Cabbage, Pear & Pistachio Salad (and Leftover Chutney)

What happens when you: 1) make a great batch of something, eat it, and love it; 2) eat it for leftovers, and love it; 3) eat it for leftovers again, and kind of loved it more the first or second time you ate it; 4) can't stand to look at it in the refrigerator anymore? I know. Even with my favorite foods, there comes a limit to my tolerance to it after consecutive encores. That's where the brazen versatility of leftovers comes into play. In the case of this raw, slaw-like salad, it knows no cultural boundaries, either.

The Brian Lehrer Show discusses brown bag lunching

This week on WNYC, the Brian Lehrer Show has been crowdsourcing for bagged lunch suggestions. I'm a great fan of the show's crowdsourcing projects (remember the grocery store prices map?), and this one is no exception. No longer your grade-school sack filled with a cold cut sandwich, banana and note from Mom (okay, I never got those either... sniff), brought-from-home lunches are a trend in offices these days that can be as satisfying as the next-door sandwich shop -- or, as I like to believe, more so.

Easy Chickpea Freezer Patties

So, I meet new people, and the inevitable “What do you do?” question often leads to the fact that I write a blog about not eating out. This often leads the recipient of said introduction to gauge how much he or she eats out, or not. ("I never cook," is a common response.) Recently, someone replied saying that the only thing he cooked was a frozen veggie patty now and then.

Here’s Lookin’ at You Cook, Mike Betit

There were many things that blew my socks off at a dinner Sunday night, held in a cozy Brooklyn ground-floor apartment. The basil-ricotta gnocchi was one of them. The lamb pot pies (above) were definitely another. But the one thing that really struck me the most was when, while casually biting off chunks of his garlic sauce-smothered lamb breast and duck fat confit hors d'oeuvres, Tamarack Hollow Farm founder/farmer Mike Betit said, "The first two years [of starting his farm], I lost money. The third year, when I started selling at the NYC Greenmarket, I broke even."

Acorn Squash Soup with Roasted Kale Chips and Pine Nuts

It's not what's inside the soup that counts. It's what's on the surface. Here, we've got creamy roasted acorn squash soup. It could be any squash, butternut, pumpkin. It could have a splash of cream or milk or not. I don't care. I'm sinking these crispy, salty kale "chips" into its sweet custard and lodging a pebble of a pine nut onto a spoon for the ultimate scoop. Call me shallow, but sometimes beauty just isn't that deep.

Heart Attack! Red Velvet Cream Cheese Frosting and Green Tea Red Bean Paste Valentine Sandwich Cookies

Two is better than one. That's what I would be saying if I hadn't just spent five hours making cookies on Valentine's Day morning. (You could say it was a labor of love.) When I asked readers to choose their favorite heart-shaped cookie proposal from six options for me to make today, I never expected such a dramatic split. There seemed to be warring sides: traditional all the way (red velvet cream cheese frosting), and Asian-inspired (green tea red bean paste, toasted sesame ginger). Early numbers had me convinced that green tea red bean was going to prevail. But red velvet turned a strong comeback in the end, and with one more vote than the green tea, it looks to be the winner. But, I had already gotten matcha and soaked red beans by the time the last votes poured in just for the occasion. So here it is, or here they both are: my Valentine's Day cookie double date.

Recession Chili (and the Curious Case of the Ridiculously Packed Chili Takedown)

Welcome to 2009, Chili Takedown. This is no time to be splurging on pounds and pounds of beef. Sorry, heritage pork (except for your bones and spare ribs, which I'll get to in a bit). I'm not even doing the fresh garnish doodads anymore. This is recession era chili. And I'm going back to the basics of peasant home cookery -- that is, minimal amounts of meat, used for flavor mostly, cheap winter vegetables, and lots and lots of B-E-A-N-S.

Fresh Veggie Korean Pancakes

So I mentioned that I'm really into exploring the East right now -- in food, and particularly from other Eastern cultures than the one I grew up with. So, after hiding my nose in volumes of cookbooks to piece together the esoteric recipe, and embarking on many journeys, sometimes to the farthest reaches of the city, in search of the exotic, elusive, often strange-smelling ingredients and their required cooking tools, and lastly, chipping away at the arduous cooking technique, losing half my investment and several hours to failed batches, I've managed to pull off a feeble yet daring recreation of the... Korean pancake.

Spaghetti e Fagioli (with some eggplant on the side)

The problem with soaking dried beans, which isn't a probably exactly, and wouldn't be one in the first place if you're a little better at stomach-eye coordination as I am, is that you're usually left with far more beans than you had bargained for. Water plumps up the beans, sometimes creating pot overflows and dried, un-soaked portions at the top. (It's a bit like planting a magic beanstalk, with less fees, fies, foes and fums.) Ever since the Cassoulet Cook-Off, I've had beans coming out of my ears. White beans, Great Northern beans, to be exact. Beans can be frozen like this and thawed later, but they're best eaten soon in some clever way.