Search Results for cabbage

It’s the season of no recipes needed. In winter, we might pore over splatter-pocked cookbooks, braising a stew or simmering a ragu just the right way. In the summer, things get a lot more loosey-goosey: we unsheathe the barbecue, dig into dirt, invent salads from overflowing refrigerator crispers and lounge around barefoot catching seafood, perhaps. All this fun and the peak quality of seasonal ingredients leads to a quick and effortless cooking session, if you can even call it that.

When my mother first came to the US from Taiwan, she found the food here a little difficult to embrace. Except for spaghetti. Slurping up long, slippery strands of pasta was a familiar sensation that became the entry point for appreciating more American foods. Only spaghetti wasn’t exactly all-American. Or it wasn’t considered so then, at least. But now today, more and more Americans are slurping up bowls of Asian noodle soups, from soba to ramen to pho.

It is strange seeing winter squashes beside watermelon at the farmers market. Eggplant and enormous turnips. Sweet corn and cabbage. Winter and summer mixed with colorful abandon—that’s what early fall is for. I couldn’t resist plunging for the pumpkins and winter gourds while picking up some tomatoes, too. We won’t have the latter in-season in the Northeast for much longer, but it’s a warm welcome to squash season, having the best of both worlds.

Summer comes as a sudden burst in New York City, a gushing declaration of heat, humidity and sun. Like a blast of fireworks or a Memorial Day hibachi grill, the heat is suddenly on for the long haul — no more stalling, sputtering, or beating around the bush. “Coffee” becomes cold brew; shoes become sandals; parties become barbecues; ramen becomes chilled noodles. This is science, and who am I to fight it?

The only way to get more comfortable with cooking a certain type of food is by cooking it. Maybe for some the challenge lies in steak, or a roast Thanksgiving turkey. Maybe you’re intimidated by cooking curries or poaching eggs. But maybe it’s something a little more… unsightly than that.

Yeah, you heard right. We’re throwing out the pastry books and heading to the bodega—why? Because it was my friend Karol’s birthday last weekend. And—still—why? Because she requested specific foods for her potluck party menu, and one of them happened to be a mushroom tart. Another one was Cool Ranch Doritos.

Sometimes I like to teeter on the edge of super-precious, frou-frou-looking preparations. But there’s always something that pulls me back. They’re all going to laugh at you!—I watched Carrie again recently (on Halloween, to be sure), and that crazy lil warning from Carrie’s mom is surprisingly fitting in many circumstances. Did you spill too much over social media? Put on something weird to wear? Or, did you garnish food unnecessarily and felt frivolous afterward? No, they may not pour a bucket of … Read More

We get all worked up about winter squashes when fall comes around. I get it: they’re shiny and new. But actually, you should be more excited about brassicas in the fall; winter squashes will be here to stay for a while, stored easily all winter long. But fall weather also brings us brassicas—broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, kale, Brussels sprouts and those spiky romanesco things—and we will not be seeing them for very long after this. It’s our last dance with them … Read More

There are a lot of initiatives around hunger lately, with World Peace Day just behind us and a long winter ahead, but when one happens to involve dumplings, I cannot sit idly. The New York Dumpling Festival (#dumplingfest2015) is this Saturday, and it benefits one of my favorite charities, the Food Bank for NYC. To salute this group and shout-out the event, I thought I’d go orange with this dumpling recipe, a blend of hearty vegetables from my CSA.

Really, just those three things, plus salt, pepper, olive oil, and fresh lemon. High heat, maybe, is another equal player in this equation. Plus, that makes it all the faster to throw together. I was looking for something to really treat myself with this weekend (and coming off my $1.50 meal in the last post). I just didn’t expect that it would take so little effort, and time.