Arnaboldi Recipes

Strawberry Shortcake With Lemon-Pepper Syrup

Here’s a take on the perfect summer birthday cake: a buttery, vanilla-scented spongecake doused with ripe strawberries and fresh whipped cream, gilded with a spicy-tart syrup to cut the sweetness. After the cake cools, you’ll cut it into two layers and put them back together with the sliced strawberries, which have been resting in some sugar and lemon zest, your whipped cream and the lemon-pepper syrup. Then top the whole thing with more whipped cream and serve it up. It’s a couple of hours of your time, resulting in a treat appropriate to welcome anyone’s next trip around the sun.

Molten Chocolate Crackle Pie

Molten Chocolate Crackle Pie…my new favorite Thanksgiving pie that rivals all others. A super simple chocolate pie made with eggs, cocoa powder, a touch of coffee, and sweet chocolate chunks. All baked together until puffed on top, but warm and gooey in the center. The crust is buttery, flaky, and sprinkled with sweet vanilla sugar. While the filling inside is warm, fudgy, and almost molten-like. Delicious when served with a dollop of vanilla hazelnut whipped cream. It’s the perfect Thanksgiving pie. Or maybe just your Friday night dessert!

Halloumi With Corn, Cherry Tomatoes and Basil

Seared cubes of halloumi get melty and soft on their insides and dark brown and a little crisp on the surface, making it almost impossible not to devour them all as they come out of the pan. But try to resist, because they’re even better tossed with a quick sauté of summer corn and tomatoes, seasoned with basil. Slivers of red onions, folded in raw at the end, add crunch and sweetness, while a squeeze of fresh lime makes everything tangy and fresh. Although this dish is at its most sublime made with fresh summer corn and ripe tomatoes, it’s nearly as good in winter made with frozen corn. Serve it for a light, meatless dinner or a substantial side dish with roasted or grilled chicken or fish.

Cranberry Tart

This is a tart not just in shape but also in flavor, because the berries remain whole, bound in a lightly candied filling. It would provide a brightly refreshing finale to a holiday meal.

Baked Chicken Meatballs

These Baked Chicken Meatballs are the BEST! The perfect addition to any meal or to eat right on their own. Bonus: they’re meal-prep friendly to stock up throughout the week!

Mango Lassi Ice Pops

Ina Garten’s Parmesan-Roasted Broccoli

Maple Pecan Pie

This delicious pecan pie recipe is naturally sweetened with maple syrup (no corn syrup!) and tastes so delicious.

Cold Soba with Cucumbers, Watercress, and Sesame

The thrust of this recipe is just cooked noodles tossed in sauce, topped with toasted sesame seeds and veggies. It can be modified with different vegetable toppings and it makes great leftovers. I thoroughly enjoyed the fresh and slightly spicy combo of Persian cucumbers with watercress, and I’d want to stick to vegetables that contribute similar strengths to the dish.

Spicy Poblano, Black Bean, and Quinoa Enchiladas

Think bubbling-cheesy enchiladas layered with smoky charred poblanos, hearty black beans, and fluffy quinoa. The sauce soaks into warm tortillas, the edges crisp up, and every bite hits that cozy, fall-into-winter comfort zone.

Coconut Popcorn Chicken with Sweet Thai Chili Lime Sauce

This coconut “popcorn” chicken is breaded in sweet coconut, oven-baked, then dipped in a spicy, tangy Thai chili lime sauce. Add a creamy honey mustard sauce for an extra dip…you’ll be so glad you did! This is what I call at-home takeout. And yes, these popcorn chicken bites are even healthier than takeout because they’re baked, not fried…plus so much tastier. Serve with steamed rice or oven-baked french fries and veggies for an easy Thai inspired dinner that’s different, sweet, spicy, and full of flavor.

Oven-Roasted Chicken Shawarma

Here is a recipe for an oven-roasted version of the flavorful street-side classic usually cooked on a rotisserie. It is perfect for an evening with family and friends. Serve with pita and tahini, chopped cucumbers and tomatoes, some olives, chopped parsley, some feta, fried eggplant, hummus swirled with harissa, rice or rice pilaf. You can make the white sauce that traditionally accompanies it by cutting plain yogurt with mayonnaise and lemon juice, and flecking it with garlic. For a red to offset it, simmer ketchup with crushed red pepper and a hit of red-wine vinegar until it goes syrupy and thick, or just use your favorite hot sauce instead.

Maduros (Fried Sweet Plantains)

Tender in the middle and crisp at the edges, maduros, or sweet fried plantains, are served as a side dish throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Plantains change color as they ripen: They are firm when green and unripe, then soften as they turn yellow, and eventually, black. Like bananas, plantains develop more sugar as time passes. For the sweetest maduros, use blackened plantains — they have the most sugar, and will yield a more caramelized result. If you can only find yellow ones at the store, buy them in advance and be prepared to wait over a week for them to fully ripen. They’re worth it.

Sheet-Pan Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Here’s a clever trick for making a big batch of pancakes that will save you from spending all morning at the stove: Bake them all at once on a sheet pan. In this recipe, the batter comes together like biscuit dough by cutting the cold butter into the flour before adding the liquid. This cuts down on gluten production, which means fluffier pancakes. For wonderfully crisp edges, heat the sheet pan in advance, so the batter starts cooking as soon as it’s poured into the pan. If you like, you can stir a teaspoon of vanilla extract into the batter, sprinkle it with finely chopped fruit, or mix and match toppings to please the crowd.

Vegan Chocolate Pudding With Cinnamon and Chile

This winner of a pudding, made with silken tofu, takes about as much time to make as hot chocolate. And in fact the combination of cinnamon, chile and chocolate recalls Mexican hot chocolate. Use the highest quality chocolate — semisweet or bittersweet, please — you can lay your hands on. After all, it's the flavor of the chocolate, not the flavor of the tofu, that will dominate. The texture is almost unbelievably good.

Everyday Pancakes

The basic pancake is made from a simple batter of eggs, flour, milk and baking powder for leavening. You can use different types of flour if you want to experiment with whole wheat or buckwheat. And you can also add fruit to the mixture. You might also enjoy this video of the recipe, which walks through a few variations. The batter can be made from scratch in about the same time it takes to make toast. The most time-consuming part of making pancakes, of course, is cooking them. But that time is so short you should consider these an everyday convenience food, not a special-occasion feast. Cook this recipe a few times and it may become part of your weekly routine.

Baked Apple Cider Doughnuts

This recipe yields the classic flavor of baked cider doughnuts. For the most traditional result, a doughnut pan is recommended, but you can also bake these off in a muffin pan.

Honey-Apple Bread Pudding

Soft and cakelike challah makes for a deluxe bread pudding. This one is shot through with cubes of apples caramelized in honey, then topped with sliced almonds for crunch. You can assemble the pudding up to two days ahead of time and store it, covered, in the refrigerator. Then pop it into the oven an hour or two before you want to serve it, adding a few minutes onto the baking time. It’s best served warm, when the apples are at their most jamlike. But leftovers served cold from the fridge make a terrific breakfast.

Curried Butternut and Coconut Gratin

Vegetarian Skillet Chili

If you keep canned beans, tomatoes, onion and garlic in your pantry, you can make this dish on any weeknight without having to shop. The pickled onions aren’t strictly necessary, but they are simple to make and add a welcome tangy contrast to the beans. Pickled peppers are a fine substitute. If you have a bell pepper or jalapeño or two, chop them up and sauté them with the onions. And if you want to be fancy, grate the zest off the lime before juicing for the pickles, and stir it into the sour cream.