For sheer ease of elegance, you can’t beat roasted veggies. Grilling is another great way to concentrate their flavor, but now that we’re moving into a less-sun-and-more-chill time of year, roasting veggies in the oven (or anything else, for that matter) is more appealing than standing outside in the rain tending to a grill. Unless [...]
Continue reading about Warming Up Your Fall with Roasted Greens
You know what’s great about all the specialty cuisines nowadays? By “specialty,” I mean those that cater to niche — but growing! — interests like vegan, raw, gluten-free, etc. Everyone can sample these cuisines and ideas and benefit from them no matter what our personal food philosophies are. Take raw food, for example. Raw food [...]
This post is a two-for-one deal: it’s a continuation and an introduction! The continuation is the part where you make darned tasty use of your leftover high-quality, no-mess, baked bacon from the previous recipe. The introduction part is to let you know about brown rice maifun noodles. I stumbled across them at Westborn lately and [...]
Remember the Ranch days? The days when everything was dipped in and topped with Ranch dressing? Ranch fries, Ranch burgers, veggies swathed in a sea of slightly speckled white. There’s no denying Ranch’s creamy, herby appeal…but you can create a much tastier, much more nutritious version of it using plain Greek yogurt and fresh or [...]
Continue reading about Giving a Favorite Dressing a New Wardrobe
When I was a kid, I thought the only difference between pastas was that some were long and skinny and others were tubular and short. Or looked like shells. But nowadays, the more I troll through the pasta aisles, the more I realize that while shape is important, the biggest difference between one pasta to [...]
It’s almost summer, things are finally green, and I’m actually excited about mowing the lawn again. It’s a lot better than shoveling snow! Or mopping the basement floor with an old towel when the heavy early-spring rains hit and you get water in places you don’t want to get water. Hot summer days sound pretty [...]
Good bacon goes with everything — I have a sneaking suspicion that bacon ice cream would be a hit. (Especially if you paired the bacon with pecans.) When I say “good” bacon, I’m referring to bacon from pastured hogs that snort and snuffle about on an actual farm. You can find this kind of bacon [...]
Spaniards have some delectable culinary customs, among them “giant” beans and “giant” corn. (I found the latter — salted and roasted, no less — in a flamenco bar in Cádiz, sold in cocktail-peanut-style canisters in a mini rotating vending machine. Like most bar snacks sold in disposable canisters, they weren’t very good, but still, I [...]
Continue reading about Frijoles Gigantes and Other Spanish Oddities
1 roasted beet (see “Roasted Beets” under “Ingredients & Staples”) 2 hardboiled eggs (see “Hardboiled Eggs” under “Ingredients & Staples”) 1/2 pound to 1 pound of green beans Feta cheese, preferably in brine 2 medium tomatoes fresh cilantro, torn or finely shredded balsamic vinegar olive oil Clean and trim the ends off the green beans. [...]
Nothing can compare to sitting in Brussels’ Grand Place and enjoying a salade nicoise at an outdoor café, but here’s a simple, tasty version I made for a last-minute dinner yesterday. (Minus the potatoes and anchovies.) Depending on your appetite, this could serve one or two people. Ingredients 1 can tuna 1 large tomato 1 [...]
