Globe trotting and persistence pay off: Tilapia with Miso and Scallions

Miso, mirin, rice vinegar and garlic create a flavorful Japanese-inspired marinade for mild tilapia fillets. Quickly sautéed scallions and toasted sesame seeds add a beautiful finish. Recipe below.

Food is at a particularly cool intersection these days. On one hand, we’re thinking more about how our food gets to our plates, and locally sourced ingredients are getting much deserved attention. At the same time, global influence has never been stronger in the kitchen. Home cooks everywhere have ever increasing access to flavors, ingredients and ideas from around the world.

This week’s recipe is of the global variety. It will send you on a hunt for a number of Japanese ingredients. But don’t worry—they’re readily available lots of places, some of them in supermarkets, in fact. And in the Kitchen Notes, I’ll give you some ideas for other uses for those ingredients as well as a couple of substitutes if you can’t find them. Continue reading “Globe trotting and persistence pay off: Tilapia with Miso and Scallions” →

Fast food fast tracks Indian cuisine to mainstream

In my latest USA Character Approved Blog post, a bevy of new Indian fast food restaurants reflects the mainstreaming of food from the Subcontinent here.

Fast food gets a bad rap, often for good reason. But something it does well, I think, is spot culinary cultural trends and help make them mainstream. In many cases, it even speeds them along.

One of the latest cuisines getting the fast food fast track treatment is Indian food. Living in Chicago, we’re blessed with lots of good options for Indian food, especially along Devon Avenue. The many restaurants along the crowded street are stuffed with Indian and Pakistani immigrants as well as growing numbers of adventurous Westerners. But dinners there are often protracted affairs, and for the uninitiated, the menus can be daunting. Continue reading “Fast food fast tracks Indian cuisine to mainstream” →

Lamb, onions and potatoes become comfort food with an English accent: Lancashire Hotpot

This take on Lancashire hotpot—traditional English food at its most comforting—is made with lamb, onions and carrots topped with sliced potatoes and baked until fork tender. Recipe below.

DON’T YOU HATE IT WHEN A GOOD MYTH GETS DEBUNKED? Turns out one of Mark Twain’s cooler quotes may never have been uttered by him. I say ‘may’ because while no one can find it in his writings anywhere, they also can’t find anyone else who said it. Continue reading “Lamb, onions and potatoes become comfort food with an English accent: Lancashire Hotpot” →

A big, delicious bowl of healthy: Turkish Style Red Lentil Soup with Chard

Sweet Hungarian paprika, garlic, cayenne pepper, sumac, diced tomatoes with green chilies and just a bit of lamb make Turkish Style Red Lentil Soup with Chard a lively, healthy, robust meal in a bowl. Recipe below.

As the weather has been turning cooler, Marion has been messing around with lentils in the kitchen, trying a dazzling array of recipes. I’ll let her tell you about her most recent delicious results.

We mostly try to eat fairly sensibly. But on occasion, we don’t (and when we don’t, it’s usually pretty wonderful). When we have had a shockingly sumptuous meal, I often say for the rest of the week all I am going to eat is one lentil.

Not that eating lentils is suffering. Really, I can’t say enough about how good and important they are. Lentils are not only so, so delicious, but so, so healthy. Continue reading “A big, delicious bowl of healthy: Turkish Style Red Lentil Soup with Chard” →

Celebrating the multi-cultural flavors of National Hispanic Heritage Month

National Hispanic Heritage Month celebrates many countries and many cultures. I explore the culinary contributions of chefs from those different backgrounds in my latest USA Character Approved Blog post.

It seems every day, week or month on the calendar is designated as National (insert topic here) Day/Week/Month. But few are as delicious to celebrate as National Hispanic Heritage Month. Spanning two months, from September 15 through October 15, it recognizes the histories, cultures and contributions of Americans whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.

Hispanics are the fastest growing segment of the US population; since 2000, our Hispanic population has grown by 43%. And lucky for us, they brought their cooking pots with them. Continue reading “Celebrating the multi-cultural flavors of National Hispanic Heritage Month” →

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” →

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” →

Too hot to cook? Not with this quick Peppery Pork Cucumber Stir-fry

Ground pork, English cucumber, red bell pepper, scallions, lemongrass and ginger come together quickly in Peppery Pork Cucumber Stir-fry—perfect for hot summer cooking. Recipe below.

Extreme weather puts us in the mood to take it extremely easy in the kitchen. I’ll let Marion tell you about a quick stir-fry she whipped up that tastes far more delicious than the short time spent in the kitchen would suggest.

All my complaining about the cool, non-summery weather has led to it being miserably hot and humid and weird. This month alone, we’ve had a giant hailstorm that swept across the city accompanied by lightning (we heard it coming, this low drumming advancing toward us in the dark, long before we figured out what it was, and then so much hail, no rain, just hail); then a derecho uprooting trees and hurling around heavy objects on its thousand-mile path; then, this weekend, a day of basement-flooding, record-setting rainfall.

And in between all of this, most of the time it’s been hot—at times so hot that my colleagues in places like Florida and Arizona and California have been helpfully pointing out that it was actually being cooler there, in all those places. (Guys! Thanks, guys!) And along with the heat is a chemical veil over everything, so that when the wind blows, you actually feel worse.

So we have been hunting for dinners that cook up fast. Things mostly made from ingredients, not products, things refreshing to the eye, and nothing including the word slow. Continue reading “Too hot to cook? Not with this quick Peppery Pork Cucumber Stir-fry” →

Cooking in Cabo: Zucchini Tomato Goulash

Inspired by a cooking class on an organic farm in Los Cabos, Mexico, this hearty goulash combines zucchini, tomatoes, garlic, fresh basil, jalapeño peppers and ricotta cheese to create a lively side dish or vegetarian meal. Recipe below.

You know how when you’re traveling and one of the locals asks where you’re from, then says wistfully, “Wow, I’ve always wanted to go there”? I didn’t get that once in Los Cabos. Not once. And I live in Chicago, a place I consider capable of generating a certain amount of destination envy.

I was in Los Cabos a few weeks ago, at the southernmost tip of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula, on a culinary press trip to explore the foodie side of this popular tourist destination. Continue reading “Cooking in Cabo: Zucchini Tomato Goulash” →