Eggs Elinor (Sausage and Cheese Breakfast Casserole)
A breakfast casserole that checks the boxes on flavor, texture, ease, and reliability every single time.
Pumpkin Breakfast Pudding
It’s as cooling as it is warm with the deep yet bright notes of cardamom which is accentuated by the complexity of buckwheat honey. The pumpkin brings a freshness and cottage cheese keeps it light with acidity while bringing a creamy texture.
Grits and Grillades
Grits and Grillades are the classiest and most comforting of all brunch dishes in New Orleans. It’s pieces of beef cooked in the most flavorful and complex of gravies. While tomato sauce takes the back seat, it creates depth of flavor and cloves gives it the unexpected hint of sweet and bitter that warms the soul on the greyest of winter days.
Grande Pates
Grande pates is dough that is pulled, fried, and served with smoked sausage and a good helping of Steen’s cane syrup. It’s a perfect harmony of sweet, savory, and smoky.
Cucumber and Peanut Salad with Tahini Dressing
Cooling cucumbers give you all the freshness you want on a hot day and peanuts and tahini bring you an earthiness to keep you satisfied.
Smoked Sausage and Rum Quiche with Cane Vinegar Onions
The quiche has it all. It’s creamy, smoky, a bit of sweet, and a bit of crunch.
Higos y Datiles (Figs and Dates)
I had these wonderfully glorious creamy cheese filled sweet dried fruit with pistachios and a bit of citrus to break the sweetness as a dessert at El Farol, a Spanish tapas place in Santa Fe.
Tumeric and Herb Millet with Roasted Vegetables and a Poached Egg
Millet is the perfect wingman to shallots and garlic which are at the forefront of flavor but is grounded by turmeric and rosemary. The roasted vegetables bring a bit of sweetness and spice (thanks to ginger and cayenne) and a runny egg creates a richness you don’t want to miss.
Pickled Collard Stems
They’re crunchy, acidic, and spicey, and I love them. Eat them as is, on the side of a rich meal, or in a sandwich. You really can’t go wrong.
Battle of Brown Rice
A friend recently gave me the tip to put a dish towel under the lid of the pot while the rice cooks. I gave it a shot and it worked.
Mushroom Ragou with Poached Duck Egg
There’s few dishes I look forward to eating each year more than this one. The grounded richness of the mushrooms is like hot lava running through my veins, warming my core from the inside out even on the most bone-chilling of days.
Apple Butter
Bring on the cool nights, crisp days, and apples! Slow cook those bad boys and that sweet freshness will become a complex decadence that will warm the soul.
Ricotta Cheese
Fresh cheeses are one of the simplest things we can make, and will often taste worlds better than their purchased counterparts. Fresh ricotta like eating a moist ball of fluff that brings a richness to acidic foods.
Blueberries and Cucumbers with Pistachios and Yogurt
The Mozart of salads … it’s classic, uplifting, refreshing, brilliant piece of art, well you get the point. You can thank Vivian Howard from Deep Run Roots for this one
Perfect Peaches with Almond Pesto
This dish has it all. It has the smoothness of ripened peaches, coarseness of almonds, earthiness and crispness of sage, brightness of citrus, sweetness of fruit and amaretto.
Marinara with Charred Red Bell Peppers and Onions
The eggplant brings a creaminess and body and the charred peppers and onions creates a depth of flavor that gives this marinara a flavor pop.
Tomato and Caramelized Onion topped Socca
Socca is an unleavened chick pea pancake which makes it the perfect base to be topped with caramelized onions offset by acidic tomatoes.