Roasted Butternut Squash and Peanut Salad
This salad has almost everything I love in food, the deep notes of caramel in the squash, the brightness of fresh herbs, the grounding peanuts, and the fruity tanginess of pomegranate molasses.
Dandelion Fritters
The cornmeal gives the most delightful crunch while the petals give you a nice chew. If you’re hesitant to try them, please do, they’re delicious. The fritters remind me of fried fish but with the most delicate of herb flavors.
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.
Yorkshire Christmas Pye
Nothing like spending Christmas with George Washington. Yorkshire Christmas Pye is a savory delight that warms the soul.
Chicken and Andouille Gumbo
Gumbo is one of the only foods I can think of that equally belongs at a fine dining restaurant, school cafeteria, hunting camp, tailgate party, Christmas parties, concession stands, and weeknight meals. Perhaps gumbo fits so many occasions because of its ease of cooking, forgiving nature, bold flavor, and soul-warming capabilities.
Beet and Burrata Salad with Grapefruit Vinaigrette
It’s fabulously fresh with a citrusy vinaigrette. It’s sassy with crunchy broiled grapefruit that brings tartness but sweet with yellow beets to cut the sour. Burrata brings a creaminess to the salad, yet remains light, and pistachios compliment all of the components.
Pomegranate and Cranberry Salad with Spiced Orange Vinaigrette
It’s light and feisty with spicy greens, mandarins, pomegranate, cranberries, and pecans. The salad is perfect to pair with a rich holiday meal or to use leftover Thanksgiving ingredients to create a filling salad. The beauty of this salad is almost anything goes and the point is to have a delicious dish while cleaning out your fridge.
Charred Carrots with Apple Brown-Butter Vinaigrette
Charring carrots brings on a marvelous complex of sweet and deep that is brightened yet grounded with apples, lemon, and browned butter.
Turnips as Cardoons
They’re buttery, decadent, and a little bit sweet. It’s everything a turnip should be: comforting, complex, a bit unexpected with just a hint of bitterness.
Cabbage with Onions Two Ways
Cabbage and onions are simply buttery bliss or you can take them one step further and turn them into fritters. Either way you’ll wish you knew this recipe a long time ago.
Halloween Salad: Cabbage, Carrot, Raisin, Pecan Salad with Honey Mustard Vinaigrette
The perfect Halloween festive salad that is as tasty as it is colorful. It’s bold, sweet, salty, and has texture for days. The dressing brings the perfect amount of zing that balances the sweeter components.
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.
Peanut Soup
I began the meal with peanut soup and that first bite warmed and relaxed my most inner soul. It was creamy with a faint, but lingering peanut flavor.
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.
Shrimp and Corn Soup
It’s bold and spicy. You can call it summery with its abundance of corn and shrimp but will hold its own with the best of winter soups because of its depth of flavor.
Smothered Pork Chops with Caramelized Onions
The pork chops are tender with the deepest rich notes of caramelized onions that create the base for one of the best gravies you’ll ever eat.
Peach and Almond Salad with Creamy Lemon Basil Dressing
The dressing is so smooth and bright with the luxurious feel of a creamy dressing but the freshness and palate cleansing components of a vinaigrette.
Fish with Mango Salsa
It’s fresh, light, decadent, and special. It’s summer sunshine on a plate and no one can imagine how something so simple is so delicious. No one would ever imagine it’s so simple.
Roasted Potatoes with Harissa
These little guys are a mouthful full of bold flavor. They’re spicy and crispy and creamy and perfect as a hot appetizer.
Strawberry, Ricotta, and Sunflower Seed Salad with Lemon Tarragon Vinaigrette
It’s sweet, fresh, and grounded. It brings us the best of warm spring days.