Peach Habanero Tarragon Butter adds a lively kick to toasts with goat cheese, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, plain Greek yogurt and more. Recipe below.
I REMEMBER BEING SUSPICIOUS OF APPLE BUTTER AS A KID. We were mostly a margarine family, but I still wondered how you could call something butter if it had no butter in it. And yes, I ate peanut butter pretty much every day, but that was different. Continue reading “Sweet, spicy taste of summer: Peach Habanero Tarragon Butter”
Tomatoes and basil from the garden (or the farmers market) combine with ricotta cheese and linguine for a quick, creamy vegetarian dinner. Recipe below.
It’s August, and that can only mean one thing. Food websites and blogs everywhere are telling you how to use up all the tomatoes that are filling your garden, CSA box or farmers market. Sounds good to me. Here’s a quick, simple pasta dish that will also help you use up some of your excess fresh basil. Continue reading “Cooking from the garden: Linguine with Tomatoes, Ricotta and Basil”
Mushrooms roasted a day ahead team up with caramelized onions, a green bell pepper roasted directly over a stove burner and saffron pasta for a delicious weeknight quick meal. Recipe below.
The calendar says it’s summer. But until just the other day, the thermometer said it was October. The winter that wouldn’t end has come to a grudging close—the ice on the Great Lakes finally vanished, just a few days ago.
What this has meant for us in the Midwest is enduring autumnal weather—cool nights and, in the daytime, half-hearted jabs toward hot. To be honest, I love it. I hate when the temperature soars! But this perpetual sweater weather definitely has its down side. My tomato plants (which have not been in the ground very long) are looking, frankly, puzzled. The basil is not much bigger than when I put it in the ground. And of course the ongoing cool is not great for the farmers and the crops. Continue reading “Earthy and simple: Saffron Pasta with Roasted Mushrooms, Caramelized Onions and Bell Pepper”
For a quick, healthy, delicious lunch, top warm brown rice with Greek-style yogurt, pistachios, fresh rosemary and a drizzle of olive oil. Recipe below.
Yogurt is having more than a moment. It’s experiencing a seismic shift. North America is eagerly discovering Greek-style strained yogurt, with its higher protein content, thick luxurious mouth feel and tangy flavor.
The picture below shows just a portion of the yogurt case in the Wegman’s supermarket in East Syracuse, New York—maybe 20 percent of the yogurt on display. The shot doesn’t even include the vast part of Wegman’s yogurt case that features the star of the show and the hero of the new American yogurt story, Chobani. Continue reading “A simple, satisfying vegetarian lunch: Savory Yogurt with Brown Rice and Pistachios”
Disks of Crottin, a classic French goat cheese, are baked on buttery toasts, then placed atop a simple salad of mixed greens and Dijon mustard vinaigrette to produce a classic bistro dish. Recipe below.
Terroir, the idea that a “sense of place” flavors agricultural products, is most closely associated with wines. But increasingly, the term is being used with coffee, tea, chocolate, hops and, germane to this story, cheese.
We were recently asked to sample a number of French chèvres, cheeses made from goat’s milk, each produced in a different region. They beautifully illustrated for us just how deeply place is ingrained into French agriculture. And how complex the notion of terroir can be. Continue reading “Tasting a sense of place in French chèvre: Salad with Baked Goat Cheese”
Mushrooms are quickly cooked in butter and sherry. Kale is sautéed just as quickly with pancetta (optional), onion and garlic. Combined, they make a delicious sauce for pasta. Recipe below.
Last Saturday was one of our typical whirlwinds. It included shopping in two different neighborhoods for birthday gifts, picking up and dropping off dry cleaning, a smash-and-grab run through Trader Joe’s, getting lunch fixings at our neighborhood Polish bakery and sausage shop, wrapping gifts, packaging said gifts for shipping and running to the downtown post office to mail them, with a detour by the library.
As dinnertime approached, we wanted something quick and easy, but also satisfying. This improvised dish delivered on all counts. Continue reading “A quick improvised dinner on a busy Saturday: Linguine with Mushrooms and Kale”
Sweet potato gnocchi are quickly sautéed in butter, giving them a beautiful color and a lovely, nutty flavor. Then they’re tossed with kale cooked with garlic, shallots and red pepper flakes. Recipe below.
Last weekend, our family plans fell through, leaving us with two marvelous open days of no plans at all. We were cheerfully meandering around town when we realized that we had not yet been to Eataly Chicago. All those stories of long lines and frenzied crowds had kept us away—during their first week in early December, they had a stunning 120,000 visitors. By the time of our visit on Saturday for lunch, it was bustling, but not as frenetic as the smaller New York store has been every time we’ve visited. And everywhere we looked, people were relaxed and happy, having a wonderful time and glad to be there.
We lunched at La Piazza, standing at a tiny communal table. Bread and olive oil appeared almost immediately, followed by glasses of Italian wine—a chardonnay for Terry, a prosecco for me. We shared three small plates—a salad of roasted beets, olive tapenade, sea salt and mozzarella (made there daily, and so fresh and light); a half-dozen oysters representing both coasts; and supplì, deep-fried balls of creamy risotto filled with Cacio di Roma, a sheep’s milk cheese. It tells you everything about the cheerful, friendly atmosphere that strangers stopped to ask us about the supplì, and then about the oysters, and then told us about what they were having and what they were doing in Chicago. Everything was convivial and everything was sublime. Which of course got us talking and thinking about Italian food. Continue reading “Inspired by lunch at Eataly: Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Wilted Kale”
A long train ride back from a weekend in Syracuse, New York called for comfort food even an exhausted traveler could throw together from what was on hand. Below, the recipe for the easiest thing I cook.
We took the overnight train from Chicago to Syracuse last weekend. No fancy sleeping compartment for us. We toughed it out in coach, with reclining seats, a stack of magazines and books, DVDs for the laptop, a bottle of wine, sandwiches and assorted snacks. Okay, so we weren’t exactly roughing it. Continue reading “A 15-hour train ride and a four-ingredient pasta”
Chanterelle mushrooms, shallots, thyme, half & half, sherry and plenty of butter create a rich, creamy, earthy soup. Recipe (and mushroom substitutions) below.
A couple of times on our recent trip to Seattle, I wondered about the city’s name and its origin. More germane to our visit, however, is the fact that the word ‘eat’ is right in the middle of the name. In our short time there, it seemed we were constantly eating something delicious, talking about some delicious thing we’d just eaten or contemplating what delicious thing we would be putting in our mouths next. Fortunately for us, downtown Seattle is one giant StairMaster. We didn’t burn off all the glorious calories we consumed, but we at least made a tiny, doughy dent.
After an extravagantly delayed flight, cutting-edge inefficiency at the car rental pickup and our GPS device’s refusal to accept that we were not still in Chicago (and the attendant instructions on how to make the 29-hour drive from Chicago to Seattle), we finally checked into our hotel in the late afternoon. Then we headed straight out for oysters. Continue reading “Seattle on five meals a day: Chanterelle Soup”
Pasta turns a classic Italian salad into a quick vegetarian meal, Pasta alla Caprese. Tomatoes, mozzarella and basil are the key ingredients. Recipe below.
The thing about growing tomatoes is this. You plant them as soon as there’s no chance of frost, and then you wait. For a long time, there are no tomatoes. No tomatoes. No tomatoes. Still no tomatoes. And then one day, there are TOMATOES!!! Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes, TOMATOES!!! So you find yourself looking for lots of things to do with TOMATOES!!! Continue reading “Seasonal summer cooking, as simple as it gets: Pasta alla Caprese”