Berry, beery satisfying: Beef Pot Roast with Beer and Juniper Berries

Flavorful, inexpensive beef chuck roast, braised for hours in a low oven with beer, juniper berries, onion, garlic, potatoes and carrots, is the very definition of comfort food on a winter evening. Recipe below.

WHEN THE FIRST REAL SNOWSTORM OF THE SEASON IS PREDICTED, most people stock up on sidewalk salt. I bought a chuck roast.

The snow began falling in the morning, not heavy but persistent. I happened to be working from home, and I watched the snow coating first the lawns, trees and bushes, then the sidewalks and the street outside the study window. I also kept an impatient eye on the clock, eager to start cooking our first pot roast of the year. Continue reading “Berry, beery satisfying: Beef Pot Roast with Beer and Juniper Berries” →

Sweet, savory, quick, delicious: Sweet Potato Sage Pasta with Chicken

A handful of fresh ingredients—sweet potato, sage, onion, garlic and chicken—make a sweet/savory pasta dish that’s weeknight quick. Recipe below.

With holiday excesses behind us, it’s good to get back to quick, simple, everyday cooking. This dish is one of my favorite examples of that kind of cooking, in that involves fresh ingredients, using up leftovers and unexpected synapses firing.

One thing I’ve noticed in writing about food for the past five years or so is that it makes me think about food, a lot. Sometimes it seems that everything I see or read or hear or smell or taste has the potential to inspire some cooking idea. Continue reading “Sweet, savory, quick, delicious: Sweet Potato Sage Pasta with Chicken” →

Small Bites: Thanksgiving gets a party makeover and a weeknight secret weapon for your pantry

Juicy, flavorful turkey is the centerpiece of a Thanksgiving cocktail party—this time in the form of sandwiches. And store-bought red sauce that it’s okay to love is the subject of my latest Character Approved Blog post.

Thanksgiving is just about our favorite holiday. No presents to buy, no elaborate ceremonies, just a celebration of food and family. Last week, we attended a pre-Thanksgiving event at the test kitchens of Urban Accents that put a new twist on the holiday for us. The Chicago maker of spice blends, grilling rubs, sauces and seasonings turned the traditional family feast into cocktail party fare to share with friends.

Sweet potato smash crostini, maple-glazed, bacon-wrapped Brussels sprouts lollipops and smoky chipotle roasted pumpkin seeds all captured flavors ingrained in our collective memories since childhood. Shooters of mushroom bisque with crisp green bean garnishes and a sprinkling of crumbled crispy onion stood in for green bean casserole. Continue reading “Small Bites: Thanksgiving gets a party makeover and a weeknight secret weapon for your pantry” →

Sauce Vierge: A no-cook sauce livens up steak, fish, chicken, chops…

Sauce vierge, an uncooked French sauce, combines tomato, basil, garlic, shallots, capers and Dijon mustard to liven up steaks, fish, chops and more. Here, it’s served over pan grilled strip steak. Recipes below.

Honestly, if you ask me what I like to put on my steaks, my usual answer is salt, pepper, a knife, a fork and my teeth. I’ve never been a bottled steak sauce kind of guy. And the first time I ordered steak at Tango Sur, an Argentine restaurant in Chicago, I ignored the side of chimichurri sauce for the first several bites. (It was delicious, of course, when I finally sampled it.) I have since made my own version of the big flavored, garlicky, slightly spicy chimichurri sauce many times. Continue reading “Sauce Vierge: A no-cook sauce livens up steak, fish, chicken, chops…” →

Pesto with a French accent flavors hearty, traditional Soupe au Pistou

Big flavored pistou, a Provençal sauce made with basil, garlic, Parmesan and olive oil, gives a delicious kick—and its name—to Soupe au Pistou, a hearty vegetable soup. Recipe below.

Every spring, Marion plants basil based on my best intentions. And every fall, I scramble to harvest the bounty I’ve failed to convert into numerous promised batches of pesto (I think I made it twice this summer). So Sunday afternoon found me, anorak-clad, gathering basil in the rain, fending off bumblebees as I snipped the flowering tops onto the compost pile. Continue reading “Pesto with a French accent flavors hearty, traditional Soupe au Pistou” →

The lazy man’s way to pickles: Quick, crisp Fresh Dill Pickles need no canning

These crisp, lively Fresh Dill Pickles get their flavor from dill, garlic, jalapeño peppers and coriander, mustard and fennel seeds. And they’re ready to eat in 24 hours, without canning. Recipe below.

A friend of ours is very good at blackjack. She’s actually gone on Caribbean vacations and stayed at casinos, where her daily routine has been to hit the tables for a couple of hours in the morning, long enough to make dinner and walking around money for the day, then head to the beach. She can do this fairly reliably. When incredulous friends ask why she doesn’t do it for a living, she says simply, “Then it would be work.”

This goes a long way toward explaining my lack of interest in canning, I think. I love to cook (I hope you can tell that much from my weekly ramblings here). But I love doing other things too. I’m not one of those people who fantasizes about spending an entire day in the kitchen. Canning, to me, involves a little bit of messing with food and a whole lot of work—much of it around boiling, steaming cauldrons of water. Continue reading “The lazy man’s way to pickles: Quick, crisp Fresh Dill Pickles need no canning” →

Cooking in Cabo II: Tuna Watermelon Ceviche

Citrus juice quickly “cooks” sushi-grade tuna for this light, fresh, colorful first course, Tuna Watermelon Ceviche. Recipe below.

As American psychology professor Abraham Maslow once said, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Los Cabos, at the southernmost tip of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula, is surrounded on three sides by water. To the lucky inhabitants there, everything looks like a seafood buffet.

I saw this firsthand on a recent culinary press trip to Los Cabos (yes, I’m on about that again). Did you know that there are flights at 5:30 in the morning? Me neither. But being on one meant I grabbed an airport breakfast sandwich and cursed when a mad dash for my connecting flight in Atlanta precluded getting something more. So late afternoon found me at my hotel, the Grand Solmar Land’s End Resort & Spa, desperate for a light meal to tide me over until the group dinner. I found it at the hotel’s oceanside restaurant, La Roca. It was called, quite simply, Seafood from the Pacific. Continue reading “Cooking in Cabo II: Tuna Watermelon Ceviche” →

A healthy cooking technique made fragrant, delicious: Chinese-style Steamed Fish

Steaming infuses fish fillets with the flavors of ginger, star anise, garlic, cilantro and other aromatics for Chinese-style Steamed Fish. Recipe below.

STEAMING FOOD IS A HEALTHY WAY TO COOK. As practiced in Western kitchens, mostly on vegetables, it’s also often a bland way to cook. In Chinese kitchens, it is an art. Chinese cooks use both steaming and smoking to infuse foods—especially meats and fish—with delicate, complex flavors. Continue reading “A healthy cooking technique made fragrant, delicious: Chinese-style Steamed Fish” →

Sweet meets tart and savory: Grilled Chicken with Strawberry Balsamic Vinegar Sauce

Grilled chicken breasts get a flavor boost with a simple, jam-based sauce. Recipe below.

I read somewhere recently that chicken growers are having trouble marketing chicken parts that aren’t skinless, boneless breasts. And it’s not because chicken breasts are more convenient to cook, or that chicken thighs and legs are more fatty than breast meat. It’s that skinless, boneless chicken breasts don’t have bones and therefore seem less like they came from an animal and are therefore somehow less icky.

Seriously? If you’re going to eat meat, own up to it. You can pretend all you want, but that boneless, skinless bit of animal protein was just as much a part of a living chicken as a bone-in thigh or drumstick.

If you’re not ready to give up eating meat (I know I’m not), but you want to feel better about doing so, there are a number of things you can do. Continue reading “Sweet meets tart and savory: Grilled Chicken with Strawberry Balsamic Vinegar Sauce” →

The (sort of) French connection: Grilled Lamb Chops with Lavender

Fresh lavender blossoms, rosemary, thyme and garlic deliver complex depth with a slight French accent to Grilled Lamb Chops with Lavender. Recipe below.

Cooking with lavender got me thinking about some of the strange things we humans put in our mouths. Whether out of desperation or sheer culinary curiosity, we’ve eaten just about everything, from grasshoppers to poisonous blowfish, stinging nettles and even Marmite. And while much has been comedically made of how hungry the first person to eat a lobster must have been, I’m far more impressed that anyone ever decided that there might be something worth eating inside a sea urchin.

By comparison, cooking with lavender seems downright tame. Continue reading “The (sort of) French connection: Grilled Lamb Chops with Lavender” →