Sometimes kitchen “scraps” are actually the best part. Plenty of classic dishes are based on that “Waste not, want not!” mentality: French ratatouille, Spanish paella, wedges of Italian polenta served with garlicky white beans. Good thing there have always been thrifty cooks among us! Just goes to show that great flavor doesn’t have to have [...]
Continue reading about Stems, Scraps & Rinds: How To Be Deliciously Thrifty
Although you can’t beat juicy-fresh fruit, dried fruit has its own set of charms: it’s non-messy, it’s very portable, and since it has such low water content, not only is it a better source of fiber than its fresh counterpart, dried fruit also has a more concentrated flavor. Berries in particular have a refreshing sweet/tart [...]
It’s strawberry season! Not to mention chive season and lettuce season. Cool evenings and not-too-hot days make for smoother, softer-tasting chives (as the season progresses, they get more and more oniony) and sweeter, softer-tasting lettuce (hot days = more bitter leaves). All of that means it’s the perfect time to enjoy simple salads, either as [...]
Continue reading about Spring is in the Air…and on the Plate
Lots of ingredients can make a soup great, but I recently realized that adding toasted nuts as a garnish makes almost any soup even greater. Sliced almonds are particularly good candidates for toasting since they’re uniformly slim and crunchy. And because almonds are less oily than other nuts, dry-toasting them in a pan means you [...]
Continue reading about Pairing Creamy Soups with Toasted Nuts
We’re used to seeing red-skinned potatoes and long brown potatoes and even ivory finger-shaped potatoes (fingerlings taste amazingly buttery all on their own, by the way!), but in Peru, Andean farmers are used to seeing 3,000 kinds of potatoes, all with a distinctive flavor and appearance. Imagine what a roasted rainbow all those potatoes would [...]
Maybe it’s a childhood memory or maybe it’s something I dreamed, but it seems to me that super-tiny shrimp were popular in cold salads when I was a kid. I have absolutely no idea what they were called…I just remember thinking they were the cutest things ever. Can’t remember what they tasted like, either. Whether [...]
As already mentioned in my previous post, I love pineapples. (When I was attending a Spanish-language school in Costa Rica, our chosen names were a combination of our favorite fruit + our favorite color. That made me Piña Violeta, or “purple pineapple.”) Most of the time, I cut up a fresh pineapple and eat it; [...]
Of all the grains in the world, rice might be my favorite: it makes great flour, freshly-cooked rice is welcome in everything from pilafs to grape leaves, leftover rice is perfect in savory casseroles as well as sweet puddings, and even in the U.S., there are dozens of varieties of rice on our grocery store [...]
I used to think that hummus was a great dip. Then I moved on to thinking it was a great condiment and dip. These days, I’ve given up trying to categorize hummus — I’m willing to try it with darned near anything. (And I’m usually glad I did!) Somehow, that combination of smooth, creamy chickpeas [...]
Who says a tuna casserole can’t be glamorous? (Or gorgeous, for that matter.) It’s simply a matter of choosing your cheeses wisely — scrumptious cheese makes for a scrumptious casserole. For this concoction, I was fortunate to have a complementary selection of cheeses on hand: herbed Brie, English Stilton, and Dutch Parrano (which is a [...]
