If your refrigerator is full to over-flowing with Thanksgiving leftovers (aren’t you lucky) and you’ve juuuuust abooooout had your fill of turkey sandwiches and reheated vegetables, it might be time for a big pot of turkey soup.
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Looking for Thanksgiving? Try my THANKSGIVING, AN INTIMATE VIEW (Redux) or click “Thanksgiving” in the subject cloud for more info than you really wanted.
There really is a song, “If I Knew You Were Coming, I’d Have Baked a Cake,” and somewhere in my stacks, I even have the music for it. This chocolate cheesecake, which can be made gluten-free (Double Chocolate with a nut crust) or not (Triple Chocolate with a chocolate wafer cookie crust), is without a doubt the cake you’d bake were someone ultra-special about to knock on your door. The wonderful original recipe by well-known baker and writer Abigail Johnson Dodge (author of the fun new book SHEET CAKE) is one I found in FINE COOKING magazine — or on its website–a number of years ago. (The famous site is no longer available, more’s the pity, though another site does have the recipe. See TIPS below.) I’d make it for one person’s birthday and someone else would say, “Can I have that cake for my birthday?!” Or I’d carry it to a dinner party only for the host to pull me to the side and whisper in my ear, “I’d really love that recipe!” It’s just that kind of cake. Everyone craves it, especially chocolate lovers. Even fine fruit folk (my apple and cherry pie people) have been known to ask for an extra slice to take home.
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Looking for Thanksgiving? Try my THANKSGIVING, AN INTIMATE VIEW (Redux) or type Thanksgiving into the search box for more info than you needed.
Over the years, I’ve made Bolognese sauce almost exactly like the world famous Marcella Hazan’s recipe or just as Tyler Florence or Aida Mollenkamp thought it should be done and it’s always lovely any of those ways. Aida’s version (scroll down for info) is the one I’ve used for my lasagna for many moons and there’s nothing, nothing, nothing like it. (That recipe, more’s the pity, is no longer on the internet to my knowledge. Sad. Print your favorites, friends!) Even my sister, who doesn’t particularly like to cook, has made it. This time, I simply went ahead and fixed it just as I wanted to. Which meant a little more tomato than Tyler and a lot more tomato than Marcella and, the biggie–I made it, ye gods and little fishes, with chicken, mushrooms, and bacon instead of with Aida’s (and many other cook’s) veal. Bolognese, the real deal, has just a little tomato and no herbs at all save parsley; it’s meat sauce with milk (I know–but you won’t taste it) and is served with a little sauce and a ton of pasta. Like 1 cup of sauce to 1 1/4 – 1 1/2 pounds of pasta. Nothing like Americans are used to. Perhaps because we eat pasta as a main dish. Italians use pasta as a first course -primo–served between the antipasto and the secondo, which is a meat or fish dish or our main dish/entrée. I like it sort of in between, but I do want a little more sauce and meat to the meal because I like it that way. Period. And this time? I wanted lot and lots of chicken. Chicken? Why chicken?
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