Get the latest recipes from Scrumptious http://www.grouprecipes.com/people/scrumptious My mom is a master of kitchen magic. On nights when I would look into the fridge and pantry and see a barren wasteland, incapable of supporting human life, she would look and see… dinner. One of the meals she would make appear seemingly from nowhere was Cottage Cheese Pancakes. This simple dish was a favorite in part because I loved to beat the egg whites until they stood up in fluffy peaks, and in part because it tastes really, really good. (Recipe is originally from her old, well-worn, hippie-looking copy of the "Tassahara Bread Book.") http://www.grouprecipes.com/27144/cottage-cheese-pancakes.html My boyfriend often brings home bagfuls of day-old croissants and morning buns from the fancy French breakfast place where he sometimes works. It feels just too sinful to munch on croissants day after day, so I created this recipe as a way to use them all up in one go, and then share the wealth, as it were, with others. This makes a super-luxurious party/potluck dish, but I like the recipe because it doesn't go crazy with butter and cream like so many bread puddings. The brandy and raisins are optional - I include them because I have a big bottle of cheap brandy around to use for cooking, but I wouldn't go out and buy brandy just to make this dish. You could also mix the raisins into the pudding. I'm usually doubling the recipe below to deal with at least twice this many croissants, but they are expensive to buy fresh, so I've pared the recipe down from a 9x13 pan to an 8x8 for folks who don't have a steady supply of free pastries coming in! http://www.grouprecipes.com/21872/croissant-bread-pudding-with-brandy-raisins.html This is another wonderful recipe from my current obsession, "5 Spices, 50 Dishes," an Indian cookbook by Ruta Kahate. It is a bit more elaborate than I usually like to make, as it involves more than one pot *and* calls for the use of a food processor. It tastes fantastic, however, and I feel incredibly indulgent and yet incredibly healthy while eating it, thanks to my substitution of yogurt for the cream called for in the recipe. This is a terrific way to powerload those iron-rich superfood greens! The original recipe states that other combos of greens may be used, like mustard or chard, but to avoid collards. (I highly recommend the beet greens as the ruby-colored stalks add flecks of gorgeousness!) If you do want to go full-fat and use cream, the original recipe calls for only 1/4 cup, not 1/2 cup as I used with the yogurt. http://www.grouprecipes.com/19894/punjabi-creamed-greens.html Baingan Bartha, a smooth, savory Indian eggplant dish, is an addiction in our household. My boyfriend and I could both eat a mountain of it! We found this recipe online at www.theveggietable.com (adapted from Madhur Jaffrey's "World Vegetarian") and modified it to suit ourselves. It came out perfectly - we ended up making it several times in one week. As my boyfriend's father said when we fed him our leftovers, "Hey! This tastes like Indian food!" No better compliment for two neophyte Indian-cuisine cooks. The recipe is a great one for making with two cooks - one to man the grill and the other to prep the rest of the ingredients while the eggplant is cooking. I generally hate recipes that require a grill (because I don't usually have access to one) so I have included instructions in the "Alterations" section for making this using the oven. NOTE ON SERVING SIZE: The original recipe said it served four using the ingredient amounts I have given below. Perhaps we are piggies, or perhaps our eggplants didn't yield as much because there were many small ones rather than one large one, but, either way, the two of us finished this off in one sitting, and so I would probably always double this recipe in order to have leftovers! http://www.grouprecipes.com/19879/smoky-indian-eggplant-baingan-bartha.html This simple dal is easy to make and incredibly delicious, and satisfies my perpetual simple-weeknight-vegetarian protein quest. The recipe is from my new favorite cookbook, "5 spices, 50 dishes" by Ruta Kahate, and originally called for yellow split peas (and hence had different cooking directions), but the version below reflects how I adapted it for red lentils, which were what I had on hand. http://www.grouprecipes.com/19103/everyday-red-lentil-dal.html This recipe for clafouti, a classic French dessert, is a potluck staple of mine and one of my top most requested recipes. It is surprisingly low in sugar, relying mostly on the sweetness of the fruit for flavor, and it's also a wonderful, easy way to use an abundance of summer stone fruits - plums, peaches, nectarines, and the like - without the hassle of making a pie. I've never met anyone who doesn't like this dish - including people who hate custards, people who hate sweets, and people who hate just about everything! This recipe has been adapted from an Epicurious one I found online - I've converted it to a One-Pot recipe so it is easy to make and easy to clean up after. I've also included a sulfite-free variation in the "Alterations" section for people who can't have wine. http://www.grouprecipes.com/19100/french-summer-fruit-clafouti.html This recipe is very slightly adapted from one of my all-time favorite cookbooks, "Asian Vegetables" by Sara Deseran. My change: I found the sauce a little weak on flavor, so I upped the flavoring amounts. NOTE: There seems to be some interchangeable-naming confusion out there between "pea shoots" and "pea sprouts." The dish in the photo was made with small, sprout-like shoots, and the recipe should work with any type of pea shoot or sprout, and would work with something like baby spinach as well. http://www.grouprecipes.com/17342/pea-shoots-stir-fried-with-garlic.html Using a couple of tips from the geniuses at Cook's Illustrated, I was finally able to achieve super smooth, luscious sorbet with no hint of iciness or graininess. The photo doesn't do justice to how perfect the texture of this sorbet was, because it melted under the light I was using to photograph it! The two secrets are to use the correct proportion of fruit to sugar and to add a tablespoon of vodka - the flavor of the alcohol disappears completely, leaving behind a silky texture instead. http://www.grouprecipes.com/16470/incredibly-smooth-strawberry-sorbet.html I love chard, especially rainbow chard and red chard. I think it is gorgeous. That's why I got sick of recipes that started "Trim off stalks and discard..." The stalks are the most beautiful part! But they aren't that tasty if you just steam 'em. That's why I fiddled around until I came up with this easy recipe for perfect chard that uses the whole plant and keeps that gorgeous color. If you have only ever steamed or boiled your greens, you will be very pleasantly surprised at how simultaneously sweet and savory chard can be. http://www.grouprecipes.com/16173/perfect-chard.html When I was ten I lived for a summer in Provence, in the South of France, with a French family. This simple but very fun-to-eat egg dish was my favorite meal, and it became my mom's favorite, too, when she came to visit. There is a special utensil used for cutting the tops off of the eggs, and, when we left to go to the train station, my host-mom triumphantly presented one to my mom and me as a parting gift. It's not necessary to have egg cups and tiny spoons and egg cutters (and substitutions are suggested below) but it sure makes everything more fun! The key to the dish is the contrast between the hot egg, the warm toast, and the cold butter, so make sure your butter is spreadable but still cool. P.S. Did you know there is a wikipedia entry for "egg timer?" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_timer) Is there anything that isn't in there? http://www.grouprecipes.com/16088/oeufs-a-la-coque.html