Roasted Red Pepper & Parmesan Soup

Most of my favorite soups have "peasant" origins. From the poorest "peas porridge" to simple black bean, reheated ribollita to wintermelon and stock, this humble fare reminds me that you don't have to simmer a whole great number of specific things to come away with a really great soup. Especially if your ingredients are great on their own.

Seaweed Salad (with the stuff washed up on the shore)

It's a ubiquitous side on the sushi restaurant menu, but "seaweed salad" is just weeds from the sea, tossed with dressing. Often, it's made from dried and reconstituted seaweed sheets, shred into ribbons. You can get packages of the dried stuff at any Japanese grocery. Or, if you're at the beach, you'll come across it, fresh, for sure.

Apricot-Glazed Salmon with Bok Choy

I can't think of too many other proteins you can't try this same dish out on -- whether it be fish, a pork chop, or a hunk of firm tofu. It's simple: a seared steak (of some sort) brushed with a little sauce while it finishes in the oven. But I'm lucky, because the protein I have most readily on hand happens to be wild-caught Alaskan sockeye salmon.

A Veggie Tipsheets Recipe Contest Recap

Two weeks ago, I invited food bloggers to a challenge: to cook (and blog about) a unique recipe from their home kitchen to our computer screens. The incentive? To win a ticket to Let Us Eat Local, the food-filled annual fundraiser party put on by Just Food. And, publication in the non-profit's upcoming Veggie Tipsheets handbook, a how-to on everything you might come across at the market, or in your CSA share. Four brave bloggers took it on, and here's what they made. Though we may not have room for them all in the handbook, I hope they're online inspiration for years to come.

A Very Manhattan New England Clam Chowder

If you had to name two things that go brilliantly when thrown together in a pot, especially when you're at the shore in the last throes of summer, you might not immediately pick clam and tomatoes. Lobster and corn might come to mind, with potatoes a tagalong or alternate. But it's the first combo that I'd go with from now on. It was the basis of the best soup I've had in a while, just in time for chillier nights.

Eggplant-Tomato Tartare

Just another fun way to serve up eggplant, fresh and simple. Because it's got to be cooked, eggplant tends to get weighed down in heavier preparations -- parmiggiana, or an Asian stir-fry with lots of gloppy brown sauce. But I love just roasting a skinny eggplant half, face down like a spear, and eating it straight-up like that afterwards, soft and gooey inside. This was more or less what I did for cooking demonstrations two weekends ago at New York Botanical Gardens' Edible Gardens series, when the theme ingredient was this versatile nightshade.

Pickled Swiss Chard

I was inspired to do this by one of my favorite Chinese condiments, pickled mustard greens. The greens are finely shredded, brined with salt, vinegar and soy sauce, sometimes chiles, and in some cases, slightly fermented before going into a can or a jar to be preserved. Then, they're served with almost anything: stir-fries with tofu, a bowl of noodle soup with sliced pork, and, when I was little, sometimes just sprinkled on top of a bowl of hot, soupy leftover rice. It's kind of like sauerkraut, only leafier. Or kimchee, only shredded finer, and not as spicy, garlicky and gingery. You get the drill.

Shredded Kale & Sungold Tomato Crostini

First it was this on a plate with leftover roasted almonds strewn about, a salad. Then it was this, transported to crisps of leftover bread, a crostini. Next it was this, stuffed into my cold burrito from a take-out place that I didn't even go to (somebody else did, and gave me their leftovers). Soon it will be this, on leftover rice that's stuck to a pot in the fridge. Basically, this is really good. Any way you serve it.