Brunch - quick and easy recipes - page 35

A careful balance of salty and sweet, crisp and chewy, these nuts are the perfect accompaniment for cocktail hour. You start with raw, untoasted cashews, toss them with oil and set aside. Then you make a syrup with brown sugar, a little water, and honey. Drizzle it over the cashews, toss, spread onto baking sheets and toast in a medium oven till golden brown and crisp. The cashews will last 1 week stored in an airtight container at room temperature. We featured this recipe in our Bring Happy ...

Like crepes? Than you’re going to love socca. This thin chickpea flour pancake hails from Nice, but it’s rarely seen outside the South of France (except in Genoa where’s it called a farinata), and we think it merits wider recognition. Add a flavorful filling—we like it with a dollop of fresh goat cheese and lots of freshly ground black pepper—fold it up, and polish a few off for a delicious snack.

A favorite pancake recipe of mine. This recipe went through vigorous testing to create an amazingly fluffy and light pancake. The olive oil addition is what creates such a moist cake. Olive oil can be replaced by melted butter, or even browned melted butter, for a richer flavor. Add fresh fruit or citrus zest to your completed batter to create other versions of this beauty.

This is a smoothie with a secret: a handful of fresh spinach leaves, a powerful source of vitamins, minerals, and fiber (in addition to the blueberries’ fiber and antioxidants) that provide tons of nutrition without tasting that way. It’s great for adults and kids alike. Serve with a spoon and scoop of Granola for a more filling, crunchy treat.

For many, being a teenager in the ’80s meant hanging at the mall and consuming as many cups of Orange Julius as possible. As a nod to this frothy, orangey drink, which remains one of the best takes on a smoothie ever, we created this recipe, a fancier homemade version of the original. For more healthy inspiration, check out our Fruity Smoothie, Healthy Blueberry Smoothie, and Apple-Lemon-Ginger Juice.

Greek yogurt gives this healthy smoothie a gently tangy edge, a great boost to your morning. To make it vegan, use almond milk in place of regular milk and replace the yogurt with coconut milk. We suggest making with our Granola recipe as a more filling option with an added crunch.

This carrot salad has a little bit of a Moroccan influence and a tad of Middle Eastern. This shaved medley spiced with harissa, cumin, and caraway is brightened by mint, parsley, and lemon with all sorts of textures and colors. This salad could steal the wow factor from your meal’s protein. It’s that good.

Move over Mike’s Hot Honey and Bees Knees Spicy Honey, you can make your own chile-infused honey. It’s only the hottest new condiment, that’s all. Drizzle it over pizza, ribs, chicken, fruit, and even vanilla ice cream. Your chile-infused honey would be great on this Roasted Pepper and Spicy Sausage Grilled Pizza recipe.

This is not your standard prepared pimento cheese at the grocery store. This is so much better. It’s fresh and has more complexity than those less ready-made versions. Also called pimiento, pimentos are red cherry peppers, about 3 to 4 inches long and are more succulent, sweet, and aromatic than red bell peppers. Serve this pimento cheese dip with crackers, peppers, carrots, and celery sticks — or even make a grilled cheese sandwich with it.

Let’s not overcomplicate things, shall we? Sometimes you want a classic, no-fuss grilled cheese. Forget the fancy bread, caramelized onions, pears, or whatever else you can do to multiply the steps in creating this simple tradition. Here’s something to cook when you don’t feel like cooking.

When you cook onions for a long time, they turn translucent and trade their bite for a sweet-savory flavor that’s so good you want to dive into it. Well, you can dive your chips and crackers and crudités in this recipe. Slow-cooking onions for 7 to 9 hours is taking caramelizing to the next level. We suggest that you double the recipe and freeze half of the onion mixture for the next time you make French onion dip.

They look like little armadillos, but that’s where the similarities end. Originally a Swedish potato dish, the name “hasselback” comes from the Hasselbacken Hotel Restaurant in Stockholm, Sweden. These hasselback potatoes are crispy in places, but still soft and buttery at their core, thanks to the increased surface area open to the oven’s heat. You can line up two knives on both sides of the potato to ensure you don’t slice all the way through.

I can eat an entire bowl of these Brussels sprouts and still go back for seconds. It is a great side dish at dinner, especially in the fall and winter. The sweetness of the pear, the tartness of the dried cranberries, and the caramelized edges of the Brussels sprouts make for smiling faces around my family table. For the best-tasting Brussels sprouts, bake them on a large rimmed baking sheet to ensure they have plenty of room to spread out.

Staffordshire, right in the middle of England, is a county famous for the invention of bone china, cute bull terriers. In harsh winters of years gone by, farmers in the area would grow oats rather than wheat and so the oatcake was born. They have a delicious natural malty sweetness that is traditionally topped with melted cheese and bacon and were traditionally sold directly from kitchen windows, how idyllic!

This dish is deceivingly simple, as long as you get the right ingredients, it can be executed for the home cook seamlessly. This salad started as a play on the classic “Cucumber, yogurt and smoked fish” combination, but at dinnertable in NYC, their team adds in a unique Japanese twist: mixing in sesame yogurt, marinated trout roe, and a seaweed (hijiki) dressing.

Here’s a quick and simple spin on traditional hummus from Chef Dakota Weiss, Executive Chef and Partner of Sweetfin Poké and Estrella in Los Angeles. “I love this Cauliflower Hummus because it’s so tasty and it’s EASY to make. It has the basics of what a traditional hummus consists of, but with an extra added bite from the cauliflower and it’s so creamy!”