Cold Noodles with Spicy Eggplant and Cucumber Salad
This recipe is really 3, 4, or 7 different recipes bundled into one package: 1. You could make just the spicy cucumber salad. 2. You could make just a spicy eggplant salad.
Pasta with Kale and Beet Greens Pesto, Summer Squash, Sausage & Swiss Chard
The season of summer CSAs has begun! This recipe’s title might sound slightly ridiculous, but then if you’ve just begun a summer CSA too, you will probably be able to relate. You’ve got greens coming out of your ears, and you need to find a use for them, quick.
Lemony Pasta with Mushrooms and Fried Kale
These cold, tough months of winter, I’m always in the mood for a warm bowl of pasta. But marinara sauce can get tiresome, and it looks like we’ve got a long winter still to go. So I made this simple pasta with garlic, mushrooms, and crispy slivers of olive oil-fried kale. I had it as leftovers next, and its flavors had really combined and popped. The oil was deep-green from absorbing that kale. It had also absorbed that lemon, softening … Read More
Pasta with Cherry Tomatoes, Sweet Corn and Clams
There’s been some talk about the new “never-ending” pasta bowls at the Olive Garden lately. It seems the franchise is disregarding the low-carb (or the fresh and local) dietary trends of the day, and beckoning diners with even more all-you-can-eat. (My favorite crack? “When you’re here… Why are you here?“) Well, I happened to eat at the Olive Garden in New York City recently, to celebrate my friend Kara’s birthday. It was a nostalgic gag that myself and 14 other … Read More
Pan-Fried Noodles with Kale and Summer Vegetables
Whenever I have a plethora of random vegetables with no assigned purposes, I start to panic think along the lines of stir-frying them. This tends to happen a lot in the summer, when stockpiles of goods from farmers market strolls begin to overbear my fridge. Everything looks so good, and there are so many kinds of vegetables in season now–eggplants and peppers, beans and leafy greens–it’s like looking at a menu that you want to order everything from. But fortunately … Read More
Cavatelli with Cranberry Beans and Pea Shoots
It’s finally arrived — the season for budding blossoms, bike rides, and all things green. Well, make that Spring 1.0, the beta-test days. We’ve still got frosts and chances of flurries, and at the farmers markets, there’s little green to be seen. Except for those shoots and seedlings grown in a greenhouse. But — tulips and daffodils, mint, parsley and chives! Step aside, winter squashes and brown-speckled apples. A natural changing of the guards has just begun.
Hearty, Meaty Pasta Bolognese (and a failed attempt at a vegetarian version)
There was nothing I was craving more than a luscious red sauce studded with slow-cooked morsels of meat this chilly fall week. This is a diversion from my everyday, quick-cooking routine, which has lately been focused on what fall vegetables are still in season. But, it was cold out, and I had weekend time to spare. A hearty, meaty, proper bolognese sauce was calling like a wintry elf in red stockings. But…
Kale Ravioli with Apples and Brown Butter
For me, it’s pretty difficult to separate “fall pasta dish” from “squash.” It’s perhaps second only to severing “brown butter” from the presence of “sage.” These things just go together like beets and goat cheese, it would seem. But look what happens when you squash kale inside ravioli (because you’ve used up your squash), and toss them with brown butter, apples and sweet onions (because your sage plant died while you were traveling) instead? It’s a new marriage of flavors … Read More
Soba Noodles with Tomato and Cilantro Vinaigrette
One great misconception about Asian food is that there isn’t much use of tomatoes. In everyday Chinese cooking, for example, there are tomatoes: in scrambled eggs (which is exactly the way it sounds), in eggdrop soup (as soft, vibrant wedges), and as a base for sauces (like a stir-fry of shrimp). Well, I can think of one space where tomatoes don’t factor in too much in Asian food: noodles. And that happens to be where we encounter tomatoes in Western, … Read More
Pasta with Fresh Tomato and Anchovy Sauce
Too many tomatoes. That’s something I didn’t think I’d ever be saying earlier on in the summer, or, least of all, during the colder months we’re heading into now. But currently, in the Northeast, it’s tomato mayhem. For the last several weeks, I’ve gotten more and more reinforcements of tomatoes from my CSA. I had my volunteer shift last week, and was given the task of sorting tomatoes. There were far too many for the (many of them vacationing) members … Read More