What to Cook

Salty Vanilla Frosting

This is a sort of hybrid basic-buttercream/cream cheese frosting, combining the best of both worlds.

Caramelized Beans with Tomato & Cabbage

This saucy, tangy recipe might be the closest of the three to traditional “baked beans,” but these are sweet not from brown sugar or molasses but rather from jammy tomatoes and browned cabbage.

Spicy Braised Short Ribs with Garlic & Lemon

Short ribs that can be made with ingredients you’ve already got on hand, cooked ahead of time, reheated with ease.

First Bloom Hot Chocolate

The perfect drink all winter long. Top with an immodest amount of whipped cream.

A Cheeky Little Eggnog

Makes 6 cups / serves 4–6 Rompope is a Mexican eggnog made from cooked custard infused with spices and blended with almonds. I am allergic to using a blender, so I avoid that part, but many recipes I found use sweetened condensed milk instead of sugar, which I love. I

Tomato Pasta with Eggplant and Sausage (on the side)

Decidedly a tomato pasta with eggplant and not an eggplant pasta

Roasted Eggplant with Capers and Garlic

This is a very simple recipe that came from a dinner I made while “cooking on vacation”– limited ingredients, sparse cooking tools.

Spiced Zucchini Soup

The bulk of this soup here is zucchini

Buttered Oat Cake with Summer Fruits

Makes one 9" cake This is a cake meant to be eaten over the course of many warm summer days, sliced off in thick or thin pieces, either slathered with softened butter or on top of a napkin while standing in your kitchen in a bathing suit. It’s

Spring Pasta with Peppered Peas

The goal is a sort of spring-y Alla Gricia (pork fat + lots of black pepper + spring vegetables), so this pasta is ideally made with guanciale, green garlic, pea shoots and fresh peas. But know that even if made with olive oil, regular garlic, arugula and frozen peas, it’ll still be so lovely.

Blueberry Muffins

The recipe, requiring only two bowls and a whisk, is among the easier things you can bake in your kitchen and frankly, they might even be better the next day. Part Entemann’s and part Costco muffin, they are, quite possibly, the best I’ve ever had.

Pasta with Sausage, Browned Butter and Broccoli Rabe

This is a simple recipe, but an important one. Take the measurements and ingredients with a grain of salt, knowing that at the end of the process you should end up with a skillet of saucy, porky pasta laced with as many greens as it can handle.