical culinary insight. My brother looked at me [...]

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Pecan pie, no corn syrup

19 November 2012 Food
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I love pies and pecans, but I was always wary of pecan pies. Why the gelatinous goo? Why the impenetrable layer of nuts that squishes the goo when you try to break through? Why pile such deliciously buttery nuts atop corn syrup jelly? But then I tasted my friend Jenny’s pecan pie. Jenny’s pie – [...]

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Thanksgiving meal planning

15 November 2012 Food
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Thanksgiving, with its focus on gratitude and an generous meal with loved ones, is easily my favorite holiday of the year. In contrast with the frenzied, materialistic rush that Christmas has become, Thanksgiving is a day to slow down and be grateful for all that we have (at least until Black Friday sales start at [...]

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Marian Burros’s fruit torte

5 November 2012 Food
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First published in 1981, Marian Burros’s plum torte reigned for years as the most requested recipe ever from the New York Times archive. Silly that I’m only discovering it now. Have you guys been making this for years? If not, jump on my late-to-the-party bandwagon. This is one of those timeless recipes: easy, gorgeous, versatile [...]

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Pasta with butternut squash, sausage and sage

26 October 2012 Food
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A lovely butternut squash, at once elegantly elongated and voluptuously curvy, kept me company in my kitchen for a couple of weeks as I wondered what to cook with it. Fresh produce items generally demand immediate attention, wilting petulantly to show their impatience, but butternut squash waits serenely, saving its soft golden sweetness for when [...]

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Butter cake

11 October 2012 Food
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It’s no wonder that my friend Lisa and I were fast friends from the very start of first grade. While other kids wolfed down lunches in their haste to claim a foursquare court, Lisa and I spent the entire lunch recess contentedly working our way through our tin lunch boxes. When we got together on [...]

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Quinoa with roasted vegetables

5 October 2012 Food
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I’m not one for trends, food or otherwise, so it took me a while to bring quinoa (“keen-wah”) into my kitchen. But now I’ve developed a real fondness for this crunchy little pseudo-grain with a funny tail. It’s easy to make, versatile, keeps well and satisfies the increasing number of friends I know who are [...]

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