Shrimp with Butter and Garlic

My Favorite Dishes of 2018

I know it’s popular to do a rundown of the most popular recipes on a food blog, and I probably will do that, but I also wanted to highlight my personal favorites. These are new to me dishes that I’ve already made more than once this year.

Roasted Green Olives.

roast green olives with orange and rosemary

These are cooked with orange zest and juice, garlic slices, rosemary sprigs, olive oil and crushed red pepper flakes and served warm or room temperature. See the recipe for Roasted Green Olives.

Sweet Zucchini Pickles

Sweet Zucchini Pickles
Sweet Zucchini Pickles

Okay, I made these last year but didn’t post the recipe until this past spring. Since then, several friends have made multiple batches and I made two batches this summer. Get the recipe for Sweet Zucchini Pickles.

Raw Artichoke Salad

raw artichoke salad

I grow artichokes so have plenty to experiment with. This raw artichoke salad quickly became a favorite. See the recipe for Raw Artichoke Salad.

Pizza

broccoli rabe and sausage pizza

I make pizza almost every week and this year my favorite doughs alternated between a fast one (about 2 hours) and a slow one (about 18 hours). I also played around with new-to-me toppings and one of my favorites is broccoli rabe and Italian sausage. You can see the recipe for Jim Lahey’s slow pizza dough here as well as see some more creative pizza topping ideas.

Pureed Beets with Za’atar

You must try this dip! It’s vibrantly beautiful and wonderfully flavorful. It will instantly jazz up any table of appetizers. Get the recipe here.

Shrimp with Butter and Garlic

Shrimp with Butter and Garlic

This was from Dining In, by Alison Roman. If I remember correctly, I cooked these three times in 1 month–unheard for me to repeat a dish that many times but I kept wanting to share them with people. Go try it. It’s easy, fast and good. The recipe is here.

Sweet, Salty, Crunchy Kale Salad

my kale salad for lunch

This has been my lunch several times since I first found the recipe. It packs well, says my youngest, who also makes it and packs it up for her lunches. Chickpeas, dried cranberries, apples, walnuts, celery, kale… I’m getting hungry again just writing about it. Go here and make it!

Ina Garten’s Tri Color Salad

Ina garten's tricolor salad

This salad made an appearance at both my Thanksgivings. It was just the right note of brightness and tartness for heavier than normal meals. It iuncludes argula, radicchio and endive, plus oranges, shallots and kalamata olives. I’m going to make it again soon because I also think it will be great in January when many of us are trying to eat a little lighter. The recipe is here.

Happy New Year!

I look forward to cooking many more new recipes in 2019 and will share as many as I can here. The blog is over 15 years old (and the old web site was started a couple of years before that) and has gone through many changes over that time. The older recipes had no pictures because that wasn’t a thing when I started blogging. Now it’s easy to snap a picture on my phone! I’m mainly cooking for just one or two these days, except for family dinners and holidays, so that’s changed as well. It will be exciting to see what changes the new year brings.

Cooking on Christmas Eve

Happy New Year!

Ellen


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