My own tried-and-true recipes for home cooks.
Lemon Meringue Pie Cookies
So why make these cookies? Truthfully, they’re transcendent. I have never had a cookie like this before. I don’t actually know if I’ve ever had meringue on top of a cookie before now that I think about it (and I’m tempted to continue the trend). The balance between sweet/buttery sugar cookie dough, sunny/tart/zippy lemon curd, and just-sweet-enough/caramelized meringue can’t be beat. Sure, you could just make a regular ‘ole lemon meringue pie. But that’s no fun! And this way everyone gets a perfectly perfect lemon meringue pie (cookie) all to themself.
Beet Citrus Salad with Sesame Goat Cheese
I love beets. Most people do not. I feel like one of my purposes is to convince people that beets are in fact delicious orbs of vegetable heaven. That means pairing beets with naturally and popularly “yummy” things like oranges, goat cheese, sesame, honey, and lemon. The combination of beets, citrus, and goat cheese though is not necessarily new. So how do you make this combination interesting? I rely on a little warm goat cheese moment to provide the intrigue: coat the goat cheese in a sesame crust, give it a little sear, and use it as a protein-rich-creamy-fatty salad topping. The interplay of the warm goat cheese with the just-out-of-the-fridge citrus is truly heavenly. The beets are there as the foundation.
Lemon Cheesecake
This is the only cheesecake recipe you’ll ever need. The cake itself is excellent. The curd makes it extraordinary. A perfect balance of sweet and tart, I could eat this every night.
Butter-Basted Halibut
So the name of this recipe is a little bit of a misnomer because I’m actually going to call for you to use ghee (or clarified butter) instead of just regular butter. The first reason is because if you try to do this with regular butter it will burn, smoke up your kitchen, ruin your fish, and make your life sad. The second reason is because ghee tastes amazing and complements the delicate perfection of halibut.
Easy Lemon Tahini Dressing
Let me be the first to tell you: store-bought salad dressing isn’t good. And even more: making salad dressing at home is literally the easiest thing you can do in the kitchen besides boiling water. This tahini sauce is a staple of Israeli cooking. I call it a dressing here but you can actually use this as a sauce, drizzling it over roast chicken, using it as a dip for crudites, the options are endless. But I love this as a salad dressing especially.