Sweet, spicy and sour, what a wallop for your morning toast. What a surprise for a spread with cheese on crackers. This jar will surely sit a special place in the fridge, one of the wacky, must-think-before-eating creations, right there with the kimchee-pickled beets. The good thing: one slick will go a long way. The bad thing: your tastebuds will become more tolerant to heat, as you’ll want to slick on more and more.
I often shop with my eyes rather than my head when it comes to local food at the Greenmarket. This leads to a fun culinary game later of what to do with strawberries, fiddleheads, and a rainbow trout, for instance. Not the most practical method, I’ll admit, but I’ll stand by it just for the unexpected little solutions to those puzzles like this. Plowing through a bustling Saturday market at Grand Army Plaza, my eyes settled on some of the … Read More
In the past couple months, I have gone off such the deep end into Eastern philosophy it’s embarrassing. I’ve traded coffee for tea, drunken bike crashes and homemade hangover brunch parties (as recalled in The Art of Eating In) for bikram yoga and granola with soy milk. I don’t know what’s going on. My latest obsession is with macrobiotics. It stresses the importance of many of the things we’re already privvy to about food (unprocessed, well-balanced), but much more, like … Read More
There are a few famous bedfellows for asparagus, when cooking it simply as a side. One is Hollandaise sauce. Shaved parmesan and a poached egg a la Milanese tradition has very much taken root in restaurants here. A faction of moms only dress asparagus with grated, hard-boiled eggs, according to some friends. And not that everything hasn’t been wrapped with bacon, but a bundle of stalks secured with a strip has become quite notorious, too. Now, there are few things … Read More
Make no mistake: food is trend-oriented. Each region has its own fixations; we recycle them once they’re in season each year, and other times, toss them out to make way for newer trends. It’s a monkey-see, monkey-eat philosophy, and one thing that’s been made abundantly clear to me these past few years is that an unassuming, often-wild allium called ramps is definitely in, around here.
I’m not on a raw food diet; but my oven would have me that way. It won’t fire up, for mysterious reasons, and I seem to miss the mechanic at my building every time he comes by. So what was going to be a simple side dish of roasted root vegetables — just carrots and parsnips — turned out even simpler. And arguably more delicious, or at least, more refreshing.
Behold a new era of bread-baking. Since hearing so many success stories about no-knead bread in the aftermath of publishing The Art of Eating In (which included a recipe for a parmesan peppercorn version), I’ve rekindled a passion for the home-baked loaf. While the no-knead method liberated the baker from spending much time and effort, my current bout of baking pride involves the least amount of ingredients that need to be purchased. As long as you’re handy with what’s around.
Yeah, they’re navy beans, so what? I didn’t have lentils on hand. But I still wanted to make something spicy with curry seasonings, filling in just a few slurps, delicious, and did I mention, cheap? Any bean, please. And for that matter, anything else that was in the cupboards, too. This happened to include some pickled red peppers from last summer’s harvest, parsley and shallots, and a lemon bursting with juice. Which brings me to a very tentative naming situation: … Read More
You know how salads in restaurants tend to have eight things in them, at least? Or else, it’s not really a salad, it seems. One of those ingredients is usually cheese; another is usually nuts (and it’s usually crusted with something sweet). There’s often meat, grilled and served hot in contrast with the cool greens. It gets more complicated, too. Dried or fresh fruit, oily crusts of bread or croutons, dressings that are an army of ingredients in themselves, and … Read More
Sick of the same old squashes? Bored of the brainless old ways to cook them, too? (i.e. Roast until tender. Puree into soup.) I think this happens just about every January. It’s the winter’s-here, we’ve-done-our-soup-thing, home-cook-head-scratching blues. The holidays are over, and reality has sunk back in; it’s back to the daily grind. And what? You’re coming down with a flu, too? Yep, you’ve got it bad. Better get some antioxidants in the system, STAT. Luckily, eating squashes (not just … Read More