Pan-Fried Potatoes and Turnips with Chili-Soy Sauce & Scallions

Here is a really good example of the fact that I'm half-Chinese. I have no idea what this is, but I just made it for a snack. It's sort of like hash browns, but with turnip slices, and condiments fit for dumplings. I gotta say, though, it was a lot simpler to make than either of the above, and its taste satisfied somewhere in between.

Peach and Roasted Beet Salad

I don't know anything that doesn't taste good with a slice of a fresh, juicy and tree-ripened summer peach. It doesn't need anything to accompany it, but it sure can give other ingredients a boost. For example, ricotta or goat cheese with a peach slice on crostini. A bowl of vanilla ice cream with peaches. Grilled peaches on shishkabob sticks, in salsa and gazpacho, on a pizza instead of tomato slices, peanut butter and peach sandwiches. I'm eating buckwheat pancakes with peaches on them right now. Life is peachy. So I decided to do as I've done before with citrus fruit wedges, and toss them along with some roasted beets.

Rainbow Chard on Toast, Two Ways

I often shop with my eyes rather than my head when it comes to local food at the Greenmarket. This leads to a fun culinary game later of what to do with strawberries, fiddleheads, and a rainbow trout, for instance. Not the most practical method, I'll admit, but I'll stand by it just for the unexpected little solutions to those puzzles like this. Plowing through a bustling Saturday market at Grand Army Plaza, my eyes settled on some of the flashiest gems, and I left with -- and not knowing what to do with -- a bunch of rainbow-stemmed Swiss chard, and some multigrain bread.

Spelt Pilaf with Pickled Radish, Pumpkin Seeds, Golden Raisins & Parsley

In the past couple months, I have gone off such the deep end into Eastern philosophy it's embarrassing. I've traded coffee for tea, drunken bike crashes and homemade hangover brunch parties (as recalled in The Art of Eating In) for bikram yoga and granola with soy milk. I don't know what's going on. My latest obsession is with macrobiotics. It stresses the importance of many of the things we're already privvy to about food (unprocessed, well-balanced), but much more, like directional energy, color, and stuff I still can't comprehend.

Brown Rice & Radish Bibimbap

If that isn't the most fun food name to pronounce, I don't know what is. Bibimbap is lots of fun to make, too. It simply means, "mixed rice" in Korean and it's an everyday, meal-in-one-bowl. Any vegetables you have on hand will do; you can marinate some sliced meat and sautee it to add, too. Then you just assemble everything on the rice, add a dollop of spicy gochujang and an egg to pop. You can mix in a little more than that, add fancier steps like grilling, or hot stone bowls that still cook. But that's the basic swing of things -- it's the bibim bop, can you dig?

Miso Broiled Mackerel with Potatoes & Spinach

Mackerel is like the kid who gets picked to be on the team last. Outside of Japanese cuisine, it doesn't get much respect. The poor things are canned more often than not, commonly smoked or cured (this is also because it must be eaten only very fresh), and considered too fishy-tasting and unimpressive in size. You won't see it on the menu of too many restaurants, roasted or grilled as is. But when eating in, you get to be captain of your team -- er, menu -- and here's why this underdog is actually a terrific choice.