With some recipes, you just look at their name and know how the dish is going to taste. Take, for example, Nigella Lawson’s chocolate Guinness cake. It will be chocolaty, of course, and it will be Guinness-y. You might guess that the mellow, smooth bitterness of the beer will file down the sweetness of the cake. And you might also figure that the cocoa powder will bump up those cocoa notes in the stout. What’s that frosting, you say? Ah, that’s just powdered sugar, cream cheese and heavy cream, which will provide a refreshing sourness that coats the tongue and is best washed down with the remainder of the beer.
So, knowing all this, you probably now know that you need to make this cake.
Featured Recipe
Chocolate Guinness Cake
We have — as you also may already know — lots of good recipes for celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. In the spirit of the holiday Monday, I think I’ll share some dishes that have a healthy dose of green. (And, incidentally, they are very good for using up any sturdy greens or herbs that have started to sag in the fridge.)
I adore a skillet chicken dinner, and Melissa Clark’s five-star skillet-braised chicken with greens and olives has a winning formula: bone-in, skin-on chicken + kale or Swiss chard + puckery lemon and olives = delicious. Be sure to scroll through the comments for excellent variations on this formula; I’m definitely going to try adding golden raisins or prunes along with the olives in Step 6.
Perhaps you wish for some fish? This sheet-pan roasted salmon with pea pesto from Dan Pelosi is super simple, bright and cheery. The pea pesto is a mix of (frozen) peas, roasted almonds, garlic, lemon juice and some basil; I’ve swapped in parsley to great effect (and I bet dill would be really nice, too).
Speaking of dill, Farideh Sadeghin’s maroulosalata (green salad with feta and dill) would be a perfect fresh, crisp side to pretty much any simply roasted main, be it chicken, pork tenderloin or fish. Same goes for this sheveed polo from Naz Deravian, which our reader Julia calls “an inspiration for preparing rice dishes with copious amounts of other fresh herbs.”
A green shrimp: Grace Young’s stir-fried shrimp with snow peas and ginger, adapted by Julia Moskin. A green pasta: espagueti verde, Paola Briseño-González’s creamy roasted poblano pasta, “a brilliant combination of flavors between the peppers, garlic, lemon and cheeses” (that’s from LaneyHess, a reader).
And here’s Melissa’s all-purpose green sauce, the hyper-versatile condiment that allows me to buy as many soft herbs as I please, knowing that they’ll never go to waste so long as I have this recipe.
For dessert, let’s go back to chocolate and do this chocolate burfi, a recipe from Raja Sweets in Houston adapted by Priya Krishna. The shopping — or pantry-digging — list is simple: just ghee (or melted butter), cocoa powder, sugar, sweetened condensed milk, powdered milk and rose water. The resulting treat is proudly sweet, with slightly earthy and creamy undertones, a lovely treat for Holi (which is tomorrow).
