Chowder is one of America’s great culinary contributions: a hearty one-pot meal that you can customize to your stomach’s delight. While many chowders sprang out of a seafood tradition (think Manhattan and Boston clam chowders), there are also vegetable-based versions. I created this one to make use of plentiful summer crops like corn and tomatoes [...]
Sometimes you might be in the mood for a crunchy taco, sometimes you might want a soft taco. The only problem with the latter is that it’s hard to find Qualitarian soft taco shells — the majority of the store-bought ones have all kinds of chemicals in them to keep them soft and supple. And [...]
Continue reading about Alternative Soft Tacos (in a French Kind of Way)
Pie pans are great for making pies. (They also make beautiful tortilla presses — the bottoms are nice and wide and the curved sides become handy handles.) But you can make more than pies in pie pans: the roundness of them makes them ideal for laying out scalloped potatoes, for example, or making quiches or [...]
Creamy or spicy, simple or complex, powerful or understated … a meal’s sauce sets its tone. Sauces also provide a sense of place and heritage: take the same basic ingredients, for example, slap a different sauce on them, and all of a sudden you’ve gone from Mexican to Japanese. (Steak + peppers + onions + [...]
As much as I adore fresh, raw ingredients in my salads, sometimes I think roasting veggies makes them taste even better. There’s something about that slow-cooked, vaguely-carmelized flavor that makes a roasted salad explode on my tongue in an ever-so-smooth kind of way. And such salads are ridiculously easy to make — the veggies themselves [...]
I love corn. Real corn, that is, not high-fructose corn syrup, caramel color, dextrose, maltodextrin, and all the other hundreds of processed corn products in our food today. Real corn is corn on the cob and corn chips and cornmeal…and things made with those, like roasted corn and chips and salsa and Indian pudding. And, [...]
This African-influenced stew hovers somewhere between being a thick, Italian pomodoro sauce and American chili. You can spoon it over rice or couscous, serve it with crispy flatbread (in this case, a toasted pita with Parmesan cheese), or eat it all on its own. Be sure, though, to buy good-quality tomato sauce–it will [...]
Freekah is the latest chic grain to hit the grocery shelves–I found a pre-cooked variety of it at Trader Joe’s a few weeks ago. Also known as “green wheat,” freekah consists of very young whole wheatberries that have been picked before the main harvest. Diners in the Middle East have been enjoying this [...]
