There’s something ever-so-charming about edible little packages: tamales, spring rolls, pasties, grape leaves…every culture seems to have a neatly-wrapped specialty. (Maybe they appeal to our sense of orderliness?) Not only are these wrappables practical to eat and fun to make, their central position in any given cuisine means that centuries of tradition have fine-tuned their [...]
Until I lived in Costa Rica (and had to watch out for falling coconuts on my way to Spanish class!), I never knew how intriguing and bizarre fruits could be. In the Midwest, we’re fortunate to have a world of berries and apples and pears and cherries at our fingertips — and of course we [...]
Upfront disclosure to the mousse die-hards out there: this is not a true mousse. True mousses are made with eggs — they’re the key ingredient, in fact — whereas this one is made with macadamia nut butter. Still, the nutty richness of the macadamia butter is very reminiscent of an eggy richness, and both the [...]
Unbelievably. Easy. And. Delicious. Best four words I can come up with to describe roasted kale, my latest culinary adventure. I’d been meaning to try making my own kale chips for almost a year and hadn’t gotten around to it. (Even though some good friends of mine always have kale on hand to feed to [...]
When it comes to produce, I’m a big fan of the “two-fer” deals: you buy beets with the greens attached and you get two veggies for the price of one, you buy one papaya and get fruit + edible garnishing seeds for the price of one. Rapini (or broccoli rabe, as it’s often called) is [...]
Here’s some fruit trivia for the day: what’s the difference between a Hawaiian papaya and a maradol papaya? The latter is from Mexico and is visually very different than the vaguely-pear-shaped Hawaiian variety — maradols are almost a foot long and have much darker flesh. Both, however, have a wonderfully smooth tropical flavor; both blend [...]
Doesn’t it feel great to stumble across an undiscovered corner of a place you thought you knew inside out? (Like when you find a hidden closet in the basement storage room or attic.) It’s such a “wow — neat!” moment. I had one of those unexpected moments when I recently thought to troll through the [...]
Even if it’s a frigid mid-winter day and you’re hunkered down inside watching a blizzard blow by outside, opening a coconut will make you feel downright tropical. Once it’s open, you can drain the water and then notch out chunks of fresh, sweet flesh to eat out of hand. (They’re particularly good frozen.) You can [...]
Okay, I’ll admit it — I’ve been shallow. For years, I’ve avoided the ugli fruit because it was called an ugli fruit. (And because it didn’t look weird enough. I get so curious about strange foods I’ve never seen before that I would happily try something called “ugly” as long as it looked weird enough.) [...]
The best kind of fruit is the kind that yields all of itself to the cook: flesh, skin, and seeds. If it can be used in savory or sweet settings, so much the better! Enter the papaya, a fruit that can be sliced, sautéed, and served as a vegetable when green. You can scoop out [...]
