Blog / Recipes

Recipes to share, tinker with, improvise, and make your own

Mother’s Day Cheese Blintzes & Strawberry Rhubarb Compote

Jackie Gordon Singing Chef - Mother’s Day Cheese Blintzes & Strawberry Rhubarb Compote

My mother’s main request of me this Mother’s Day was to PLEASE keep it simple. “I just want bagels, lox and cream cheese, to play Scrabble and watch Toy Story 3,” she said.

I rolled my eyes. She knows I hate simple.

I said, “I have to make something—how about blintz soufflé?” She lit up because she LOVES blintzes and this casserole style of making them is pretty simple. Done.

Then I thought, there’s no reason to take the easy way out since I wasn’t making anything else. So I offered to make real blintzes and she didn’t roll her eyes, so it was all good.

I like classic blintzes with a plain cheese filling on the inside, served with jam or fruit and sour cream. She found beautiful rhubarb at the market and adding strawberries was a natural and tasty progression.

The original recipe for Jewish cheese blintzes comes from Fran Zacharias of Munster, Indiana. Blintzes are similar to French crêpes, Polish nalesniki, Hungarian palacsinta and Serbian palachinke—thin pancakes that are rolled around various sweet or savory fillings. The difference is that blintz batter has twice the amount of eggs as crêpe batter.

The Diva That Made the Deviled Egg Egg

Jackie Gordon Singing Chef - The Diva That Made the Deviled Egg Egg

Once every couple of months a bunch of food lovers gather for Brooklyn Swappers where they trade homemade goods. You never know what these wonderfully creative cooks will be swapping: pickles, jams, sauces, chutneys, relishes, infused alcohols, teas, cakes, cookies, flavored salts, chocolates, candies, kombucha—it could be ANYTHING!

For Sunday’s brunch swap I made Salted Cinnamon Browned Butter Caramels.

There’s also a potluck, for which I believe I invented a new dish: the Deviled Egg Egg

The Diva That Made Peppermint Crusted Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies

Are you lazy? I definitely am… sometimes. But not when it comes to cooking and baking. These pinchably CUTE! cookies are a lil bit of a “love job” or even “love cookies” because there’s a bit of work in making them. Not complicated, but there are three definitive steps that you can do in one day or spread over several days. The dough is tender because you use powdered sugar and lots of butter. It’s not as tough as a standard shortbread or sugar cookie dough, but the texture is heavenly. You do need to be a little careful dipping them, but it’s totally worth it. When you love people, you make them “love” cookies.

The Diva That Made Bacon Wrapped Sweet Plantains with Lime, Garlic & Jalapeno Mojo

These rock! Liza de Guia is an inspiration. Not only does the lovely founder & chief storyteller of FOOD CURATED make rich and informative videos about passionate people who bring us incredible foods, but when she was on a holiday, she tweeted about eating bacon wrapped sweet plantains and bells went off in my head! Ding! Ding! I had to make them!

I decided that the sugar in the plantains and smoky goodness of the bacon would be DELISH with a spicy dipping sauce. I love the salty, garlic in oil condiment that is served in Latino restaurants would be a good place to start, but maybe too over-the-top for my guests. The lime and chilies and cilantro temper the garlic.

My guests flipped for these! YUM! YUM! YUM!

The Diva That Made Kiwifruit Ginger & Chili Jam

What would you do with 10 overripe kiwifruit? As many of you know, I go a little canning crazy at harvest time. This season, I made about fifteen different pickles, chutneys, relishes and sauces! ←Crazy diva! On the list were kiwifruit and red pepper pickles, which I thought would be adorable for the holidays. I found the recipe in Oded Schwartz’s excellent book,Preserving.

I put “10 hard unripe kiwifruit” on the shopping list when I sent my boyfriend to the store. Mistake! What I got was 10 very ripe kiwi-fruit and the excuse, “That was all they had.” You can only make pickles with unripe fruit so I went back to another store and got them and made the pickles.

What to do with the very ripe kiwifruit?

Diva Does Dukkah

Jackie Gordon Singing Chef - Diva Does Dukkah

I rediscovered “dukkah”, a delicious and highly versatile treat when I was back in Australia in August 2010. I have never made or even seen it on a menu here in the states. It’s easy to make and delicious to just eat with bread and fruity olive oil or to accent or spice up any number of dishes. It’s originally from Egypt and translated the word “dukkah” means to pound.