Sangak (Persian Flatbread)
The first time I ate sangak I was standing on a sidewalk in a cloud of flour, eating it straight off the paper it came wrapped in. A bakery near a friend's place sold it by the sheet, still warm, dimpled all over from the stones it baked on. I…
Cherry Tomato Sauce
This is the sauce I make every time I have cherry tomatoes that need to be used. Two pints, three tablespoons of olive oil, four cloves of garlic, salt and pepper. That's it. Twenty-five minutes. The cherry tomato sauce is what happens when you let small tomatoes cook long enough…
Fiesta Cowboy Caviar Cheese Log
Most cheese balls are mild, inoffensive, and forgotten by the time the main dish comes out. This one is not that. The cowboy caviar cheese log takes everything that makes cowboy caviar worth eating — the black beans, the corn, the jalapeño heat, the cilantro, the hit of lime —…
Brownie Batter Cookies
The doneness test for these cookies is not a toothpick. It's not the edges pulling from the pan. It's not a finger press. It's whether the tops are still glossy. When brownie batter cookies come out of the oven, the surface goes from wet-looking and shiny to matte. That's the…
Hot Cocoa Cookies
I pulled the first batch out of the oven and pressed a marshmallow into each one while they were still hot, then slid the pan back under the broiler. Ninety seconds later I had to explain to my kid why we couldn't eat them yet. It's a fair complaint. These…
Cinnamon Roll Cheesecake Cookies
I've made a lot of stuffed cookies. Most of them disappoint — you bite in expecting something and find mostly dough with a faint hint of what the filling was supposed to be. These don't do that. The cinnamon roll cheesecake cookies have four things happening at once: a soft,…
Sweet Potato Honeybun Cake
This is the cake I make when I have leftover mashed sweet potato and no plan for it. Two cups of sweet potato go into the batter along with a box of yellow cake mix and a box of instant vanilla pudding, and what comes out is one of the…
Candied Sweet Potatoes with Marshmallows
My grandmother never measured anything for this dish. She'd peel four sweet potatoes, slice them, pour some orange juice over them, drop butter in — "enough butter" — and shake brown sugar over the top until it looked right. I asked her once how much cinnamon and she held up…
