They might not be human, but fungi sure are fun — to eat. The woodsy, umami-rich flavor of mushrooms always gets my saliva glands going. The silky, slightly rubbery texture is titillating. I can’t decide which type is my favorite, but thoughtfully munching on different mushrooms one at a time from a spoonful of miso-based soup in attempt to identify one winner, I get lost in the sheer pleasure of it and forget.
Last week, I listened to a radio program about the need for more grocery stores in rural food deserts, as they are known. This, which occurs in dense inner-cities as well, can lead to a health crisis when the only food options are unhealthy restaurant meals or junk food. I’ve written before about this lack of “real” food, as many advocates are wont to describe fresh, organic, and unprocessed food such as from a farmers’ market. Yet these terms can … Read More
I hope everyone saved their turkey bones from the Thanksgiving feast! (Oh yeah, and hope you had a nice Thanksgiving, too.) The roasted, crusty carcass is prime stuff for making stock with, and a bubbling pot of it going on the stove is a treasured pasttime for the day after for me (or day after-day after). As far as aftermaths of major holidays go, the post-Thanksgiving weekend is a relatively healthy, relaxing one (so long as you get pepper-sprayed at … Read More
Imagine this gloriously textured mess with a runny fried egg plopped on top, and you’ve just accurately captured my breakfast. (Now try to picture the gluey streaks of yolk goo and breadcrumbs stuck to my cheek. No, don’t.) This dish was a tasty way to enjoy what seems like a more hearty, slow-cooking dish very fast. It’s not quite a casserole, and it’s not simply roasted vegetables. It’s a gratin.
It’s another round of head-to-tail cooking, for the underrated root vegetable! And for good cause: radish greens are a true superfood, among the most nutrient-rich of all leafy greens, yet they tend to become a little coarse and bitter-tasting while the root beneath them matures. No matter — mash them into a silken fresh pasta to toss with the lightly cooked radishes, too.
Think spring is the best time of year to eat leafy greens? Fall’s cabbage, Swiss chard, lettuce and spinach are just as great, if not better, having been sowed in summer’s warm soil. In this region, it’s usually a sure bet that they’ll mature in time for the first frost to hit, but before they wilt in strong sun. And despite the recent snowstorm on the Northeast, New York’s local greens are looking ship-shape, especially the spinach.
I was peeling apples the other day, scraping off bits of smooth, ruby red skin like rose petals, when they appeared just as that instead of waste. The flesh of the apple was supposed to go toward a simple tart, but what about these crisp, juicy peels?
I’ve been learning about all sorts of things tea lately; did you know that matcha derives from the words mo cha, to grind tea, in Chinese, and that doing so was customary during the Song dynasty? The practice fell out of fashion in China afterwards, but has continued in Japan, where tea drinkers can whisk up a frothy cup of jade-green matcha from the finely milled powder of green tea leaves. And thanks to its being so refined, bakers and … Read More
This satisfying side dish or humble meal with rice is not the most interesting food I’ve eaten during my travels in Taiwan. Still, it has plenty of virtues that I hold close to heart: few ingredients, lots of plant-based protein, and it’s incredibly quick, and impossibly cheap to prepare. I hardly needed to go across the globe to access the recipe for this typical Taiwanese dish, however; it’s been a favorite of mine since I was a child.
This post might double as a “Reason For Why I Haven’t Posted In More Than a Week,” and it has to do mostly with travel. Both alternate titles, that is. I’m currently in Taipei, Taiwan, eating a breakfast of warm soymilk with a savory doughnut stick, and plotting my next victims of rapacious culinary tourism in order to compile an excess of recipes for a book I plan to write. (Yes! More on that to come!)