Category: white wine

Beef Stroganoff

This easy beef stroganoff recipe is made with the most delicious garlicky creamy mushroom sauce and can be ready to go in just 30 minutes! Feel free to serve over any kind of noodles, rice, or polenta. For those days when you’re craving a cozy and comforting bowl of beef and noodles… …this classic beef […]

This easy beef stroganoff recipe is made with the most delicious garlicky creamy mushroom sauce and can be ready to go in just 30 minutes! Feel free to serve over any kind of noodles, rice, or polenta.

Easy Beef Stroganoff with Noodles

For those days when you’re craving a cozy and comforting bowl of beef and noodles…

…this classic beef stroganoff recipe is here for you, friends. ♡

It’s made with a quick sauté of tender steak (or you can opt for ground beef) and a perfectly-browned mushrooms, and tossed with the richest, savory, garlicky cream sauce (that I’ve lightened up a bit and made without heavy cream).  And when served warm over a big bowl of noodles, rice or polenta, get ready for a delicious burst of nostalgia.  Because this retro recipe is total comfort food and always so satisfying and delicious.

The other bonus with this particular beef stroganoff recipe is that it’s actually incredibly quick and easy to make in just about 30 minutes.  So the next time you need a quick weeknight meal that’s sure to please a crowd, bring out the beef and mushrooms and let’s sauté up some stroganoff together!

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Oven-Roasted Plums

I made a statement recently on social media that plums were my favorite fruit. I guess I said the same thing about cherries, at some point, which I was reminded of. But I’ll confess that I may have also said the same thing about nectarines, figs, mangoes, and litchis at some point in my life. However plums really are my favorite fruit, and I’m happy…

I made a statement recently on social media that plums were my favorite fruit. I guess I said the same thing about cherries, at some point, which I was reminded of. But I’ll confess that I may have also said the same thing about nectarines, figs, mangoes, and litchis at some point in my life. However plums really are my favorite fruit, and I’m happy that they stick around from summer all the way through the beginning of fall.

There are a lot of plums out there. In Northern California we had big purple Santa Rosa plums, as well as an array of others with names like Elephant Heart and Angelino, as well as pluots, a hybrid of apricots and plums. While they don’t show up in Paris, there are green Reine Claudes (which are close to being at the top of my list for favorite varieties of plums), tiny golden Mirabelles, and sturdy Quetsches, which hold their shape relatively well during baking. And while they’re not as tart as U.S. varieties (most of the tartness of plums is in their skins), they are reliably good, and flavorful, when baked or oven-roasted, as I often prepare them.

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Turkey in White Wine Sauce

Being a baker, braising wasn’t something I did a lot of. I also didn’t cook a lot of meat or poultry. Actually, I didn’t cook much at home as I ate most of my meals on the fly when working in restaurants. (I was also going to say that when I lived in California, I tended to grill as much as I could on my…

Being a baker, braising wasn’t something I did a lot of. I also didn’t cook a lot of meat or poultry. Actually, I didn’t cook much at home as I ate most of my meals on the fly when working in restaurants. (I was also going to say that when I lived in California, I tended to grill as much as I could on my patio but someone sent me a rather pointed message to stop talking about living in California…so I guess I should work on that.) It wasn’t until I came to France, which has a plethora of butchers and volaillers (poultry sellers), that I started branching out from my usual fall-back meals from when I was a professional baker and line cook in San Francisco (if that woman is reading this…sorry!), which included chips & salsa, bbq from Flint’s in Oakland, or a burger at The Smokehouse.

Another thing that happened when I no longer had to work in the evening was that I began to have people over for dinner. But I’ve learned in France not to make something that needs to be served at a precise time. That’s because it’s considered impolite to arrive on time. If you do, you’ll surprise your hosts which I did recently when I was invited to someone’s place for dinner who I didn’t know. I arrived 15 minutes after the time I was told, and I was the only one there, except for the host, who was surprised to see my standing in his doorway. And it was a somewhat uncomfortable twenty minutes I spent making small talk, and watching him put the last-minute preparations on things while I just stood there like a dope. Oops.

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15 Crisp White Wines We’d Buy by the Case

The warmer the weather gets, the more I want white wine. Crisp, bright, mineraly, cold-as-can-be white wine. Probably with an ice cube or two! Hopefully in the sun. And my coworkers feel the same way. This week, I asked them for their best white wine p…

The warmer the weather gets, the more I want white wine. Crisp, bright, mineraly, cold-as-can-be white wine. Probably with an ice cube or two! Hopefully in the sun. And my coworkers feel the same way. This week, I asked them for their best white wine picks and let’s just say, they had a lot of thoughts.

Here are our favorite white wines for summer (and beyond!), according to the Food52 team. Cheers.

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Montparnasse Cocktail

It’s been fun doing my daily Apéro Hour on IGTV and happy that people are tuning in. Here’s how if you’re not familiar with the format. Yesterday, bartender and spirits writer Jeffrey Morgenthaler, author of Drinking Distilled and the award-winning The Bar Book, was my guest and he made his revised French 75. Here’s the line up for the rest of the week: Wednesday: This…

It’s been fun doing my daily Apéro Hour on IGTV and happy that people are tuning in. Here’s how if you’re not familiar with the format. Yesterday, bartender and spirits writer Jeffrey Morgenthaler, author of Drinking Distilled and the award-winning The Bar Book, was my guest and he made his revised French 75. Here’s the line up for the rest of the week:

Wednesday: This Montparnasse cocktail with Calvados from Normandy and elderflower liqueur

Thursday: A round-up of French apéritifs; Pineau de Charentes from cognac, Pommeau de Normandie (made with apples), and the elusive, but excellent, Macvin du Jura.

Friday: Making tisanes and herbal infusions the French way with a Frenchman…Romain returns!

Saturday: A visit to Burgundy with traveling distiller Matt Sabbagh of Alambic Bourguignon and Sab’s Spirits, who makes gin, pear eau-de-vie, and marc & fin de bourgogne.

This cocktail is named after Montparnasse, an area of Paris where the Gare Montparnasse is situated in, a train station that’s surrounded by crêperies. Each train station in Paris serves a different region of France; The gare du Nord serves the North of France, the gare de l’Est serves Alsace, and the gare Saint-Lazare transports people to Normandy.

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