Roasted Sweet Potato and Quinoa Salad with Chickpeas and Preserved Lemon
25 Jan 2018

Roasted Sweet Potato and Quinoa Salad with Chickpeas and Preserved Lemon

by | posted in: Beans, gluten-free, Grains, Recipes, Sides & Salads, vegan, vegetarian | 18

There’s evil starches, then there’s good-for-you starches, from a modern-day health perspective. White potatoes are roundly shunned as one of those bad, rotten, festering ones of the bunch, bound to metastasize into a gummy tube of fat around your waistline. Refined white flours are bad, too, if you can even eat them without experiencing painful gluten intolerances! Now, I will never call either of these types of food “bad” entirely, but the bright side to these diet trends is discovering a … Read More

Tabbouleh Salad with Cherry Tomatoes & Pine Nuts
10 Aug 2012

Tabbouleh Salad with Cherry Tomatoes & Pine Nuts

by | posted in: Grains, Recipes, Sides & Salads, vegan, vegetarian | 2

Most people think of tabbouleh as a grain-based salad, with bulgur (a whole wheat product) comprising the bulk of the dish. But actually, it’s more of a parsley-based salad, with lots of fresh tomatoes, lemon juice, chopped onions and other herbs, too. Its name derives from the Arabic word for “seasoning” (taabil), and purists have scolded my lack of sufficient parsley in past attempts. This got me thinking that tabbouleh is something of a chunky pesto, with some filling grains tossed … Read More

Rainbow Chard on Toast, Two Ways
2 Jun 2010

Rainbow Chard on Toast, Two Ways

by | posted in: Recipes, Sides & Salads, vegan, vegetarian | 15

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 … Read More

Spelt Pilaf with Pickled Radish, Pumpkin Seeds, Golden Raisins & Parsley
28 May 2010

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

by | posted in: gluten-free, Grains, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian | 9

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 … Read More

Za’atar Bread with Feta and Parsley
10 Mar 2008

Za’atar Bread with Feta and Parsley

by | posted in: Grains, Recipes, vegan, vegetarian | 14

Last night I hosted a housewarming party at my new apartment. Each guest appeared at my door toting a bottle or two of wine, a six-pack of beer or the occasional small housewarming gift. Then, a new-ish friend of mine arrived and dug into her bag a moment. She whipped out a small Ziploc bag with a mound of moss-green, fuzzy-looking dried plantlife at the bottom. “Um…” “It’s Za’atar!” she exclaimed. My suspicions cleared, I excitedly opened the – ahem … Read More