I’m much more of a bean than cream person when it comes to soups. But I think you can find a happy compromise by slow-cooking white beans until so tender they’re luxuriously creamy on their own. So rather than following the formula for cream of broccoli (or cream of fill-in-the-blank vegetable), you might sate your taste buds for the mild taste and velvety texture of much the same with this soup instead. I’ve gone and added some cauliflower along with … Read More
Just because cool weather and fall produce have arrived doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a good salad. I’m not sure if there’s anything that mandates a “salad” but the simple treatment of fresh ingredients, and the clean feeling you get from eating it. This salad, for instance, is served warm thanks to crisp, lightly roasted cauliflower and romanesco florets — and it has no lettuce greens. However, I like to roast the leaves from these brassicas along with them until … Read More
Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart. I won’t finish that familiar rhyme but the first part is thankfully very much true. Each of the three components in this concise side dish are beans or bean products. This doesn’t include the drops of vinegar, which was made with rice. However, if you served this with steamed rice to make for a complete meal, you’d essentially be eating a typical Eastern version of “beans and rice.” (See what I meant about … Read More
I can never really get bored with cooking zucchini and other summer squash when they’re fresh, firm and in season. I generally grab a couple bright, cheerful varieties any given time I’m at the farmers’ market all summer, but this often leaves me with a surplus of squashes that aren’t so terribly awesome-looking later in the week. But a few age spots on the outsides doesn’t mean they’re any more austere; I went ahead and baked these ones, in a … Read More
I couldn’t decide whether to cook the crisp cubanelle peppers I’d gotten from the market or chop them up to serve somehow raw. So I went with the best of both worlds, softening the pale-green pieces along with onions, garlic and fresh tomato for a Spanish rice infused with chicken stock, and mixed the remainder with fresh lime juice, onion and mint leaves for a refreshing topping. Yeah, I’ve had a serious craving for Mexican food lately.
They say a photo’s the best way to capture a moment in time. But I tend to think of mason jars when it comes to keeping some of my favorite ones. Here is the moment: I’m rushing through a not-very-bustling strip of the Greenmarket in Carroll Gardens, adjacent to a park, and in the late afternoon. It’s not a market I go to often, but I’m making use of my chance location by picking up various things for various projects … Read More
If you have a few favorite ingredients to cook with, you’re bound to run into a moment of deja-vu pretty soon: “Did I just make the basically same thing last week?” Sometimes, you can set out to make a wholly different dish one night and find that you dined on an incredibly similar one the night before (and sometimes, this happens knowingly, like a weekly breakfast routine). But when it happens by accident, it’s a sure sign that that you … Read More
Most people think of tabbouleh as a grain-based salad, with bulgur (a whole wheat product) comprising the bulk of the dish. But actually, it’s more of a parsley-based salad, with lots of fresh tomatoes, lemon juice, chopped onions and other herbs, too. Its name derives from the Arabic word for “seasoning” (taabil), and purists have scolded my lack of sufficient parsley in past attempts. This got me thinking that tabbouleh is something of a chunky pesto, with some filling grains tossed … Read More
I’m fond of using up kitchen “scraps.” I was working in the kitchen of a soon-to-be new restaurant in Brooklyn, when I scraped together a family meal (aka nosh for the staff) using some celery trimmings, chicken legs, and somewhat dried-up knobs of ginger after they were grated to the last stubs. Here, I’ve salvaged the stems of a leafy bunch of Swiss chard to chop finely and quick-pickle, and pair with capers and crumbles of feta cheese in a … Read More
There are two very different cousins of the squash and melon family working together here. One is seldom cooked (and seldom should be), and one is most commonly cooked to some degree, usually on a hot grill in the summer. They are strikingly similar in appearance and easy to confuse; they are both harvested amply during the same time (mid-summer). They aren’t often served together in a dish, but here take off their fighting gloves and go with one preparation … Read More