Blue Cayenne

Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.” Today’s Oldie But Goodie recipe is for a Chocolate Guinness Cake. You’ll find it here.

You don’t want to miss this great recipe…again.

Want to dive deeper into our recipe archive? Just click one of the categories at the top of this page or use the category search drop down menu on the right side of this page.

And…here is a link to Blue Cayenne’s main page: Blue Cayenne.. If you are in the mood to cook (or eat!), we hope you will take a moment to look at the many excellent recipes we have featured.

It’s the end of the month. It’s cold. 

What better time for a hot spicy bowl of chili?

If you’ve been curious about some of those meat substitutes that have come on the market, here is a chance to try them out. Or, not.  This is a very good recipe however you prepare it.  I used the Trader Joe Meatless Ground but Impossible Burger would be good, too. 

This recipe is adapted from one (Spicy Pork and Black Bean Chili) that appears in Melissa Clark’s Dinner: Changing The Game. It’s a wonderful cookbook and is available at your local bookstore or on Amazon here.

Here is the chili recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen using the ingredients pictured above.. This recipe tastes best, I think, on day two after the flavors have had overnight to marry. 

You want raisins with your spaghetti?

Turns out that you definitely do.

This Spaghetti With Spinach, Pine Nuts and Raisins is a knock-it-out-of-the-park variation on traditional spaghetti recipes. There is the silky smoothness of the noodles, the crunch of the pine nuts, the healthfulness of fresh spinach barely cooked, and the pungent edgy sweet/sour vibe of raisins soaked in a red-wine vinegar solution. 

This recipe is adapted from one that appears in Joshua McFadden’s Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables. This three hundred plus page cookbook is a compendium of excellent recipes. Alice Waters (of Chez Panisse) said of this book: “Joshua McFadden has the soul of a farmer, and his recipes are beautifully in tune with the seasons and the land.” Who doesn’t want to be “beautifully in tune with the seasons and the land?” I know I do and this cookbook has a special place in my burgeoning cookbook collection. You can buy the cookbook at your local bookstore or on Amazon here.

Here is the recipe as I cooked it in my kitchen.