Homemade Hummus with Fried Chickpea Skins

I had so much fun making and eating this bowl of warm, homemade hummus that even though I’m far from an authority on the Middle Eastern spread—and even though there are many acclaimed recipes for it online—I just had to share this journey and recipe with you. Why hummus? It’s something I had been dropping into my shopping cart a lot lately, and eating up the tubs far too quickly for my once-or-twice-a-week grocery-shopping routine. It had been several years … Read More

Curried White Beans and Kale with Cherry Tomatoes

Beans, greens and grains: Remember this formula, and you will be fed for a lifetime in a very healthy, inexpensive and earth-friendly way. And it’ll never get old. You simply cannot exhaust the shapes, sizes and varieties of beans, grains and green vegetables alone (but have fun geeking out over heirloom beans and trying!). And there’s no limit to how you can prepare these—from black beans and rice to daal to minestrone, to new creations that are somewhere in between these various classics of … Read More

Roasted Sweet Potato and Quinoa Salad with Chickpeas and Preserved Lemon

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

Cassoulet and Rillettes: A Post-Thanksgiving Trip to France

The greatest Reason For Not Eating Out is having leftovers in the fridge. And the greatest reason for having leftovers in the fridge, of all days of the year, is perhaps Thanksgiving. If you made the requisite roast turkey for the grand dinner, you’re bound to have lots of bits and pieces of turkey meat clinging to the carcass, no matter how much of it you and your family ate. Many cultures can teach us a thing or two about that. But this year, … Read More

Spicy and Sour Tomato Lentil Soup (Rasam)

This week marks the publication of my friend Chitra‘s cookbook, Vibrant India. If you’ve been reading this blog a while—or if you just like home cooking as much as I do—you may have found that cheap, healthful, and seasonal are some essential beacons to guide everyday recipes. And Chitra’s home cooking—and, hence, her cookbook—have these traits in spades.

Roasted Squash, Broccoli & Lentil Salad with Raspberries

File this under Stupidly Simple Seasonal Salads with A ‘Lil Bit of Something Cray-Cray and Not-So. And that’s a pretty good general formula for making a tasty, cheap, healthy and hopefully delightful meal. The cray-cray-not-so in question here are the raspberries, since they’re A) Not in season in my part of the world and B) Not usually found in savory bean or grain salads even if they were. But for some reason I woke up one morning recently thinking about raspberry … Read More

Split Pea Soup with Root Vegetables

It wouldn’t really be a soup if it were only one ingredient, right? That’s the thinking behind this weekend concoction where I deposed my growing stash of random root vegetables into a not-strictly-root-vegetable soup. By definition, soup is a mingling of stuff in liquid form, often creating a harmony of flavors that tickle your tastebuds as it soothes your soul. So do your kitchen a cleaning with this approach to your next winter soup.

Green Beans Braised with Tomatoes, Olives, Capers & Herbs

I know what you’re thinking. Green beans cooked well past crisp-tender is unideal; their sodden, saggy skins remind you of bad leftovers and TV dinners, an accident, not something you would set out to make. Yet though they might not snap in that satisfying way, slow-simmered green beans retain an impressive structure, plumped with juice and fat from olive oil, and all the flavors therein, transforming into something very different, but still mildly sweet. And in case I’m not waxing poetic … Read More

Heirloom Bean Salad with Roasted Garlic Scapes

So after this year’s Fourth of July barbecue, where I consumed lettuce wraps packed with meat, a hot dog, a chicken burger, a kielbasa, and some wings, I decided to go easy on my lunches the following week. I propped my kitchen stool below the highest cupboards to look for some whole grains to make a refreshing salad with—maybe quinoa, maybe spelt, or some neat-o ancient grains would be found there, I thought. But I didn’t find those.

Chickpea Squash Tagine

For me, fall is the right time for entertaining. I spent a languid weekend preparing for two back-to-back dinner parties, post-Halloween hullaballoo (I was Kate Middleton for that, did you think you saw her walking down the street in Brooklyn?). It was the perfect antidote to a candy-strewn holiday, and one of the dishes I served for my friends was this vegetarian option, which I’ve been eating for lunches since. Like most long-simmered stews and soups, it just gets better … Read More

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