Bastille Day a perfect excuse for mussels, frites and all things French

A pair of simple, delicious French recipes this week—Mussels steamed in wine with shallots, garlic and lots of parsley and oven-fried pommes frites flavored with herbes de Provence.

Lafayette, we are here.” Those famous words, marking our returning the favor to France in World War I for their vital assistance in our Revolutionary War, were undoubtedly followed by the less well known, “Now, when do we eat?”

Because in addition to contributing to American independence, the French are rightly far more known for their contributions to food and cooking. And not just for their stellar, elaborate concoctions. It’s more their understanding of how a few well-chosen ingredients perfectly combined can become something wonderful—and their daily celebration of food in even the simplest dishes. So when I saw that this week’s post would go up on Bastille Day, that was all the excuse I needed to feed my inner Francophile in the kitchen. Continue reading “Bastille Day a perfect excuse for mussels, frites and all things French” →

Winter’s seasonal pleasures: Braised Brussels Sprouts with Bacon, Golden Raisins and Linguine

Many flavors come together to create a complex, satisfying and surprisingly mild seasonal pasta dish. Recipe below.

Brussels sprouts get a totally undeserved bad rap. I think much of it comes from our national suspicion of vegetables in general. And much of that stems from bad or at least unimaginative cooking. Too many cooks treat vegetables as an afterthought, something to be boiled beyond mushy and then seasoned with a little salt and pepper. Of course many of us learn to fear vegetables from our parents. They hated them as kids and expect us to hate them too. So we do.

Whatever the reason for this collective aversion, hiding vegetables has become an industry all its own. Campbell’s V8 Juice first turned them into juice, so you could drink them. Now they’ve launched V8 Fusion, which hides vegetables in clear fruit juices.

Jessica Seinfeld wrote an entire cookbook, Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food, based on the premise of sneaking vegetables and other good things into kids’ meals. Continue reading “Winter’s seasonal pleasures: Braised Brussels Sprouts with Bacon, Golden Raisins and Linguine” →

Rustic but no plain Jane: One-skillet Chicken with Black-eyed Peas and Cherry Tomatoes

Fresh black-eyed peas, green beans and cherry tomatoes combine with wine, thyme and bacon to make this one-skillet meal complex, layered and delicious. Recipe below.

skillet-chicken

I love Mark Bittman dearly. And I’ve grown even fonder of him since he backed off his edict against canned beans. Sort of. Recently on his blog, he did a recipe with canned chickpeas [I’ll wait for the gasps to die down] and grudgingly admitted that canned beans were sometimes acceptable, but that dried beans were still better.

I don’t know about you, but for us, canned beans are one of the greatest cooking conveniences known to mankind. Yes, when we have the foresight and luxury of soaking beans overnight, we’ll sometimes do so. But honestly, the outcome is far from certain for me when I do. So naturally, when I had the chance to one up Mr. Bittman by skipping his dried legumes and cooking fresh black-eyed peas, I had to do it.

Not being a southerner myself but being surrounded by southern relatives pretty much from birth on, black-eyed peas have never not been a part of my life. I’m sure some relatives cooked them fresh, but when my mother was in the kitchen, they always came from a can. So I took up that practice on the rare occasions I cooked with them—my Curried Steaks with Black-eyed Pea Salsa, for instance.

Still, more than one person has told me that fresh black-eyed peas were better than canned. Continue reading “Rustic but no plain Jane: One-skillet Chicken with Black-eyed Peas and Cherry Tomatoes” →