Sunday in the kitchen with family

A couple of our favorite recipes turn into an informal Sunday dinner when family drops in.

IF BLUE KITCHEN WERE A PRINTED COOKBOOK, some pages would be more dogeared and food-speckled than others. Often, Marion or I will be in the kitchen, a laptop open to a recipe on the blog as we cook. Last Sunday, we were both in the kitchen armed with laptops. We were cooking two of our favorite recipes.

Our Milwaukee daughter Laurel and her boyfriend were coming down for the day. We offered to get takeout, maybe something they couldn’t find in Milwaukee, but what they wanted was home cooking. Our home cooking. So Marion took over the kitchen in the morning, baking a family-favorite dessert, her gingerbread. Pictured above, this is some serious gingerbread. Dark molasses, black pepper and Chinese five-spice powder make for big flavor with plenty of spicy bite. And it’s not overly sugary or fat-laden, like cake can sometimes be. Once you bake it, we think it will be a family favorite for you too. You’ll find the recipe here.

For the main course, I made our version of Lidia Bastianich’s Ziti with Sausage and Fennel. We don’t cook this delicious dish nearly often enough, so when we were shopping recently and spotted some nice fennel bulbs, we got them to right that wrong. When we mentioned it in passing on a phone call with Laurel (yes, we all talk about food—a lot), she got absolutely nostalgic. And that’s when Sunday’s main course was decided on.

There are so many reasons to love this dish. Besides being so flavorful—Italian sausage, onion, tomato paste, Parmesan and anise-flavored fennel—it is wonderfully easy to make, in a very organic way. It cooks up quickly, and if you have people in the kitchen while you’re cooking—we did—impressively. You’re taking whole fennel bulbs, slicing the meaty bases and chopping the elegantly delicate fronds. You’re looking like someone who knows how to cook. Make this dish, you’ll really like it. Here’s the recipe.