You tap a maple, you get maple syrup. You cut into the flower buds of a palm tree, you get palm nectar that you can cook down into palm sugar. (Specifically, you can tap sugar date palms, sago palms, and coconut palms.) If you let the palm sugar dry out and go from a semi-liquid [...]
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Who says you can’t have a fiesta in the wintertime? (Especially when it’s 48F outside. It’s like spring in the winter!) Unlike mexicanized restaurant food in the U.S., actual food in Mexico is fresh, vibrant, and light in a satisfying and hearty kind of way. Case in point: a crisp, refreshing version of pozole, served [...]
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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
I have a new love: capers. I’ve been on my caper honeymoon for a week now, and it doesn’t look like the affair will be over any time soon. (A week is a long time for an inquisitive foodie who rarely makes the same thing twice.) Sure, I’ve always had a passing fancy for the [...]
Natural peanut butter is one of my favorite foods. Not only does it taste so good that it’s addictive, it transcends sandwiches and chocolate cups to create lusciously creamy soups, sauces, and sautées. PB is also easy enough to make yourself: just put 1 cup of unsalted peanuts, 1 tablespoon unrefined peanut oil, and a [...]
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Even though we think of salsa as necessarily involving tomatoes, onions, and garlic, “salsa” just means “sauce” in Spanish…which kicks the pantry cupboard doors wide open to interpretation. (There’s also the dancing kind of salsa, but I won’t even get started on that for fear of ditching my food writer’s post in favor of the [...]
Continue reading about Grapes Are Good for More Than Just Wine
Something new — at least, new to me — is going on the citrus world: sweet limes. Citrus fruits have long been cross-it-over favorites, of course, like the tangelo. (Although I haven’t seen those in a while, I can still remember when they were the “in” fruit.) That deliciously juicy hybrid is a combination of [...]
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; [...]
Cabbages aren’t exactly the hottest item on the vegetable menu: they don’t have the slim elegance of a green bean or the curvy voluptuousness of an eggplant. From Sauerkraut to Asian cabbage-parcel soups, however, they do feature prominently in most world cuisines. (To achieve the latter, stuff a leaf, tie it off with chives, and [...]
