Tamale Soup

Who can resist a tamale dumpling? Not us! Inspired by Rick Bayless's Chipotle Beans with Masa "Gnocchi" we decided to give these little cuties a spice makeover and pop them into a belly warming chicken soup. We dubbed it Tamale Soup after the first bite because it has all the goodness of a tamale, but in soup form. It is a hearty crowd pleasing soup with bold flavors, perfect for game day or family get togethers. Slow cooked chicken thighs seasoned with plenty of our Adobo spice made a savory base for the little masa dumplings. We infused the dough with a healthy measure of our Chorizo Bomb for a big bite of flavor, and just like tamales, you can't take just one bite!

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Pumpkin Pie with Apple Butter & Candied Ginger Streusel

This is spiced pumpkin pie is one to love! It's more than minimalist but doesn't try too hard, pleasing both those who love the time honored classic versions and those who want something a little more interesting. Combining apple butter and pumpkin makes the most of falls harvest and the ginger and walnuts in the streusel are a delightful complement. And you can't go wrong with our original twist on Pumpkin Pie Spice, with a hint of orange and a pinch of cayenne, this blend never falls flat. Enjoy!

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Dawn's Apple Cranberry Pie

This is not your average apple pie. Dawn's apple cranberry pie takes an All-American classic for a spin, with cranberries and currants soaked in fragrant liqueur and seasoned with Ras el Hanout. This seasonal and festive fruit combination makes a great addition to any holiday table. When making the recipe, be sure to macerate the apples with sugar and spices for a few hours. This step is key to getting the perfect texture and flavor infusion! You can use your favorite homemade or store bought pie crust for this recipe, including gluten-free.

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Rabbit in a Clay Pot

We love cookbooks, and this cookbook is a staff favorite. Kachka: A Return to Russian Cooking by Portland chef Bonnie Frumkin Morales. Her acclaimed Portland restaurant Kachka celebrates the vivid world of Russian cuisine, with an emphasis on locally sourced ingredients, and is changing the way America thinks about Russian food. Her cookbook does the same, while updating and modernizing Russian cuisine without losing its spirit and traditions. In Kachka, you'll find everything from ingenious vodka infusions to vibrant pickles and pillowy dumplings and even more delicious sweets. First and foremost, she considers this more of a cookbook of Soviet-era cooking and foods from the former USSR, and not necessarily Russian. While always starting with a family recipe, these are her interpretations. Kachka challenges the assumption that Russian food is bland, boring and lacking in variety, and that "soul food" transcends cuisines and cultures, to become "soulful". Current food trends such as pickling, fermentation, bone broths and alcohol infusions are the norm in this cuisine. Most of the creative vodka infusions in the book and restaurant started out as babushka health remedies, and her anecdotes will have you laughing out loud, while the vibrant photographs will have your stomach growling. This "Rabbit in a Clay Pot" is just one example of a simple, yet elegant recipe included in Kachka. From the author: "There are dozens of classic dishes that get cooked in smetana. To the uninitiated, braising in cultured dairy just sounds wrong. But it's magic. And while the smetana can work its voodoo on the rabbit all on its own, I like cramming in a heady amount of garlic and porcinis, and then balancing all that earthy intensity with the sharp-sweet punch of sour cherries. Serve with draniki (potato pancakes). Or, if you're looking for a quick shortcut, add some potatoes right to the braise for a one-pot meal. Having trouble tracking down rabbit hindquarters? You can modify this recipe to work with chicken thighs. Simply cook the smetana braising sauce for about an hour on its own at 350°F before adding the chicken thighs, then reduce the heat to 250°F and braise for another hour."

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Chow Fun - lemongrass sausage, pea vines, mint

Created by James Beard Best Chef-nominee Rachel Yang, who with her husband, Seif Chirchi, owns three restaurants in Seattle (Joule, Trove, and Revel) and one in Portland (Revelry). My Rice Bowl - Korean cooking outside the lines is a cookbook with recipes taken from her Korean upbringing, but then influenced by various cultures and cuisines that she's been exposed to from around the world. She has taken the food memories from her childhood in Korea and added the global flavors she loves, as well as the culinary influence from her previous restaurant work (Per Se, Alain Ducasse). This has resulted in a unique and authentic fusion of food. In My Rice Bowl, she thoughtfully combines different flavors together and results in making Korean flavors more accessible to everyone: “It’s all about how I kind of take my traditional Korean palate and knowledge and then how I make it my own here in America…We like to think of it as unexpected and delicious first, and Korean second (or maybe even further down the line).” In the cookbook you’ll find favorites like the restaurants’ kimchi recipe but, also dishes such as seaweed noodles with crab and crème fraîche, tahini-garlic grilled pork belly, fried cauliflower with miso bagna cauda, chipotle-spiked pad thai, Korean-taco pickles, and the ultimate Korean fried chicken (served with peanut brittle shards for extra crunch). This book exemplifies cross-cultural cooking at its most gratifying, such as this take on Chow Fun. From the lemongrass sausage to the pea vines to the fresh mint. It's sure to satisfy your stomach and dazzle your taste buds.From the author: "With their light texture, rice-based chow fun noodles (sometimes spelled shao fen) are a natural match for the springy, green flavor of home made lemongrass sausage. Tossed with a loose mint and cilantro pesto, baby peas, and pea vines, this Trove favorite is the antithesis of a heavy noodle dish. We top it with our version of togarashi, the traditionally Japanese spice mixture that we blend with dried orange zest, to add just a hint of heat.Look for the wide, flat chow fun noodles in the produce section or the refrigerated section of a large Asian grocery store. Although they're sometimes sold already cut into half-inch strips, look for the kind that are packaged uncut, so you can cut them yourself into slightly wider strips, if possible. (They're impossible to tear apart when cold. If you purchase them refrigerated, reheat them in the microwave for about ten seconds at a time, until the noodles are soft and pliable.)If you'd like to break up the work for this recipe, make the sausage, pesto, and togarashi up to a day before serving, and refrigerate the first two, covered, until ready to use. We always assemble each serving individually at the restaurant, but at home, it's easier to do in two big batches in a large wok, using half the serving ingredients for each batch."

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Raw "Couscous" Cauliflower with Almonds, Dried Cherries, and Sumac

Winner of a James Beard Award Best Book in Vegetable-Focused Cooking and topping many "Best Cookbook of the Year" lists, Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables highlights the evolving attributes of vegetables throughout their growing seasons - from spring to early summer to midsummer to the abundant harvest of late summer, then ebbing into autumn and, the the earthy mellow sweetness of winter.Joshua McFadden, chef and owner of renowned trattoria Ava Gene’s in Portland, Oregon, is considered to be a "vegetable whisperer", and has learned to appreciate every part of the plant and how to get the best from vegetables at every stage of their lives. Each chapter begins with recipes featuring raw vegetables at the start of their season, progressing to sautés, pan roasts, braises, and stews. We think you'll enjoy this Raw "Couscous" Cauliflower with Almonds, Dried Cherries and Sumac - it tastes as good as it looks!From the author: "In this dish, I crumble the raw cauliflower so that it has the look and texture of couscous—it’s easy and unexpected and makes you think of cauliflower in a whole new way. If you can’t find dried tart cherries, use golden raisins or even chopped dried apricots; the idea is to have a sweet-tart and chewy element as contrast to the granular vegetable. And be sure to dress and season this salad generously. Underdressed, it risks being dry."

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Chole

We loved Chetna Makan on "Great British Bake Off" and her first cookbook, The Cardamom Trail was full of many flavorful and stunningly photographed dishes. For Chai, Chaat & Chutney: a street food tour through India, she returned home to India and the street food that she grew up on. The book has four chapters that are organized by cities that make up the four corners of India - Chennai, Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta), Mumbai and Delhi. The fifth chapter? All masala and chutney recipes. Some recipes will look or sound familiar, others will not...but the photos and descriptions of the food will make you want to eat (or drink!) all of them. If you love Indian food or any form of street food, this is the cookbook for you! This recipe is a wonderful example how curries in the North of India use lots of fragrant and aromatic spices to make this mouth-watering vegetarian curry made with chickpeas.From the author: "One of the ultimate curries of the North, this chickpea curry is often paired with Bhatura, a deep-fried flatbread sold piping hot originally on the streets of Delhi but, now, all over the country. This combination should be on everyone’s must-try list when visiting India. You can keep it light by eating this curry with rice or chapatti, if preferred."

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Meatballs with Pumpkin & Spice Butter

With its location between the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Asia, Turkey has an amazingly rich and varied cuisine. For most of the past twenty years, Journalist Robyn Eckhardt and her photographer husband, David Hagerman, have traveled around Turkey tasting all of the country's most delicious dishes. Now they're sharing them with us in their wonderful cookbook,  Istanbul and Beyond: Exploring the Diverse Cuisines of Turkey. They first start in Istanbul, which is home to one of the world's great fusion cuisines. Then they travel to some of the lesser-known provinces, which feature cuisines influenced by neighboring Georgia, Syria, Armenia and Iran. These authentic and easy to follow recipes all come from local bakers, village home cooks, farmers, fishermen and café chefs. This Meatballs with Pumpkin & Spice Butter is an example of one of the many colorful and flavorful dishes found in this cookbook. We're sure that you'll fall in love with this cookbook just as much as we have.From the author: "For this warming dish from Hakkâri, delicate lamb of beef meatballs studded with ground rice are laid atop a bed of pumpkin chunks and then steam-simmered in a light tomato sauce. Before serving, the dish is drizzled with sizzling tomato butter seasoned with purple basil and red pepper flakes, which play off the richness of the meat and the sweetness of the pumpkin. I ate this dish at the home of Sehmur and Baran Kurt, in Hakkâri.A good meatball is light and tender, attributes achieved in Turkey by hand-chopping the meat, something even I am unwilling to undertake on a regular basis. But you can achieve a similar texture by spreading ground meat on a cutting board, sprinkling the seasonings over it, and cutting everything together with a knife. (This keeps the meat from turning into a paste, as it would if you mixed the ingredients in a food processor or by squeezing and kneading with your hands.) The process takes only about 5 minutes. Combine this technique with very light handling when you form the meatballs, and they'll end up tender.You must soak the rice for 1-1/2 hours before proceeding with the rest of the recipe, during which time you can peel, see, and slice the pumpkin and complete other prep work. The meatball mixture can be prepared ahead of time and kept in the refrigerator. Serve the dish with a simple cooked vegetable like spinach and plain Strained Yogurt. For a dinner party, give your guests an appetite-rousing preview by placing the pot in the middle of the table before pouring over the sizzling spice butter."

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Kofte Meatballs with Marash Yogurt Sauce

These lamb meatballs made with our Kofte Spice are a crowd pleaser, and are even more marvelous with Marash Chile Flakes and warm yogurt sauce. Sound exotic? It is! But they are easy to make and the seasonings have wide appeal. Serve them over your favorite grain pilaf or roll them out at your next cocktail party for a new take on everyones favorite hors d'oeurve.

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