Shelley Wiseman
Shelley Wiseman has been teaching people to cook since 1990 when she first opened La Place, a French-style cooking school in Mexico City. Her career began in New York City, cooking at illustrious restaurants Le Plaisir and Le Cherche Midi. Having fallen in love with French cookery, Wiseman then moved to France to hone her craft.
After years of cooking and teaching, Wiseman joined Gourmet as a food and travel editor, where she spent 12 years developing recipes for home cooks. In 2014, Wiseman joined fellow Gourmet alum Ian Knauer as co-owner of The Farm Cooking School. She now owns and operates Shelley’s Table, hosting cooking classes and curating culinary adventures for food-focused travelers.
Wiseman is the author or co-author of several cookbooks, including Just Tacos, The Mexican Gourmet, and The Farm Cooking School, Recipes and Techniques to Celebrate the Seasons. When she’s not cooking, she spends her time painting watercolors, hosting dinners with friends, and traveling as often as possible.
Recipes
Beurre Blanc
This velvety white wine sauce imparts tangy, rich flavor to everything it touches.
Recipes
Flan de Queso
Tangy cream cheese custard drenched in bittersweet caramel. Cue the oohs and aahs.
Recipes
Chiles Rellenos
With layers of flavor and centuries of history, chiles rellenos makes an excellent vegetarian main.
Recipes
Lettuce Soup
Blend a crisper drawer’s worth of salad greens (romaine, arugula, spinach, watercress, etc.) into this vibrant, surprising soup.
Recipes
Herb-Crusted Rack of Lamb
This celebration-worthy rack of lamb recipe yields tender, rosy meat and a beautifully browned crust flavored with fresh herbs and garlic.
Recipes
Galette des Rois
This celebratory French tart is baked for the Feast of the Epiphany in the first month of the new year. Here it’s made easy for home bakers with frozen puff pastry.
Recipes
Gin Rickey
With all due respect to the mighty gin and tonic, the rickey may just be the world’s most refreshing gin cocktail.
Recipes
Fresh Strawberry Milkshake
A secret ingredient helps all the flavors of this homemade strawberry milkshake shine (hint: you definitely have it in your pantry already).
Recipes
Bourbon Chicken Liver Pâté
Though this pâté can be eaten the day it's made, we find it even more flavorful when made one or two days ahead. If you use several small ramekins instead of a pâté crock or terrine, you may need more clarified butter to seal the tops.
Recipes
Turkey Meatloaf
Too many turkey meatloaf recipes have resulted in a dry, uninspiring dinner. But soaking breadcrumbs in milk prevents the meatloaf from drying out as it cooks.
Recipes
Chicken Tostadas
Once a way to make use of stale tortillas (by toasting and/or frying them), tostadas are so good that it wasn't long before people simply started using fresh tortillas. After biting into these layers of flavor—crunchy, creamy, luscious—you'll see why.
Recipes
Gratin Dauphinoise (Scalloped Potatoes)
This classic French dish is originally made without cheese. It is the starch from the potatoes, and the cream and milk, which give the dish its cheesy taste while the leek and garlic gently infuse their flavors into the potatoes. Of course if you prefer you can add some grated gruyère to the top along with the cream.
Recipes
Piquant Bell Peppers
A colorful mix of bell peppers gets a bang of flavor from red wine vinegar, tempered by a touch of sugar and salt. These quick-fix peppers require no roasting and peeling. Just simply slice them up and sauté. Serve these alongside our Easter menu's pork loin roast for a bright contrast of flavors that stand up to the hearty main dish.
Recipes
Pork Loin Roast with Fennel-Garlic Rub
Try a heritage Berkshire pork loin rack for great flavor and tenderness. If you are lucky enough to have a pork vendor at your local farmers market you can buy it there (you might want to order it in advance) or it can be mail ordered from www.heritagepork.com or prairiepridefarmminnesota.foodoro.com. Many butchers can cut a loin rack for you as well. Commercially, the loin rack is cut into pork chops but if you call ahead they can cut a roast for you.
Recipes
Rhubarb-Mascarpone Mousse Cake
A yellow cake gets filled with jam then cleverly surrounded by a rhubarb mousse by using a larger spring-form pan as a mold. A jewel-like rhubarb glaze creates a finishing touch. If you have small, early tri-star or wild strawberries to garnish the top, so much the better!
Recipes
Parmesan Pistachio Crisps
These delicious bites couldn't be easier to make, and an added bonus is that they keep well, too. You can buy good quality, already grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or make your own in the food processor (cut the cheese into smaller chunks), but don't even think of getting one of those green canisters!
Recipes
Vegetarian Red Pozole with Red Beans
This vegetarian take on a traditional Mexican red pozole—pozole being the name not only of a type of stew, often made with pork, but also of the large dried corn kernels (hominy) integral to the mixture—is rich and satisfying. The accompaniments are an essential and fun part of the dish, adding some fresh crunch to the toothsome bite of hominy, beans, and vegetables. It's the perfect meal to have waiting on the back of the stove for family and friends as they straggle in from near and far for a holiday weekend.
Recipes
Chorizo Corn Bread Stuffing
This corn bread stuffing is a stroke of genius. It's so easy, you'll be making it far more often than once a year for Thanksgiving! Shelley Wiseman, author of Just Tacos, knows a thing or two about corn—and not just in tortillas—and she decided to skip the process of drying the cubes of corn bread in the oven. That alone is a huge time-saver. To enliven the corn bread, she balances the flavor punch of chorizo with the sweetness of onions and corn kernels. When it comes time to bake it in a dish (not inside the turkey), she forgoes the old process of covering the stuffing—which allows steam to soften the dried bread—because the bread isn't dry. She simply bakes it uncovered, so that the top gets golden with crispy brown edges, while the interior stays moist.
Recipes
Pear and Cranberry Cobbler with Citrus-Infused Custard Sauce
A cobbler is the easiest way to get to something similar to a pie—meltingly tender and juicy fruit with a crusty topping—without having to make, roll out, and crimp pie dough. Biscuit dough, in general, is easy and fast to assemble, but the cream dough below is a real cinch because you don't even have to blend butter into the flour mixture; you just pour in heavy cream and stir, then pat it out with your hands. A round cutter is your default shape but feel free to rummage through your cookie cutter collection for something fun, such as a leaf or diamond.