Easiest Tastiest Guacamole

June 20, 2011

Perfect Guac This makes about 2 cups and really features the avocado flavor: Take 4 ripe avocados, cut in half lengthwise, remove pit with knife, then, using a spoon, scrape out flesh into a bowl. Mash to desired consistency with back of the spoon, fork, or pestle, and season with juice of 2 limes or [...]

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Wile E. Chayote

June 7, 2011

When our oldest was two, discovering a new life in Brooklyn with a new babysitter, and using the bizarre and sadly all-but-forgotten expressions unique to every toddler in the first great bloom of language, he spoke of a new favorite food: christophene. Or christophine. Or something like it—we hadn’t a clue. It filled us with [...]

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Rhubarb Awakening

May 29, 2011

Here’s a Luddite thought. Instead of paying lip service to the idea of seasonality—spurning, say, corn on the cob, as I do, until it’s at the farmer’s market with a sign that says Just-Pikt!—actually eat the way your great, or great great great grandparents did. Or at least an idealized version of them. Try to imagine [...]

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3 Easy Rhubarb Recipes

May 29, 2011

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp Preheat the oven to 375. Wash, string if necessary, and cut 1 lb rhubarb stalks cross-wise in 1/2 inch pieces. Wash, hull, and slice in halves or quarters a quart of strawberries. Mix with 1 cup of sugar and 2 TB of flour. Set aside in a pyrex baking dish. Top with [...]

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Fave Fava Beans

May 9, 2011

Erv, the produce guy I worked for years ago, had two “stores”—a tiny grocery in downtown Allentown, Pennsylvania, and the stand at the Kutztown Farmer’s Market. Each served a very different customer. The stand drew bustling Saturday crowds of older Dutchies who streamed in from the surrounding farmland, and the store, in a poor downtown [...]

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Ramps

April 29, 2011

Shining patches of green in the otherwise monotonous grey-brown woods of early spring, ramps grow and spread in clusters, carrying with them the first bright, sharp taste of a new vegetable after the long whimpering end of winter. Well, at least in our imaginations. These days, in this deracinated era of strawberries in January and [...]

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Shanko Buco

April 22, 2011

We were graciously invited to a Seder this week. I hadn’t been since childhood, and everything seemed new and interesting, the reading of the haggadah, the order of the foods, and especially the Seder plate with its six traditional items. One was a lamb shank, the z’roa, chestnut brown and glistening in the candlelight, symbol [...]

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Flex Those Mussels

April 12, 2011

It’s late on a Friday night in Barcelona, in a crowded restaurant called Los Caracoles, “the snails,” famous for its snail-shaped loaves of bread and  rotisserie open to the street where a cook tends the roasting of dozens of chickens. We’re at the bar when a few sailors sit next to us. The one who [...]

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Smoky, Spicy Chipotle Goodness

April 6, 2011

I think it was Jessica Seinfeld who made news a year or two ago with a cookbook about sneaking vegetables into her kids meals. The mind boggles…. Our issue has been the reverse. Instead of infantalizing the food, the task has been to add more grown up flavor into family dinners so we can all [...]

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The (Radish) World in Black and White

March 29, 2011

Been thinking about routines lately, as in how hard it is not to fall into them, and even harder to figure a way out. This is as true of cooking as anything else, at least for most of us. We have a repertoire, a small collection of go-to recipes and dishes, the Friday night pasta [...]

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