Welcome to Tuesday Recipe  — so called because you can sign up here to have a simple recipe emailed to your inbox (almost) every Tuesday and because Tuesday Recipe has the same initials I do (you can find out information about me, Tori Ritchie, here too). Sign up in the box at right to join. It's free and it's fun. Here's what's cooking this week:

COME TO FOOD WRITER'S CAMP! If you've always wanted to be a food writer or you are one already and need to polish your skills or batten down on a project, come to my food writer's camp in San Francisco, June 5-8. We'll write, cook, shop and write some more. It's a chance to focus, focus, focus on the one thing you truly love to do. To enroll, click here

tuesday may 15, 2012

Today is Tuesday Recipe’s 5th birthday so I baked us a cake — at least a virtual one (the real one I made for Mother’s Day). Here’s why you’ll love it: it’s meringue so it’s easier to make than a flour/egg/butter batter, it’s gluten-free for those of you who are sensitive to that, and it’s not fussy. Just take a look at the photo. Does that look like something I styled and labored over? Nope. I put it on a plate, slathered it with cream and plopped on berries. I took a photo with my iPhone as I put the real cake on my cousin’s real counter for real people to enjoy. And enjoy we did. It tastes like marzipan, but lighter, and has that contrast of crisp and smooth, tart and sweet, that makes everyone go, “oh god, this is sooooo good.”

In honor of our 5th birthday, we're going to freshen up our look (“we” being me, myself and I…there’s no team behind Tuesday Recipe, except for my patient tech guy in Oakland). Over the summer, you’ll receive recipes from me, but not on a weekly basis (not that I’ve been weekly lately anyway — gotta work to make a living!) and most of them will be Tuesday Recipe classics. There are so many recipes on the site you’ve never seen, so check out the archives. Meanwhile, I’ll be cooking up a new plan with the same goal: one fresh recipe every week (or so) and a way to support many more years of them. Thanks for five fun years so far.

to print this recipe, click here 

tuesday may 1, 2012

I met Julie in cooking school 25 years ago. She married one of my good friends from college, her kids are two of the most fun people I know and her dogs are among my favorite walking companions. She cooks once a week for my parents through her company Your Dinner is Done and she’s always sneaking extra cookies or lemon bars or her signature chocolate chip meringues in the bag for me and Sam.

But of all the wonderful things Julie has brought me, this recipe may be the best yet. It’s fresh, light, lemony, quick — my dream pasta. Julie dreamed it up after eating something similar in Sydney, so it isn’t really Italian. There’s no sauce to cook; you just make a garlic and lemon dressing, toss in hot linguine and arugula (which wilts) and lots of parmesan, then pile crab on top. I’ve been using prosciutto now that crab is out of season here and when King salmon comes around in June, I’ll try some of that on it, too. Or maybe not. Last week I made a batch of this for lunch with nothing on top. Then I went for a walk with Julie and the dogs.

to print this recipe, click here

tuesday april 10, 2012

Dolmades. Feta. Moussaka. Galaktoboureko. I’ve been on a Greek odyssey lately and I haven’t even left the country! It started when my cookbook club came over for a night of feasting from Kokkari: Contemporary Greek Flavors by the chef of the eponymous restaurant in San Francisco. We’ve cooked from a lot of restaurant books before, but I don’t think there’s ever been one where we were elbowing each other for the leftovers at the end of the night. Kelly’s gigandes (beans with tomato sauce and a crusty feta topping), cc’s dolmades, Jodi’s phyllo triangles, Ti’s meatballs with green olives, Emily’s chopped salad with dill and scallions, and my braised goat with potatoes — all delicious. I’ve always wanted to cook goat and even though it was tougher to cut up and took longer to become tender than I expected, we loved the flavor, which was sort of halfway between lamb and beef.

Then I ate my way through the Greek shops and cafes of Astoria, Queens, on a food tour a week ago. At the Greek imports emporia unassumingly named Mediterannean Foods, we sampled feta and sausages and olives and yogurt-based dips like tyrosalata and we ooh’d and aah’d our way down the aisles. I met a woman shopping there and she led me to the bean section to show me the best beans for gigandes, which are grown on the island of Kastoria where she grew up. Of course we discussed her recipe (she uses onion and scallion and very little tomato) and which phyllo is best (doesn’t matter what brand, she said, just use #7 thickness — who knew there would be different thicknesses?) and her triplet grandchildren. All this was done in broken English with lots of hand gestures, even though she’s lived in Astoria for well on 30 years.

So if you want to cook Greek, come to my class on April 22 at Tante Marie’s in San Francisco (sign up here). Or make this luxurious layered moussaka that is based on the Kokkari recipe, or make this cheater version. This Sunday is Greek Easter. What better excuse do you need?

to print moussaka in the style of Kokkari, click here

to print my cheater moussaka, click here

tuesday april 3, 2012

I'm just back from an incredible food conference in New York where I went berserk on Greek food in Astoria, Queens. There will be a full report on that next week in time for Greek Easter, but right now here are a few Tuesday recipe classics to mull over for Easter this weekend. If you are a do-aheader, go with the ham and cheese breakfast strata, which is a make-ahead casserole that you assemble the night before and slide into a cold oven in the morning while you go back to bed (or hide Easter eggs). If you are a last-minuter, go with scrambled eggs with asparagus and goat cheese. If you don't celebrate Easter or neither appeals to you, make a reservation!

to print strata recipe, click here

to print eggs and asparagus recipe, click here

to enroll in my Springtime in Greece cooking class, click here

tuesday march 27, 2012

I don’t know why, but spring makes me crave the combo of peas and tarragon. Wait; that’s a lie. I do know why. It’s because I was trained at a cooking school with a very French outlook, even if it was in San Francisco and even if I am an Italophile. In school we made things like lettuce braised in butter with peas and tarragon, and salmon with tarragon beurre blanc. Very Julia Child and very unforgettable. A few years ago I added scallops to peas and tarragon and lightened things up with canola oil for a client. Then I modified it again with shrimp. Superb! So this weekend when I saw trim pods of English peas in the market, I knew it was time. But I can’t decide which version to make or which to offer you. Take your pick. Either way, it’s the fastest little sauté any pea-lover could ask for.

PS-- if you want to watch me demonstrating the shrimp recipe as part of a seminar on creating healthy cooking demos, click here (in this version, I don’t use any butter or salt)

to print this recipe, click here

tuesday march 13, 2012

I managed to sleep until 11:30am on Sunday. My body clock said 10:30am, but still…I’m a bit old for teenage hours. As a result, I was stuck with the breakfast v. lunch dilemma (which I suppose is why brunch was invented). Sam was in lunch mode, so I went into David Tanis mode. He wrote a story a while back in his great City Kitchen column in the New York Times about Provencal soup with an egg that I’ve made many times since. It’s just brilliant; garlicky broth + toast + an egg = a meal. I took it a step further and put an egg on top of a hearty soup of sausage, greens and beans I had made the day before. Et voilà; soup with an egg for breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner.

to print this recipe, click here

tuesday march 6, 2012

Kale, Caesar! For reasons too hard to explain, I’m reading The Illiad right now (well, one reason is this new translation is totally unintimidating). And for reasons too weird to explain, when a friend told me she was making a kale Caesar salad the other night, I thought, “I want to do a Greek version.” (Greeks, Romans. You get the connection.) I’ve had kale Caesars before and found them more fad than fabulous. The thick dressing seems to slide around on the leaves and it’s all too chewy. Since my favorite Greek salad is made with romaine, dill, green onions and lemon dressing (and called maroulosalata), I figured it would work with some Tuscan kale thrown in. The lemon juice helps soften the kale leaves and the dill adds that dimension of “what’s in here that is so delicious?” It’s really just a chopped salad that you can vary with or without feta or with diced cucumbers instead of croutons if you are a gluten-free type. The key is the kale/romaine combo. I think it would fix the kale caesar problem too.

to print this recipe, click here

tuesday february 21, 2012

I saw rhubarb stalks in the produce aisle this weekend and I wanted to shout out, “are you KIDDING me?” Rhubarb means spring—spring in February! Well, that would fit with all the other signs around here: cherry and plum trees that have already blossomed out; magnolia and dogwood bursting like giant pink and white popcorn flowers; everybody headed to the beach rather than the mountains for “ski” week. Not wanting to portray Californians as spoiled rotten (though we are), I checked in with Jane in Chicago. Early spring there? You betcha. And New York? I see you have 50s forecast for this week. Maybe even snow-soaked Seattle is seeing the light of spring. I don’t know if this means there’s rhubarb in your markets yet, but I suspect there will be soon. So throw it in a crisp with its predictable partner, strawberries, rather than in a pie. Easier and quicker to make. You see, I’m in a hurry because I just heard fog horns outside my window, which means summer is on the way to San Francisco.

to print this recipe, click here

tuesday february 7, 2012

When I call my mom on the phone and she answers, this is what I say: “Sue Raisin! It is I.” I have no idea when this grammatically Victorian salutation started, but I know why it started. My mother’s maiden name is Raisin and even though she and my dad are closing in on their 60th anniversary and she is Mrs. Ritchie to almost everyone, I love to call her by her original name. I mean, how many Raisins do you know? The name is French and means grape, so it appeals to my sense of food humor. And there’s the family lore that her father wanted to name my mother “California” in honor of our home state, but my grandmother intervened with the less teasable Suzanne. Can you imagine if she was California Raisin???? She would have been famous in the ‘80s when the California Raisin campaign was launched. And lest you laugh at the thought of anyone named California, I happen to know two who are.

Which is a very contorted way to get you to today’s recipe for raisin cookies, because there is nothing California about them. They are Persian, from a cookbook called Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies that our cookbook club featured last week. We had mixed results with the recipes (a saffron ice cream I made was about as tasty as a kickball), but our Iranian guest said these cookies were spot on. I’d describe them as tea cookies, with a batter that’s soft and cakelike and scented with vanilla. They have kid appeal, too. Our host’s son grabbed one off the plate, thinking they were chocolate chip cookies. When he bit in, he said, “Wow. Raisins. I love raisins!” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

tuesday january 31, 2012

I’m not happy about it. The 49ers should be in the Super Bowl this Sunday. Between their overtime loss in the NFC championship and Stanford’s overtime loss in the Fiesta Bowl, I’m very much looking forward to baseball season.

However, if I were to watch the Super Bowl, this is what I’d snack on and it’s what we snacked on while we watched that wretched game two weeks ago. The dip cheered up our group considerably; it’s addictive in the way most dips are, but it’s healthier than guacamole or anything sour cream–based. In fact, it’s sort of a super food if you look at the ingredients. That figures, since I got the recipe from a doctor (who suggested white beans in place of kidney beans—thank you, Jen) who got it from another doctor who is a triathlete. They told me it’s of Georgian (as in the former Soviet Republic, not Newt’s home state) origin, but I found a similar bean dip called “Lubia” in a Persian cookbook. I think I’ll ponder this cross-cultural provenance while the rest of you watch the game this weekend. I just can’t face it.

to print this recipe, click here

tuesday january 24, 2012

The smartest bit of healthy eating advice I’ve heard lately is the simplest: eat something green at every meal. Surely we can do that. Breakfast is covered (green smoothies, remember?). Lunch = crunchy salads (lettuce on your sandwich doesn’t count, sorry). Dinner = Swiss chard, kale, spinach, etc, etc, etc. That’s not so hard.

But why not cook the green right in with the meat? Vietnamese beef with watercress or braised chicken with escarole are two good examples. And come to think of it, this Moroccan chicken tagine qualifies as a greenie, too. It’s packed with cilantro and Italian parsley (from my garden, ‘natch) and while you may not think of herbs as greens, the two parsleys (they are cousins, after all) are packed with vitamins A and C and lots of trace minerals. Nutritional data aside, this is a one-pot miracle. You throw everything in together so it takes about ten seconds to prep (okay, ten minutes). You don’t have to brown the meat. The sauce is based on water and onions and yet is incredibly rich in flavor. The whole thing is cheap cheap cheap and good good good. Serve over couscous, and if you can get your hands on some preserved lemons, chop them up and throw them on there. A little yellow never hurt.

to print this recipe, click here. 

tuesday january 10, 2012

Are green smoothies the new cupcakes? Everybody seems to be making them, or at least claiming to. There are endless green smoothie blogs, there’s a Wikipedia entry (“the typical ratio in a green smoothie is about 60% fruit to 40% leafy greens”) and yes, there’s an App for that, too. I usually turn up my nose when I smell a trend (I’ve yet to make a French macaroon), but this is one time I will not. You see, I need all the vitamins/minerals/anti-oxidant/toxin-clearing/body-cleansing help I can get because I’m in major healing mode. I had my hip replaced in December and it’s been a doozey of an experience. I’ll spare you the details, other than one word: OUCH. Now don’t go all jingly and feel bad for me. I’m going to be bouncing around in my hiking boots soon and it was a genetic problem I just couldn’t ignore any longer. By the way, I hope this explains why you haven’t heard from me in so long.

Anyway, back to the smoothies. If ever there were smoothie queens, it’s my friends Mary and Sara, identical twins who built their cookbook career on that topic. So when they sent a recipe for a kale, apple, and carrot blend the other day, I made it pronto. After all, the star ingredient is organic kale, which I grow in my little garden (it’s still leafing out like mad during our mid-winter dry spell). The twins stuck a note at the bottom of their recipe asking if anyone had other green smoothie ideas. I took this as an invitation to play around with the ingredients and I present here my version, which tastes less vegetal and is super-duper emerald colored. I thicken it with chia seeds rather than sunflower seeds and in my opinion, green smoothies always need fresh ginger in them. 

Do I feel better after a few days of drinking these? Well, I feel great about having chosen the driest winter on record in California as the year I can’t ski (due to the hip), but maybe it’s just the glow from the smoothies.

to print this recipe, click here. 

 tuesday December 13, 2011

Hello from the Mediterranean! Just kidding. I haven’t been away. I’ve been ridiculously busy, so I daydream about lolling by a blue-green sea or eating cheese and bread under an olive tree. Part of the reason I’ve got the Med on my mind is that I’m teaching a special 4-week series on the cooking of that region at Tante Marie’s in January. Plus I got a copy of the new Kokkari cookbook and I’m flipping through its lamb- and eggplant-drenched pages, salivating over which Greek recipes to make. I’m also mulling over a trip to Turkey next year to do a food tour with fellow blogster Ozlem Warren and I'm going to Tuscany in April to teach at a food writing retreat with the likes of Pamela Sheldon Johns and Nancy Harmon Jenkins, two real Mediterranean food experts.  

So why am I telling you all this? I’m hoping you might want to join me in some part of this dream. Whether it’s a cookbook, a cooking class or even a real trip, what better gift than a touch of the Mediterranean to get you through the winter. If all else fails, make one of the Mediterranean favorites on Tuesday Recipe: a batch of creamy tirosalata for holiday parties; Turkish spaghetti for escapist nights when you’re avoiding wrapping gifts; easy moussaka when you can’t eat one more bite of turkey, roast beef or brisket.

tuesday November 15, 2011

It’s time to get simple, because one of the most complicated cooking days of the year is next week. Thanksgiving. A week away. The mind reels.

I keep it simple by repeating greatest hits every year: warm hazelnuts and persimmons with cocktails, an herb-rubbed turkey and my mother’s stuffing, cranberry-orange relish with ginger, and a pumpkin pie I’ve made so many times I don’t need a recipe. But the one thing I’ve never settled on is the green part. Brussels sprouts? I love ‘em roasted but my nieces do not. Salad? Yes, but not very special. Creamed onions and mushrooms? No green in that. This year I hit on it: green beans prepared the way I had snap peas in the spring at a restaurant in Oregon. There are almonds involved, which satisfies traditionalists, and the preparation is holiday friendly. You can double it to feed a bigger group, you can prep it in stages to assemble just before serving, or you can make it a day ahead and reheat it  (I tested that this week just to be sure). But the genius is the spark of lemon. It’s that lift of citrus that a Thanksgiving side dish desperately needs.

to print this recipe, click here. 

tuesday November 8, 2011

I love to matchmake, especially when it happens like this: The phone rings. It's a friend who's an editor at a well-known book company looking for a writer to work with a well-known chef. I have another talented friend who has co-written restaurant cookbooks. It so happens I've always thought these two exceptional women — who live 2000 miles apart — should meet. So I make the match, the one hires the other to co-write the book and….what? You thought this was going to be a love story???? Sorry. It's a WORK matchup. They're my favorite kind. Too much risk in the other matchmaking game.

So back to the outcome: Fast forward a year. The cookbook is done. I hold a copy in my hands. It's nearly killed all parties involved putting it together, but the outcome is worth it. I see my editor friend's creative eye in every page layout — simple, clear text overlaid on big, chewy photos of finished dishes with little insets of ingredient shots. I see my other friend's input in every word because the chef would never have got his recipes down without her hand to guide him to the stove. The man moves a mile a minute — that's both a cliche and an alliteration, but there's no other way to put it.

Who am I talking about here? The chef is Todd English. The writer is Amanda Haas. The brilliant editor is Katherine Cobbs. The book is Cooking in Everyday English and the recipe I made from it this weekend was Slow-roasted Fennel. It involves four ingredients (plus salt and pepper) and patience — it is slow after all — which is kind of funny, because according to Amanda, she and Todd knocked out an entire book of recipes in three intense days of cooking together in New York (get the full story here). As a result, every dish has fewer than 10 ingredients and is easy to make. "No restaurant food!" was Amanda's mantra. A chef’s book with no chef-y stuff? That's a match made for me.

to print this recipe, click here.

tuesday October 25, 2011

I'm becoming a mono-tasker. You know what I mean: someone who used to be able to handle ten things at once and now can barely do two. Like this morning when I was talking on the phone and pouring out cereal, which ended up on the floor. Or reading the mail while walking around the corner a few weeks ago and spraining my ankle on a snag in the cement.  No no no. It's one thing at a time from now on.

Except for pasta. It's such a seamless, logical process, you can do two things at once without stumbling: start the sauce in one pan, bring the water to boil in another, stir the sauce, cook the pasta, combine them both. The only thing to watch is the timing -- the pasta needs to be a little al dente when it goes into the sauce so it can finish cooking there. When I made whole-wheat spaghetti with garbanzo beans and the last heirloom tomatoes for meatless Monday, this two-pot dinner made me feel like a one-task wonder. The fact that it also happened to be healthy made me slap an extra gold star on my chest.

to print this recipe, click here.

tuesday October 18, 2011

I’m not an ageist. I have friends of all ages, or at least from 4 to 84, and I never try to hide how old I am. But this week there’s a number I cannot bring myself to say. It’s my th--, thuh, thuh…thirtieth college reunion. Thirty. 30. That’s class of 1981, if you don’t do math.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to bore you with college nostalgia. I’m only going to say my sophomore year was the best because I spent most of it in Florence—Fiesole to be precise. Let’s just call it Tuscany. In 1979, most Americans didn’t even know Italy had regions, much less regional cooking, but la cucina toscana was the reason I fell in love with food. Salads of bitter escarole, cannellini beans baked in a bottle, pizza blistered by the first wood-fired oven I’d seen, chicken livers on toast, tomato soup thick with unsalted bread. There was always green olive oil in a cruet on the table, poured over everything in a threadlike stream. And pork. Everywhere pork. Roasted with garlic and field herbs and called arista; carved into hunks, slapped into sandwiches and called porchetta that was eaten at an outdoor mercato in the rain, in Umbria, just south of Tuscany.

The other day I stumbled on a cookbook called tuscany (yes, with a little “t”) at the bookstore and saw recipes for fagioli in fiasco, crostini di fegato and pappa al pomodoro. These were my old friends. These were authentic dishes, not some American restaurateur’s interpretation. I took the book home and made pork roast and ribollita. I was in Florence again, at the table with my closest friends (the human ones). Age 19. Forever.

to print this recipe, click here

tuesday October 5, 2011
It's been an embarrassment of tomatoes lately. Not because my garden is bursting with them — I got a total of 3 scrawny Sun Golds from my foggy vegetable plot, about enough to feed an ant — but because the Northern California tomato harvest has run late and farmers' markets, grocery stores and friends' gardens have bushels of them. That's extremely good news because I've made this pasta dish at least four times in the last two weeks, twice in cooking classes and twice at home. Cherry tomatoes, basil and garlic are sauteed over high heat while the pasta cooks, then delicate little mussels (pulled from the shell…just like the Squeeze song says) and some of their cooking liquid are added. When the pasta is still really chewy, you put it in the sauce and finish cooking it there. The tomatoes and the mussel essence end up glazing the pasta and the whole thing tastes so simply of summer and the sea, you will feel homesick for Italy even if you've never been. More importantly, you'll want to eat right away, because pasta waits for no one and must be served the second it is ready. Which is why there is no photo of this finished dish. I'd rather eat than shoot.

to read more or to print recipe, click here...

tuesday September 27, 2011
They're back…those mottled red-and-white fresh shelling beans that come to market in September. We call them cranberry beans, the Italians call them borlotti, and people ask me all the time what to do with them. I always put them in ribollita, a thick minestrone with beans and zucchini and kale, like I had at school in Florence. It was "reboiled" with stale bread (hence the name ribollita) because the Tuscans never waste anything. This is the best time of year to make minestrone because everything you need is in season: basil, zucchini, tomatoes and Tuscan kale (aka dino or lacinato kale). So I cooked up a pot last night and ladled it over good store-bought croutons, which soak up the broth and thicken everything. It was damn close to the ribollita I ate at Cantinetta Antinori on Via Tornabuoni, circa 1979. Why are there some dishes you just never forget? More on that next week….

to print this recipe, click here

tuesday aug 30, 2011
I know I wrote last week that you wouldn't hear from me until after Labor Day, but then I got a call from Martha Stewart Radio and they asked me to talk about stuffing peppers today on the show. Funny, because a few weeks ago I thought about stuffing some homegrown peppers I got from a friend. I wanted to adapt a recipe called California Rice, a Junior League classic that calls for mixing roasted, diced Anaheim peppers with rice, sour cream and cheese and baking it as a casserole. My plan was to turn that inside out and stuff the filling into roasted peppers. Well, I didn't get around to it then, but when Martha Stewart calls (okay it was just her peeps, but still) you hustle! So I did and here's the recipe…which, by the way, would be great with those Labor Day burgers I sent out last week or with any barbecue you happen to be doing.

to print this recipe, click here

tuesday aug 23, 2011
If you have the time, inclination and weather to do one more barbecue this summer, I suggest you make these Japanese Burgers with Wasabi Ketchup for Labor Day. I found the recipe in the New York Times, which in turn got it from the book The Japanese Grill by Tadashi Ono. I have to say these are the best burgers I've made all year, even if I used a broiler because I have neither the weather nor the inclination to grill in my foggy town. Of course I forgot to buy wasabi paste (I always forget something), so I stirred some jarred horseradish into the ketchup instead and it was the best sauce ever. This recipe has made the rounds on the web, which is why you'll get an easy-to-print pdf of it from Tasting Table when you click on this.

I’ll be back with a new Tuesday Recipe after Labor Day. Until then, I'll be dustin’ out the last August cobwebs before real summer starts in San Francisco…which is in the fall.

tuesday aug 9, 2011
You say tomato. I say tomatoes. So here are some Tuesday Recipe tomato classics from the archives. If you don't find something you like, just slice up a few ripe red tomatoes and halve some tiny pear tomatoes, arrange on a platter with sliced avocados, drizzle with olive oil, spike with sea salt, and have at it. 

For gazpacho lovers, a traditional Spanish version thickened with bread, or the chunky "liquid salad" Americanized version. 

For the cherry tomatoes in your life, a summer halibut dish.

For tomatoes plus all that other summer produce, my easy ratatouille.

Finally, stuffed tomatoes, the way the Romans cook them right now. 

tuesday aug 2, 2011
Yoo hoo out there! I know it's been a while since you heard from Tuesday Recipe and I didn't want you to think I'd fallen off the planet. What I did fall into is a pile of work. In the past few weeks, I've taught cooking classes to over 75 people. Don't get me wrong — I'm not sick of cooking yet. In fact, on the one weekend we went away, I made these big billowy pancakes for breakfast and now I will never make pancakes any other way. Thanks go to Mary T., who showed me the recipe at a party at her house. We got on the topic of pancakes (what? you thought we'd be talking about the debt ceiling?), and she ran to get her copy of The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham. Published in 1987, this was an instant classic, as was pretty much everything written by the remarkable Cunningham. Until now though, I'd never seen the recipe for Zeppelin Pancakes (so-called because they are plump and airy), which Cunningham had learned from winemaker Don Chappellet. Both those names are icons of a former heyday of Bay Area cooking, so in homage to another era, I pulled out a classic tool to whip the egg whites: a rotary beater I found in the drawer of the cabin where we were staying. Between that and the lack of internet access, I felt like it was 1987 — or even 1957. 

tuesday july 12, 2011
Remember that snap pea recipe I promised last week? Here it is. It's a classic a la minute restaurant recipe, which means it's really quick and easy and buttery and salty. I got it from chef Neil Clooney of Smithfields in Ashland, Oregon, who emailed me these directions: "heat up a saute pan, add a couple of tablespoons of butter, it will start to brown a little. Add some slivered almonds, saute until they take on some brown color. Add your pre blanched sugar snaps and continue to saute until they are hot and have an attractive glazed butter appearance to them. Add your preserved lemon strips and seasoning to taste, serve."

And that's exactly what I did, but I'm giving you some tips to make it even easier. Get 'em while they're hot — snap peas will disappear from markets soon.

to print this recipe, click here

Want to hear what people are saying about Tuesday Recipe? Here are just a few of the comments we've received lately:

Tori, I am writing to tell you how much I love your recipes. I have ALL of your cookbooks and they are my stand-by when looking for a great meal. I am gluten free, and usually have to page through all of my other books to find something sans the bread crumbs or flour. But your recipes usually don't call for any of that. I've realized since my almost 5 year path on a GF diet, so many of the ingredients that turn a dish into something I can't eat, also mess with the flavors of the real ingredients. So bravo to you!
Jen R.

This [eggplant gratin] was AWESOME! I bought everything for a half-batch at the Saturday market, assembled it on Sunday (in my little 6x6 Revol pan ) and baked it up on Monday. Fantastic! The first Thursday of every month I deliver a vegetarian casserole to a Buddhist sitting group, and I can't wait to present them with this one: bright, fresh Mediterranean flavors, and total comfort food...Everyone should have this recipe in her repertoire.
Canice F.

Yesterday, I was baking cookies with my 12-year-old son and commented that I thought he needed to know how to cook more than just cookies. What, I asked, will you do when you go to college, buy take-out all the time?  He replied, "No way.  I'll subscribe to Tori Ritchie and cook everything that comes on Tuesdays. I'll be fine."
Kate F. 

Just wanted to relish you with compliments...I made your Christmas dinner from Bon Appetit and it was absolutely fantastic. The meat was unbelievable and so were all the other accompaniments. Beacuse we enjoyed that meal so much, I looked up your website and tried the best ever chicken and potatoes tonight with a fresh salad. Well, it couldn't have been more delicious, in fact it was perfection. I just wanted to thank you...my family thanks you too.
Felicia H.

Last night I made the enchiladas and the spinach slaw and both were phenomenal.  Everyone at dinner asked for your website! Thanks so much for such a great service. 
Judy H.

Thought you'd appreciate knowing that I just returned from a 5th grade Mom's night out potluck. I brought Carol's chili-cheese squares and your quinoa salad and in walked the root beer cake that someone else had made. All were hits!
Sally S.

I have been preparing roast chicken and potatoes for many years and frankly, I was in a bit of a rut. But your recipe was so savory, moist and popular that we had very few leftovers.
Margie W.

We had a wonderful al fresco dinner with your recipes, I made your gazpacho, quinoa salad (we had grilled halibut for the main course) and my friend brought your strawberry meringue cake. Everyone loved it! Thanks for your easy yet tasty recipes. My friends and I look forward to them every Tue.
Terri G.
 
I just wanted to acknowledge how much I am enjoying your recipes.  I, too, consider myself "a cook" [not a "chef"] and come from a large family of women who are handy in a kitchen. Providing delicious food has always been a gift of love for me to give to the people I love. I consider cooking in my kitchen a day of play and the recipes I have received from your site are always  welcome - great taste, easily prepared.  Thank you for sharing your talents.
Pat M.

Your guaranteed dinner party hit, the beer-and onion-braised chicken recipe was indeed a big hit. I served it last night for some friends and they loved it. I did use chicken breasts because one of the guests does not eat thighs. It still turned out tender and juicy. Thanks for your ideas and keep up the good work.
Anita E.