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Recipes

Quick Chicken Stir Fry w/ Peppers, Green Beans & Zucchini

In college, chicken stir fry was a mainstay for me and my roommates. It was something you could make a lot of, relatively cheaply, when we had friends over for Must See TV on Thursday nights. Friends, The Single Guy, Seinfeld, Caroline in the City and ER. I liked Jonathan Silverman in the Single Guy, but that 8:30 pm slot was always no man's land despite being bookended by Friends and Seinfeld. Anyway, the stir fry. Back then, we used San-J Szechuan sauce, a Sun Bird packet for seasoning and a big bag of frozen stir fry vegetables.

New Ideas for Salad: Orange-Vanilla Vinaigrette & Braised Greens

Aside from the sunshine, doing nothing and umbrella drinks, eating local is one of the best things about vacation. I love those trips where the biggest decision I'll have to make on any given day is what to eat next. On our recent trip to Tofino, BC, many of the restaurants in town featured greens from Nanoose Edibles Farm in Nanoose Bay, BC. One of the best was this salad at the Long Beach Lodge Resort with Nanoose Edibles greens, Okanagan Happy Days goat cheese, toasted hazelnuts and strawberries with a citrus and vanilla vinaigrette.

Escarole with Red Wine Vinaigrette

Escarole is one of those greens you don't give much thought to until it turns up at the farmers market or in your CSA box. We're so used to the dark leafy greens -- kale, chard, collards, mustard greens -- I couldn't tell you when I last had escarole. And then it showed up in our CSA box last week -- in June! Related to endive, the season usually runs December through April-ish, and with its broader leafy leaves and just a hint of bitterness, it's perfect for a simple salad with red wine vinaigrette.

Super Simple Sugar Snap Pea Soup

Snap Pea Soup just before Fourth of July weekend? I know, but don't you feel like that's how everything seems to be this year? Just a little behind. There were such beautiful sugar snaps at the farmers market, I'd figured on doing a little salad, simply blanching them and dressing them with a little bit of rice wine vinegar and sesame oil and a sprinkle of black sesame seeds. But then this Mark Bittman recipe popped up, equally simple, if not more so.

A16 Chocolate Budino with Sea Salt

I have a love/hate relationship with restaurant cookbooks. On the one hand, I'm thrilled that one of my favorite restaurants is sharing its recipes, but on the other, the dishes don't always seem to measure up to the versions I've had when dining out. We loved A16 in San Francisco under Nate Appleman (who's since moved on to consult for Chipotle) and had a number of wonderful dishes there -- from the burrata to the housemade salsiccia pizza w/ spicy chile oil to the chocolate budino. The A16: Food and Wine cookbook delivers on those dishes and more. It was the A16 cookbook that introduced me to "00" flour and the overnight rise for pizza dough. The ricotta gnocchi is good, and even better in brodo with spicy pork meatballs, and the chocolate budino...well, what can you say about that other than "Mmmmm."

Dried Fig and Port Jam

  Every summer I say, this is the summer I'm really going to make some amazing raspberry or blackberry jam. But something about sterilizing the jars and waiting for that suctioning pop just still seems complicated to me. So I've been sticking with refrigerator jam. And today, since the summer heat is taking its own sweet time to arrive (and I discovered my Maggie Beer is way past its expiration), I made dried fig and port jam with black mission figs.

Slow Cooker Chicken Tacos & Pineapple Salsa

  Sometimes the standout in a meal surprises you. I expected the main topic of this post to be the chicken tacos we made using this recipe from the Flying Pig food truck, but what I want to talk about first is pineapple salsa. I don't know if it's because this Spring has been very un-sunny and I'm jonesin' for a Hawaiian vacation, but this pineapple salsa really struck a chord. You'd think I never had a fruit salsa before. It was the perfect complement to the tacos.

Bent Snowboard Pizza with Seeds

Pizza is the #1 food in America, according to the results of a recently released Oxfam survey of more than 16,000 people globally, followed by steak, chicken, Mexican food and pasta. Pizza is #2 in Germany and #5 in Brazil. I can't say I'm surprised about the US result (although I thought #1 would be burgers). Pizza night - whether homemade or take-out - is almost a weekly occurrence for us. That being the case, you'd think I'd be a lot better at rolling the dough into a circle. But when it comes to pizza, I'm geometrically-challenged. Not unlike my experience in 10th grade geometry, I understand the technique, but there's a disconnect between my brain and the rolling pin. It does make for interesting shapes -- oblongs, rectangles, squares. I'd say this one is between bent snowboard and Christmas stocking.
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