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 is a cozy comfort food for a fall-time side dish or snack. I’ve long felt that turnips were under-appreciated, probably because of their sharply bitter taste. But when you roast them, their natural sugars come to the surface and caramelize in brown, fudgey smears. When you boil them and mash them, they can be combined with cream and butter to soften their taste. Here’s one other way to tame the harsh flavor of turnips, and make it a welcome … Read More
The way I see it, if you can make something healthier, why not try? And see how you like it — or not — afterwards? Does that mean that I’m a fat-phobe counting my calories and hoping to become stick-thin? No. Does it mean that I’m into the hippie scene and drink wheatgrass just to fit in? Nah. Does it mean that when I find a dish or technique that I like, try to improve upon it in little ways, … Read More
Covered in grime, knobby as a goblin, and incredibly fibrous and tough, celery root deserves a place in the “Now who’d have thought to eat that first?” category of foods. But perhaps once one was sliced into, and its gruff shade gave way to a moon-like pallor, and a deliciously fresh scent was released; that may have been enough to compel one. And since then, many have done much to showcase the unlikely edible’s charms. Like slicing the root finely, … Read More
Whisk, ladle, sizzle, and flip. These four steps epitomized the quick weeknight dinner for me during a certain time, when all I wanted to eat were Korean-style pancakes stuffed with fresh vegetables and anything-goes in the fridge. Those, and dunk — the sound of soy sauce soaking up the tip of one of them before it crunched in my mouth. It was certainly quicker to make than fried rice or noodles, another practical way to toss in any number of … Read More
I had guests over for dinner last weekend and came up with a five-person entree on the fly. I’d zoomed through the Greenmarket, picking up a pint of multi-colored cherry tomatoes, a firm eggplant, and a couple small, pattypan squashes. These all went into a pasta with a hearty portion of Italian sausage from Flying Pigs Farm for the meat-eaters in the crowd. We all loved it. Loved how the dish was colorfully studded with well-sized chunks ‘o stuff. Loved … Read More