Dear Mom and Dad, Today I had the most wonderful tomato soup. And I actually made it! Okay, it wasn’t fancy or very fussy, and actually, it could have been pureed a little bit smoother. But it tasted just about perfect: full-bodied and fresh, not too sour, but not too dulled with milk or cream that you can’t taste the tang of the tomato at all. And it wasn’t too loose or chunky, like a marinara sauce, either. So I … Read More
Holidays are all about traditions — making them, keeping them. I’ve got a tradition in the works of coming up with seasonal ice cream flavors. I don’t necessarily think this hobby needs a holiday attached to it, but it is a good excuse to make lots of ice cream. Previous holiday seasons have been responsible for creating some of my favorites, like chai, orange spice, cranberry, peppermint, chocolate and five-star anise, and curry-carrot-coconut ice cream. If I could capture the … Read More
For those readers who have been around long enough to notice, I took a vacation from “Reason of the Month” posts beginning in May, that would last through the summer and fall. The idea was to focus on Lunch at Sixpoint during the height of gardening season. (Which, you could say is one long extension of Reason #42: Because You Can Grow Your Own Food.) But now that it’s almost winter, I’ve found a great new reason to start up … Read More
You could say I’m on a bit of a soba kick lately. I’ve been slurping up a great bowl of buckwheat noodle soup for breakfast, lunch or dinner almost every day these past few chilly weeks. Let’s talk about the soba in a bit; a really good bowl of any noodle soup, in my opinion, is in the soup. It’s generally thought that a good broth takes hours or even days to make right. But I’ve figured out a quick … Read More
Meat and potatoes people, here’s a new reason to celebrate (or deviate?): sunchokes. They’re sweet and nutty-tasting, great roasted with rosemary, and they made for a delicious variation on a favorite side dish that needs little more excitement in my opinion — German potato salad. So this dish is really an excuse to combine two of my recent food obsessions, in one platter. It’ll make a good addition to the Thanksgiving table, too.
Last Halloween, Dave introduced me to a dish that involves baking stuff inside a hollowed-out pumpkin. He explained that he’d taken it from a Ruth Reichl recipe in Gourmet. This past Halloween, I hosted, and I copied Dave’s (or Ruth’s) dish to a T. (Only mine was in a white heirloom “ghost” pumpkin, and I served a side of beet-and-tomato “blood” soup.) It’s sort of like French onion soup, inside a pumpkin: you stuff stale bread cubes and pour chicken … Read More
I’ve been to Wisconsin a few times, whether traveling for work (involving food) or pleasure. So I’ve gotten a good taste of the dairy state, and even toured the caves of a cheesemaker once. So when I was asked to recreate a recipe from Wisconsin Cheese and Chef Michael Symon’s cooking series, Favorite Foods, I thought it’d be a good way to cook with one of my findings. But also, to maybe overcome a lifelong aversion I’ve had for Blue … Read More
Rather than watering it down with milk and cream, or confusing its flavor with a tomato-laden broth, this soup is all about broccoli, from its florets to its stems to its leaves. You’ll get a big burst of the broccoli with each spoonful of the stuff, and that’s a somewhat new way to experience a vegetable that’s been around (and has been disdained, in many cases) for all our lives. It starts out with roasting the pieces to concentrate their … Read More
I recently wrote a post on Brooklyn Based about Where To Get Your Gobble Gobble, a round-up of sustainably-minded turkey farms and purveyors in the region that are now offering their best for the big, birdy holiday. But as I was walking through the Greenmarket today, I thought, these vegetables are pretty fascinating, too — and I’m never short of finding a new one with each stroll. So, since we all know the most exciting part of the Thanksgiving meal … Read More
Question: Why do we eat coleslaw in the summer, usually? Okay, it’s crisp, sweet and cooling, and I even thought it was called “cold slaw” as a kid. But it’s made primarily of… winter cabbage. And we’ll be seeing lots of heads of those for the rest of the year.