Nuts - quick and easy recipes - page 44

CHOW.com asked chefs from a handful of our favorite restaurants to create better versions of seasonal lattes, with quality ingredients. Here’s former Spot Dessert Bar chef Pichet Ong’s interpretation. It’s a cross between a pudding and an eggnog latte, with condensed milk foam and a hint of passion fruit.

This is Richard Boccato and Giuseppe Gonzalez’s take on a classic tiki cocktail, and is the namesake for their neo-tiki bar Painkiller in New York City.

Charoset, a diplike Passover dish made with fruit and ground nuts, symbolizes the mortar that the enslaved Israelites used to bond bricks. This Ashkenazic version, containing apples, walnuts, and sweet wine, comes to us from the mother of our colleague Leslie Jonath. This dish was featured as part of our Recipes for Passover photo gallery. Game plan: Though charoset is traditionally served as part of the Passover Seder, it’s also appropriate for a Rosh Hashanah meal.

A roasted nut oil can give your vinaigrette a mild, earthy flavor—a nice change from bland vegetable oil or sometimes-overpowering olive oil. What to buy: We like the La Tourangelle brand of roasted nut oils like this walnut oil. Avoid brands that use refined nut oils—they don’t taste like the nuts they came from. Store nut oils in the refrigerator or freezer to prevent rancidity. Game plan: If you’re making the dressing ahead of time, add the minced chives just before serving.

The simple act of griddling a PB&J sandwich with lots of butter changes the whole thing, making the outside crispy and the inside warm and extra gooey. What to buy: We took the purist route here with peanut butter and strawberry jam, but feel free to swap in your own combination of nut butter and jelly.

Kamut contains about 30 percent more protein than other wheat-based grains, and with its naturally crunchy texture we figured it would be the perfect base for a healthy granola that won’t get soggy in milk. Walnuts add even more crunch to this granola. What to buy: Rolled kamut flakes, not to be confused with kamut berries, can be found at health food stores, gourmet grocery stores, or online.

This chopped salad is a departure from your average leafy green salad, made instead with chunky, crunchy chopped vegetables. Sweet snap peas, cucumber, and carrots are cut into bite-sized pieces and tossed with cilantro, scallions, and a spicy Thai-inspired dressing for a healthy and flavorful side dish. Add some grilled shrimp or leftover roasted chicken and serve over rice noodles for a healthy weeknight meal or easy packed lunch. What to buy: Look for chile-garlic paste in the Asian sectio...

Dicing raw zucchini and yellow squash for a salad is a fast way to use up these plentiful summer vegetables. Toss them with some red bell pepper, grapes, pine nuts, chopped mint, and a Moroccan-inspired dressing to round out this healthy dish. Paired with a grilled rib-eye or a hearty piece of fish, this salad adds plenty of flavor to a summer meal with minimal time in the kitchen. What to buy: Look for preserved lemons in gourmet grocery stores or online; or you can make your own.

Don’t let the long list of ingredients scare you, because this chili is very easy to make. Once you sauté the vegetables, it’s just a matter of dumping in all the spices, then adding the turkey, broth, and beans. The chili needs to cook for about half an hour, then the secret ingredient—chocolate—is added to give the dish a little depth. If you want more spice, add extra jalapeños.

Like banana bread, zucchini bread is an easy quick bread to put together, without the need for any fancy appliances. Just mix the dry ingredients together in one bowl, the wet in another, combine the two, and pour the batter into a bread pan. After about an hour in the oven, and a little time to cool, you’ll have a tender, sweet, flavorful bread to enjoy for breakfast, teatime, or a snack. Special equipment: You’ll need a metal 9-by-5-inch loaf pan for this recipe.

Adding a bit of pumpkin purée, cinnamon, and nutmeg to a basic cream cheese frosting gives it holiday appeal. It’s also easy to make: Just beat butter and cream cheese together in a mixer, then add powdered sugar and spices, and throw in the pumpkin at the end. Use it to frost pumpkin cupcakes, carrot cake, or ginger cake.

Though braising sounds like a time-consuming effort, this recipe from Ana Sortun, chef and owner of the Mediterranean restaurant Oleana in Cambridge, Massachusetts, can be pulled off in less than 30 minutes. The mix of Mediterranean ingredients like anchovy, raisins, capers, olives, pine nuts, and lemon lends tons of bright flavor and unexpected complexity without extra fat or calories.

Often used as a cold remedy, a hot toddy is at once delicious and invigorating. This take on the classic receives a boost of flavor from honey liqueur and apple brandy, for a toddy that’s sure to leave everyone warm and a bit toasty. A unique blend of highland honey and fine spirits, it can be found at well-stocked liquor stores or online. If you can’t find it, high-quality clover honey can be substituted.

This recipe is a great way to use up leftover Thanksgiving turkey when you just can’t eat another turkey-and-gravy sandwich. Mix diced turkey with tart apples, sweet grapes, creamy mayo, and crunchy walnuts and celery. Serve for lunch atop leaves of butter lettuce, or stuff it into delicate French pastry shells as an elegant appetizer.

This make-at-home version of a coffee-shop pumpkin spice latte gets bonus points for using actual pumpkin, plus it’s spiked with rum. Plan ahead and make a batch of Homemade Pumpkin Spice Liqueur. When it’s ready, brew some coffee, add the liqueur, and top with a dollop of brown-sugar whipped cream and freshly grated nutmeg. Serve steaming in mugs with Spiced Pumpkin-Pecan Pancakes to reach pumpkin brunch critical mass.

Instead of whisking the ingredients by hand or hauling out the heavy stand mixer, let the blender do all the work in this easy eggnog recipe. Blend eggs, egg yolks, and sugar together until the sugar has dissolved, then add milk, rum, and bourbon. Finish by blending in heavy cream, and then let the eggnog chill in the refrigerator for an hour so the flavors come together. Serve with ice and freshly grated nutmeg on top.