It’s Time to Cook and Eat at Home!

It’s Time to Cook and Eat at Home! Explore recipes, ingredients, cuisines, techniques and more and learn how you can cook delicious food and eat at home.  Learn how to use ingredients, some familiar and some new and different, to prepare and enjoy delicious food at home.  Our recipes are easy to follow and we’re confident that you’ll be happy and impressed with your results; many include notes on ingredients and technique to assist in their preparation.  Stay connected and join our email list to be advised of new recipes. We do not share nor sell your data with anyone. Please see our privacy page for more information.

Newly Added Recipes

We’re always cooking up something good!  Explore our newly added recipes below.  Looking for something in particular? Use our Search feature above or select the I Need Help tab to send us your question or request.

Pickle Brined Pork Chops

Pickle Brined Pork Chops
Pickle Brined Pork Chops makes excellent use of leftover bread & butter pickle juice and other seasonings to create a tasty brine marinade for bone-in pork chops.  While we favor sirloin cut chops, the recipe works fine with center cut pork chops too, just be sure to select pork chops of at least ½-inch thickness. …
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Savory Sweet Cauliflower Rice

Savory Sweet Cauliflower Rice
Savory Sweet Cauliflower Rice uses Calabrian chilis for a savory, spicy element and sun-dried tomatoes add sweet balance with a bit of umami to this great side dish. Using an orange cauliflower, as pictured, adds even more color to this already colorful, flavor-packed dish.  With only six ingredients, Savory Sweet Cauliflower Rice is easy to…
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Pumpkin and Rye Whiskey Pie

Pumpkin and Rye Whiskey Pie
Pumpkin and Rye Whiskey Pie adds rye whiskey’s spicy, fruity flavor notes to silky pumpkin pie, yielding a more adult but not boozy version of an old favorite.  American rye whisky, which must be made with at least 51% rye grain, is less sweet and with a lighter body than it’s more well-known cousin, bourbon,…
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Pork and Imitation Crab Stir Fry

Pork and Imitation Crab Stir Fry
Pork and Imitation Crab Stir Fry offers a great combination of land and sea proteins in a tasty and attractive stir fry. It is easy to prepare and relatively inexpensive. You can use pork stew meat or boneless pork loin chops for the pork.  Imitation crab, sometimes referred to as krab, is not actually crab…
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Brandied Beef Tri Tip

Brandied Beef Tri Tip
Brandied Beef Tri Tip roast is a great way to make this cut of beef shine. Tri Tip, as it’s popularly known, comes from the bottom tip of the sirloin.  It derives its name from its triangle shape and that it is at the very bottom tip of the sirloin. Tri tip is rich in…
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Green Peppercorn Brandy Cream Sauce

Green Peppercorn Brandy Cream Sauce
The key to Green Peppercorn Brandy Cream Sauce is using the juices of the protein as an integral part of the sauce. A variety of meats lend themselves to rich and flavorful Green Peppercorn Brandy Cream Sauce. If you want to “do it up”, use filet mignon and a French cognac; for a weeknight dinner,…
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Korean Flanken Short Ribs

Korean Flanken Short Ribs
Korean Flanken Short Ribs makes great use of less-familiar flanken short ribs in a gochujang-forward marinade/sauce. This recipe utilizes the flanken style of short rib, a thin cut about 1/2-inch thick, which cuts across the rib bones, so each slice contains a few pieces of bone. This is a popular cut for short ribs for…
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Cod with Turmeric and Garam Masala

Cod with Turmeric and Garam Masala
Cod with Turmeric and Garam Masala offers a fresh and flavorful take on pan-fried cod fillets.  Turmeric brings a bright, golden color and garam masala contributes warm, deep, aromatic essence to this easy to prepare recipe without adding any spicy or hot element.  With its short preparation and cooking time, Cod with Turmeric and Garam…
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Lenten Recipes

For those of us who are of the Catholic faith, Lent has arrived.  A time for reflection and dietary restrictions, our Lenten recipes offer meal options for observant Catholics and others seeking delicious dishes to prepare and share.

Tuna Tapenade

Tuna Tapenade
Tapenade has its origins in Provence; most recipes have capers, olives and anchovies as their basic ingredients, blended together with good olive oil. Tuna Tapenade riffs on the classic tapenade using good quality tuna as its main ingredient.  It is a proven crowd-pleaser, in fact, it is our single most requested appetizer from friends and…
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Cream Cheese Celery Sticks

Cream Cheese Celery Sticks
Cream Cheese Celery Sticks are a mid-century modern appetizer.  This classic would have originally not been seasoned, just the cream cheese and the celery, as Vito’s Mom prepared it countless times.  We’ve decided to update this classic appetizer by using a variety of seasonings to top it; “Fancy Shmancy”, as Vito’s Mom would say.  You…
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Castelvetrano Olives Marinara Sauce

Castelvetrano Olives Marinara Sauce
Bright, colorful Castelvetrano Olives Marinara Sauce brings together a few ingredients for a super flavorful, eye-catching pasta sauce.  A ubiquitous snack in Italy, sweet Castelvetrano olives, with their bright green, some say Kermit green, color, come from Castelvetrano, Sicily, and are made from the nocerella del belice olive variety. Their meaty yet buttery flesh and…
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Hearty Puttanesca Pasta Sauce

Hearty Puttanesca Pasta Sauce
Hearty Puttanesca Pasta Sauce is our take on a Neapolitan classic.  While staying mostly true to the classic version, Hearty Puttanesca Pasta Sauce replaces canned tomatoes with tomato paste, yielding a thicker, heartier sauce which really clings to the pasta.  The addition of toasted pine nuts, a subtle and rich nuance, brings unexpected yet wonderful…
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Grilled Pasta alla Norma

Grilled Pasta alla Norma
Lush and smoky, Grilled Pasta alla Norma, is our take on this classic Sicilian dish, said to be a favorite of the 19th century composer Vincenzo Bellini and named for his greatest opera heroine.  Bellini was a native of Catania, Sicily as was Vito’s paternal grandmother.  Here we grill the eggplant, yielding a deep, smoky…
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Roasted Peppers Italian Style

Roasted Peppers
Roasted Peppers are very tasty, when combined with garlic and olive oil, they are magic. In many Italian-American households roasting peppers is a long-held family tradition; Vito’s Mom was no exception and we got to enjoy them many times as part of an antipasto before a holiday meal and sometimes along with lunch or in…
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Caesar Salad

Caesar Salad
Our Caesar Salad is thick, creamy and rich with a great balance of garlic to the other ingredients.  We substitute fish sauce for the traditional anchovy fillets; fish sauce is made from anchovies, is much easier to use and you don’t have an opened tin of anchovy fillets to deal with. We strongly recommend splurging…
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Broccoli al Limone

Broccoli al Limone
Broccoli al Limone or Broccoli with Lemon presents broccoli in fresh and tasty way. It can be served as an appetizer or salad or as a side dish for roasted meats, such as Savory Grilled Pork Roast, and poultry dishes like our Harissa Spiced Chicken. Broccoli al Limone was served often by Vito's parents and…
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Warm, hearty and wonderful…

Days are getting longer but temperatures are still cold and the weather inclement.  It’s time for comfort food! Our cooking adventure has moved inside, filling your home with mouth-watering aromas and delicious meals. Check out our stews, chilis, curries, and gumbos recipes and make something warm, hearty and wonderful as the cold days continue.

Ropa Vieja

Ropa Vieja
Ropa Vieja is the national dish of Cuba.  Beef is browned and then braised in seasoned, tomato-inflected broth and wine until it falls apart.  Likely of Spanish origin and brought to the Americas, Ropa Vieja means “old clothes” in Spanish. Legend has it that a penniless old man of good faith had nothing to feed…
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Thai Meatballs in Red Curry

Thai Meatballs in Red Curry
Thai Meatballs in Red Curry combines moist seasoned pork and beef meatballs, full of Thai flavors, with a vegetable-filled red curry enriched with coconut cream.  Comforting and refreshing, this curry hits many of the right flavor notes of Thai cuisine.  Start with an appetizer of our Sicilian Orange Salad or our Wilted Arugula Salad, then…
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Grilled Meats Creole Gumbo

Grilled Meats Creole Gumbo
Grilled Meats Creole Gumbo is a West Coast take on a Louisiana classic.  Made with a roux, flavorful and hearty Grilled Meats Creole Gumbo incorporates the “Holy Trinity” ingredients of Louisiana’s Creole and Cajun cuisines, along with okra, the all-important seasonings, crab meat and shrimp. When making the roux, especially if you've never made one…
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Southern Inspired Pork Stew

Southern Inspired Pork Stew
Southern Inspired Pork Stew combines well-browned pork, seasonings and two staples of Southern U.S. cooking, black-eyed peas and okra, into a delicious and hearty stew.  The different ingredients combine their flavors and textures into a chunky but silky stew perfect for cooler weather dining.  Chipotle peppers in adobo add a subtle, spicy, smoky element to…
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Cooking should be inspired and bring you joy.  Culinary inspiration can spring from many sources.  Childhood memories of family get-togethers and at-home meals, lovingly prepared. Travel, a particular favorite of mine, to places some familiar, some foreign and exotic.  Meals taken at great restaurants, neighborhood joints, stand-up only kiosks, boardwalk stands, drive-ins, and falling-down fishing shacks on beaches.  Holiday gatherings, small and large, with family, friends and strangers too.  We will share what inspires us and hope it will inspire you too.  Now it’s time to cook and eat at home!

So, let’s start with a few questions for you.  Are you already a home chef of modest ability who wants to expand and refresh their repertoire of recipes and kitchen techniques?  Are you a cooking novice for whom the kitchen represents uncharted territory, a terra incognita of untold dangers and as-yet imagined delights?  Are you a confident master of the kitchen who is looking for fresh ideas?  Are you perhaps a bit of all three?  You are in the right place! Now it’s time to cook and eat at home!