Recipes I keep coming back to.

Cooking is the second discipline I keep alongside the engineering — same instincts, different medium. Read the recipe, do the work, taste as you go, fix what's off.

A handful of Grandma's Pennsylvania Dutch staples sit at the top — wilted lettuce, pickled eggs and beets, fried potatoes and onions. Then crème brûlée French toast, our Christmas-morning ritual for over twenty years now (the recipe came from a coworker, Mike Cleveland, who's gone now; the dish stays on the table). After that, cakes for birthdays and anniversaries, a few quiet weeknight meals, summer corn off the grill.

Dinner, weeknights and weekends

Caramelized Miso Salmon

Sear-to-oven method, shatter-crisp skin, glaze like lacquer. Sesame pan sauce at the end is the best part — don't skip it.

~30 min

Fettuccine Alfredo

Real Alfredo, not the gloppy stuff. Cream reduction, finished off heat with serious Parmigiano and starchy pasta water. The emulsion is the whole game.

2–3 portions

The French Omelette

Pépin's two-minute omelette. Pale yellow, no browning, baveuse inside. Sixty seconds of actual cooking — pure technique. Five variants once you have the foundation.

~5 min each

Impossible Meatloaf

Rebuilt around Impossible Beef after I stopped eating red meat. Heinz 57 + brown sugar + mustard glaze — happened by accident, the family went silent.

~75 min

Impossible Stuffed Peppers

The American classic, plant-beef version. Blanched peppers, seasoned filling, melted sharp cheddar over the top, hour in the oven.

30 min active · 1 hr bake

Grilled Cilantro-Lime Corn

Char the husks, peel back, hit with lime + smoked paprika + cilantro. Cape Cod farm-stand corn, twenty minutes on the grill, better than any restaurant version.

Summer · 20 min grill

Grandma's canon · PA Dutch

Grandma's Pickled Eggs & Beets

Jewel-colored, three days in the fridge. Concentric rings — white, pink, magenta — when you slice one open on day three. The jar she always had on the door shelf.

PA Dutch · 3 days resting

Grandma's Wilted Lettuce Salad

Hot bacon-style dressing over leaf lettuce — the egg whisked into ribbons off the heat. Pennsylvania Dutch original; rebuilt with brown butter, smoked paprika, crispy shallots.

PA Dutch · 30 min

Grandma's Fried Potatoes & Onions

Bratkartoffeln. The dish that lived in her cast iron skillet — sliced potatoes, sweet caramelized onions, patience. Two ingredients done right.

PA Dutch · 50 min

A Christmas-morning ritual · 20+ years running

Crème Brûlée French Toast

From Mike Cleveland. Assemble the night before, slide into the oven while the coffee brews, pull out a pan that's somewhere between bread pudding and the burnt-sugar top of a real brûlée. Kids still in pajamas. Twenty-plus Christmases and counting.

Bake · overnight rest

Special-occasion cakes · birthdays, anniversaries

Black Forest Cake

Kirsch-soaked chocolate sponge, sour cherries, whipped cream, chocolate shavings. The grown-up version — restraint is the trick.

~2 hours active

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

The cathedral. Four thin layers, peanut butter frosting between, glossy chocolate over the whole thing, mini Reese's halo on top.

Birthdays

Peanut Butter Cake

Crumb and frosting both peanut butter through. Tender, almost custardy. In grams — a kitchen scale changes the outcome.

~1 hr 50 min total

German Chocolate Cake

Not actually German — named for Sam German, a Boston baker. Cooked coconut-pecan filling, chocolate buttercream around the whole thing.

~1 hr 15 min

High-Protein Birthday Cake

Yes-dad cake. Under 150 cal/slice, ~15g protein, real sprinkles. Engineering problem solved with meringue science and Greek yogurt.

~25 min · 6"

Cast Iron Apple Cobbler

Brown butter, apples, biscuit dough on top, cold cream at the table. A humble dessert dressed up just enough to stop conversation.

9–10" cast iron

A working note — every recipe here also has my elevated version and Grandma's exact version where the canon called for it. I'm a believer in honoring the original first, then sharpening. Most of these came together over years of trying to land a specific feeling — Christmas morning, a Sunday afternoon, the quiet end of a good week. If something here works for you, that's the whole point.