All Things Food
It’s always a good idea on a cold winter’s day to make something that will keep the oven on for some time. And it’s even better when it uses a hearty winter vegetable – red cabbage – with a bit of sweetness from an apple and some cider, in an adaptable recipe that can easily be vegan! (Here’s the link to the column in The Berkshire Eagle or continue reading here.)
Read MoreFor my regular column this past week I was looking for something cozy and warming for a cold January night. Beef Stroganoff eats like a stew, but is a much quicker recipe, not needing a long simmer on the stove. I always like to serve it with egg noodles to enjoy all the delicious, creamy sauce!
Read MoreThis past week I shared something I’ve made more times than I can count. Roasted cauliflower was the most frequent vegetable when my kids were growing up, and Wilson especially loved the ‘secondary’ dish with pasta that he always referred to as a ‘sauté.’ The column itself can be found at this link, or scroll down to read it here.
Read MoreI was asked to write a “centerpiece” column for this past Wednesday in The Berkshire Eagle with ideas to make a New Year’s celebration special, even if we all stayed home.
I decided on a main course and a dessert for New Year’s Eve, and something for brunch on New Year’s Day.
While it’s too late to make these for the turn of the calendar this year, these recipes can make any meal special. A friend of mine even told me how excited she was to make the brunch quiche as a dinner main course with a salad!
Click on this link to the article, or continue reading below!
Read MoreFor my column this past Wednesday in The Berkshire Eagle, I wrote about an easy gratin that combines potato, butternut squash, and celery root.
Sometimes I really think I should say that I write non-recipes, because almost every time I make a recipe, I try some variation or another, and I like to encourage people to do the same. For this recipe, it need not be these specific vegetables – you could use turnips or rutabagas or fennel, just to name a few possibilities! As long as you follow the general idea, it should turn out great!
Read MoreHolidays are meant to be special, and yet now we have had almost a full year of altered celebrations. I know that Christmas looks a lot different for everyone this year. Even though we don’t celebrate Christmas, I really miss our traditional dinner at a local Chinese restaurant with friends, when we also run into many other Jewish families we know…So, of course, today, on Christmas Day, since we aren’t going out for Chinese, I decided to take on a project in the kitchen.
Read MoreThe first of my regular Berkshire Eagle columns was in the paper this past Wednesday, and, thanks to a college friend who posted it on Facebook, I learned it also was in the Vermont papers that are under the same ownership!
The online version introduces me as the new food columnist, which was pretty cool, and I received much congratulations from friends and family. I’ve even had several people tell me that they already tried the recipe and loved it! It makes me so happy when I hear that people are trying my recipes!
Read MoreJust before Thanksgiving, we got into a conversation in one of my classes about food for the big dinner (albeit smaller for many of us this year). I happened to mention my absolute favorite cider gravy (which can be found at the bottom of this blog post), and one of my students asked me for the recipe. I was so happy when his mother sent me an email with pictures of him making it for their Thanksgiving dinner!
After the break he told me that not only did he love the gravy, but he also made the sandwich I described in my first Berkshire Eagle piece (republished at this link), and told me he really liked the addition of stuffing and cranberry. Which led, not surprisingly to a mention of the cranberry chutney I’ve been making for more years than I can count, the recipe for which I have given to so many friends and family. In fact, one of my colleagues texted me a photo the day before Thanksgiving to show me how she’s still making it, year after year!
Read MoreA few weeks ago, I got an email, out of the blue, from the features editor at our local paper, The Berkshire Eagle. She had seen “culinursa” when a mutual friend tagged me on an Istagram post and wondered if I would be interested in writing for the food section of the newspaper. I couldn’t say “yes” fast enough! Starting this coming Wednesday I will be the rotation of regular contributors, and I can also pitch ideas for the longer “centerpiece” columns that also appear in the paper.
Read MoreAlso known as “I love beets, one of many in a series!”
Most people either love beets or hate them. When I met my husband he was definitely in the I-hate-beets camp, but now that I’ve made a convert of him, he was sad that there wasn’t enough for seconds when I made this. I’m still hoping that one day – when we can actually see each other once again – I can tempt my friend, Robin, into trying beets one more time, to see if there is some preparation that she might like!
Read MoreAs a child, I was a picky eater. When I was an infant and starting on solid food, I didn’t seem to like anything. But I did like applesauce. My mom tells me she would use a bit of applesauce to hide whatever else was on the spoon, whence derives the applesauce habit I had as a child.
I’m not kidding when I say I had an applesauce habit. Every evening at dinner, to the left of my plate, sat a small bowl of applesauce and I would dip every forkful of whatever meat was for dinner into the applesauce before eating it. Of course people have heard of pork with applesauce, but this was, truly every single meat. Even fish. Even my grandmother’s veal Parmesan with tomato sauce and mozzarella. (Yes, I realize that sounds like a strange combination, and I haven’t had it in years, but it’s one of those embedded taste memories I can still call to mind with utmost clarity.)
Read MoreAs may be clear from many of my posts, I am not vegan, yet I have numerous friends who are vegetarian or vegan. So when I made this dish and it was more phenomenal than I had even anticipated, I knew I had to share, and highlight that it’s vegan!
We had already made the brisket ahead of time – as we always do – for Erev Rosh Hashanah dinner, and I was poking around to decide what vegetable I would serve with it. I had three enormous carrots and a huge leek from our Woven Roots Farm CSA share; I also had three containers of dried fruit that were merely remnants from other recipes: 6 prunes, 3 dates, and a few tablespoons of dried cherries.
Read MoreIt is always a happy day when we go to pick up our CSA farm share at Woven Roots. Because we are now empty-nesters, we only bought a half-share and pick up every other weekend. I love walking into the tent and seeing what’s on the tables each time, and then, of course, I start to come up with recipes in my head for my treasures.
This weekend we got leeks (among lots of other veggies). I adore leeks! We also had some refrigerated gnocchi and some High Lawn Farm heavy cream that were nearing their expiration dates, and so I knew exactly what I was going to make for dinner!
Read MoreAlthough Joanie and I hardly ever see each other anymore, especially now due to the pandemic, she follows my blog faithfully. Several days ago, she emailed me with a request. A friend had Concord grapes, she told me, and she remembered a delicious Concord grape pie she had several times, a specialty of the Finger Lakes region of New York State. If she got the grapes to me, she wondered, could she pay me to make her that pie?
Joanie went on to explain that she used to cook a lot, but her eyesight has been diminishing and she really cannot cook anymore, but would really love to taste that pie again. I told her I could give it a try. But then it turned out there weren’t enough grapes.
Read MoreSo often it is a smell that takes you back. For me, when I was making relish this weekend, as soon as it began cooking on the stove, I was transported back to Bethany, Connecticut, when I was just a child.
Although my father was New Yorker born and bred – he never lived anywhere else except during college and law school – he also loved the country. When my sister and I were young, my parents bought a country house near my grandparents in Connecticut on three acres of land where we spent many weekends and much of our time in the summers.
Read MoreNow that my stepdaughter, Rachel, lives closer to us, we have had the good fortune that she spent almost all of her vacation time with us this summer! She was even here for her birthday this past week, and in the season of the best, ripest, local fruits and vegetables, she wanted plenty of them for her birthday dinner. We served lots of grilled zucchini and eggplant, and sliced fresh tomatoes from the garden, and a Tarte Robert for dessert. And for the main course of grilled duck breasts, I did a bit of kitchen improv and made a sauce with fresh peaches! I think this this would be really good with white wine, but I had none open so I used some cognac. If you try it with white wine, or serve it with something different, such as chicken, I’d love to know how it turns out!
Read MoreOur house sits upon a hill of solid ledge. If you go down into our basement (not something I recommend), you will see the rock come up out from the earth which then becomes a beautiful focal point out in our yard. The downside, however, is that with the rock just below the surface – and in some places actually exposed in our lawn – we do not have enough soil for a vegetable garden.
Our sole effort at growing some of our own food is one small raised bed, which provides enough soil for the plant to grow. We only grow tomatoes and basil, and at this time of year it means we are eating tomatoes and basil with every single meal. I also freeze and can items for the winter, such as pesto, slow-roasted tomatoes, and tomato jam.
Read MoreI’m not talking about corn tortillas, but rather tacos that feature fresh, sweet, in-season corn, along with a protein or other vegetables!
I first got this idea when I saw a Washington Post article on easy taco fillings, one of which was for corn and chorizo with soft corn tortillas. Of course I didn’t really follow the recipe. First of all, Hank and I prefer flour tortillas, and I also didn’t have any scallions. But what was really key to this delicious dinner was the spicy and the sweet together, with slices of avocado, a bit of sour cream, and a spritz of fresh lime.
Read MoreWe got a beautiful head of napa cabbage from our CSA farm share, along with some sugar snap peas, so my thoughts turned to something Asian. Napa cabbage plays a starring role in most moo shu recipes, and we had some boneless chicken thighs in the freezer, so I started to think about that. Combining a few different recipes, as I often do, with some additional ideas of my own, the plans were coming together. Except for the moo shu pancakes.
In normal times, we would have made it an event for the day to drive to Albany, visit a few stores, eat at an interesting restaurant, and stop at the huge Asian supermarket on Central Avenue to find moo shu pancakes and any number of other hard-to-find Asian ingredients. But nothing these days is normal, and it seemed like a bit too much to drive that far for only one item that we really needed.
Read MorePerhaps the most famous pasta dish with eggplant is Pasta alla Norma, which includes tomatoes and cheese. That recipe, Pasta alla Norma, is practically the official pasta dish of Sicily, at least it seemed that way to me when I visited Sicily during my Rome semester at the Centro (the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies). In the middle of my semester, we had a two-week trip to Sicily and southern Italy, staying at a different hotel practically every night as we toured numerous archeological sites. At every new hotel where we arrived in Sicily, they served our group Pasta alla Norma, to highlight this famous pasta dish of the island. I’ll admit I was a bit tired of that dish by the time we left!
So this post is not really about Pasta alla Norma! I do love the dish, but there is another way I love to enjoy pasta with eggplant. I like to cook slices of eggplant in olive oil until they become brown and practically melted inside, and then toss the eggplant with the pasta and a bit of heavy cream.
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