It's easy to get into ruts, especially with vegetables. You can spend all day thinking about the best way to cook meat and then toss some carrots in a pot to boil away their beta-carotene as an after-thought. I don't even add salt and pepper, and I don't even cut them precisely. … [Read more...] about Seared Scallops with Carrot Purée and Orange-Butter Sauce: roasted pecans and pan-fried potatoes
Honey & Maple Syrup
Red Lentil Tadka Dal
I make a lot of dal. Some are good. Some are great. Some are not great. When I run out of freshly-made garam masala and decide to use the contents of an unmarked bag in my spice containers that may or may not at some point have been garam masala, my dal generally tends toward the … [Read more...] about Red Lentil Tadka Dal
Gluten-free Dinner Rolls and Sandwich Rolls
I'm generally scared of all things yeasty. My cold hands make kneading a problem, and when you're dealing with gluten-free flours you need all the help you can get. But these call for instant yeast, which is something else I usually avoid but in this case make this dough a breeze … [Read more...] about Gluten-free Dinner Rolls and Sandwich Rolls
Raw Bowl #2: Baby Turnips, Carrots, Greens, Peppers, and Cucumber Salad with Lemon-Miso Dressing
This week's greens from the Lufa Farms Fresh Basket spice up this raw salad. And those small white turnips you got a few weeks ago? I'm pretty sure they're turnips. Either way, They're delicious raw (or cooked in soup). If you made it through them already, daikon radish is a good … [Read more...] about Raw Bowl #2: Baby Turnips, Carrots, Greens, Peppers, and Cucumber Salad with Lemon-Miso Dressing
New Harvest Apple Crumble
I'll admit I don't usually love apples, and I don't usually love apple desserts, but when I tasted the spartan apples in the Lufa Farms Fresh Basket I was more than a little shocked by how good they were. Apparently it's actually very hard to grow apples organically and these … [Read more...] about New Harvest Apple Crumble
Sweet and Savoury Fig and Tomato Salad and How to Make a Decent Salad Dressing
Have I ever mentioned that I hate raw garlic? It stays on my breath for at least the rest of the day. Often it turns into "morning after" garlic without most of the fun of what that should involve. So when I make a salad dressing I'm torn. I want body and depth, and I want tang … [Read more...] about Sweet and Savoury Fig and Tomato Salad and How to Make a Decent Salad Dressing
White Wine Vinegar & Miso Dressing for Steamed Swiss Chard
This white wine vinaigrette dilutes the punch of vinegar with yogurt and sweetens it with honey, and because of the yogurt you don't need a lot of oil - just give it a splash. Actually you can be pretty loose with most of the ingredients as long as you taste it after and … [Read more...] about White Wine Vinegar & Miso Dressing for Steamed Swiss Chard
Melomakorona: Greek Honey-Soaked Cookies
I thought these were going to be easy... ...and it's not that Melomakarona are 'hard' to make, so much as they're time-consuming. You need to shape each one by hand and then place them in batches in hot honey syrup. I figured they'd be like baklava where you pour the syrup over … [Read more...] about Melomakorona: Greek Honey-Soaked Cookies
Honey-Grilled Nectarines
I only had two white nectarines left; I could have cried. They were a little starchy. It's the end of the summer, so there are really no more great white nectarines to be had until next summer. That's so long away. Months and months of cold - mind-numbing, finger-freezing, … [Read more...] about Honey-Grilled Nectarines
100% Successful Pouding Chomeur
I love pudding cakes. You take all the wonderful things about cake, heat it up and let the icing soak through the cake, giving a higher icing:cake ratio. You can't mess up the consistency of the icing since it's liquid, but it can turn into a gooey, caramel-y sauce when all you … [Read more...] about 100% Successful Pouding Chomeur