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One of my favorite things about Easter is choosing a sweet bread or pastry to bake for the occasion. Over the years, I’ve made various coffee cakes and filled, yeasted breads. I’ve made hot cross buns and other sweet rolls. And, this year, I pulled out a recipe that had been waiting in the files for a few years. The recipe for these danishes is from the May 2011 issue of Living magazine. I do love finding a gem like this in the files. Of course, the day couldn’t be about sweets alone even after weeks of Lent with no sugar. I also revisited a quiche recipe I made a couple of years ago and this time served slices of it with roasted asparagus. It’s a tall, grand quiche with a light and fluffy texture. I feel like it deserves a special occasion but would enjoy it on the menu regularly . But, back to the danishes. They were just rich and indulgent enough. The pastry dough is easy to shape, and the cut and folded corners were to make each one look like a flower with curved petals. They’re ...

No, I didn’t say this, but 56,033 developers in 173 countries who responded to recent Stack Overflow's developer survey did.  I have always enjoyed going through these surveys to validate my several hypotheses and learn new things. I would strongly encourage you to go through the results from the most recent survey here . Here are some interesting insights: Occupation "Full stack developer" is the most identified developer occupation. More and more developers are gravitating towards this occupation where they are simultaneously working on 5 to 6 programming languages or frameworks at time. Rise of new languages and frameworks don’t mean developer fragmentation, but more developers picking up more and more languages. It’s not about SQL or Angular; it’s SQL and Angular. Ninjas: 10% of respondents self-identified as Ninjas! Yeah. So, yes, watch out. Age The millennial: The highest percentage of developers, 28.4%, are in the age group 24-29, followed by 23.6% in the age group...

Over the last year or two, I’ve been craving Indian food more and more often. When I heard about the new title from Madhur Jaffrey, Vegetarian India: A Journey Through the Best of Indian Home Cooking , I was excited to add more Indian dishes to my rotation. By the time I arrived at page 15 of my review copy, I had already marked four recipes I wanted to try immediately. In this book, Jaffrey explores all of India and shares regionally distinct dishes from homes, cafes, and special occasions. I was interested to learn about the tradition of mushroom foraging in Coorg and how those wild mushrooms are cooked over a fire and dressed with chopped green chiles, lime juice, and salt. There’s also an introduction to the Marwari community made up of strict vegetarians with a revered cuisine that makes ample use of ghee. Jaffrey also writes about specific ingredients that she hadn’t included in previous books because they were difficult to find. Now, there are more Indian markets and online sour...

A few years have gone by since I first made dumplings from scratch with Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More by Andrea Nguyen. It’s such a great book. The instructions guide you so well through each step of making the dough, portioning, flattening, filling, and shaping. The pot stickers were in the back of my mind since I first read the book. It was one of those recipes that I was a little anxious about and imagined all the ways I could end up with a failure. Would they hold their shape while frying and steaming? Would the dumplings stick to the bottom of the pan and not come loose? Would the texture and thickness of the dough turn out right? I wanted to wait until I was in my new kitchen with plenty of space for rolling and filling lots of dumplings. And so, at last, I gave it a go and couldn’t have been happier with the process. I’ve realized that working with dough and seeing the transformation from mixture to final product, whether dumplings, pastry, o...

I love a good cocktail party, of course, for the cocktails themselves but maybe even more for the little servings of food that go so well with a drink. Cocktail party food is always fun food, and that certainly applies to the offerings you’ll find in Mary Guiliani’s new book The Cocktail Party . I received a review copy. She shares stories from her years of catering along with ideas for parties for every season of the year and every time of day. I caught the episode of Barefoot Contessa when she showed Ina how to make her mini grilled cheese sandwiches which is one of her signature party menu items. After cooking, the sandwiches are cut into cute, bite-size, tiny triangles. There are several versions found throughout the book for different themes. The Mini Buffalo Chicken Grilled Cheese and the Mini Sausage and Egg Grilled Cheese were two of my favorite ideas. Another one of her popular menu items is pigs in a blanket, and there are multiple versions of it as well. I need to find a g...