Grilled Lamb and Peaches with Peach and Green Bean Succotash

You might consider a hearty red meat like lamb a more winter-appropriate food, not on your summer cookout menu. Or you might associate it with restaurants rather than your home-cooking menu, any time of the year. But I think it’s a secret weapon to creating a fun outdoor feast that tastes like it came from a gourmet gastropub.

Summer Succotash with Tomatillo Sauce

I’m not sure why tomatillos aren’t as popular as tomatoes around the world. They’re as easy to grow as tomatoes, and they’re even covered with a natural, papery husk to protect from bruising or the need to even rinse dirt off. Yet tomatillos don’t appear to be as well integrated into cuisines outside of Latin America, which is too bad, because I love their intense tanginess, and thick, jammy consistency when cooked. So I’m using them as a base for … Read More

Green Bean Casserole with Caramelized Onions, Parmesan and Creme Fraiche

Sometimes you’ve just got to eat something ooey, gooey, and rich. That doesn’t mean it can’t be vegetables, layered with all that good stuff and little else. It occurs to me now that whoever drafted that recipe for green bean casserole and sold it to millions via labels on condensed soup cans was probably trying to come up with a “healthier” alternative to most casserole recipes. In this recipe, I’ve probably found the most decadent way of preparing a side … Read More

String Beans With Silken Tofu and Vinegared Soy Sauce

Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart. I won’t finish that familiar rhyme but the first part is thankfully very much true. Each of the three components in this concise side dish are beans or bean products. This doesn’t include the drops of vinegar, which was made with rice. However, if you served this with steamed rice to make for a complete meal, you’d essentially be eating a typical Eastern version of “beans and rice.” (See what I meant about … Read More

Broiled Bluefish with Romano Beans and Corn-Kimchi Salad

I don’t get the hesitation over darker, oilier, “fishier” sort of fish. Bluefish, mackerel, herring, sardines — these are the flavorful dark meats to bland white meat chicken (of the sea). If you’re one who prefers full-flavored, juicy cuts like chicken thighs or pork shoulder instead of loin, you might find common ground in these highly undervalued types of fish. Then again, the fillet of bluefish I broiled here was so fresh, it tasted clean and just faintly of the … Read More

Creamy Cabbage Salad with Romano Beans & Mint

These hot few weeks, nothing cools like a crunchy salad. I like shards of crisp, brittle cabbage, which deserve the name “iceberg” much more than most types of lettuce. If you’ve ever bought a whole head of one, you’ll know how many mounds of shreds they’ll yield, and how they last long in the crisper, too. The fresh, sweet flavor of cabbage compares to that of pole beans, just in season now here on the Northeast; combining the two, I … Read More

Heirloom Tomato Salad with Dukkah

We’ve officially reached the “too hot to cook” threshold in NYC. Or for frequent home cooks, too hot to eat anything that isn’t cooked, and then chilled. Does cold food automatically equate a salad? I don’t know. If you have hot string beans, blanched and drizzled with olive oil, you don’t call it a salad. But if it’s the same thing cold, it’s a green bean salad. I fear this argument has no consequence, but to prove some state of heat-stricken delirium.

Fresh Fettuccine with Baby Portobellos, Green Beans and Sage in a Cream Sherry Sauce

I got a brand new toy. Alright, it’s gently used and I bought it on eBay for $10, but check this out: A true Italian Marcato (aptly named) “Pasta Queen” pasta crank with 7 thickness settings, 2 pasta widths and a table clamp. Early Christmas in New York.

Sundried Tomato-Braised Green Beans

This side is: a) 100% vegetables b) 100% hearty c) oddly Christmasy-looking d) all of the above If you guessed “d,” then you hate these kinds of questions because you always know whoever’s posing it is trying to get you to say that. And I don’t blame you. But you’ve got to try these green beans to believe how true it is.