This is such an inadequate title for this dish! Firstly, properly roasted red peppers are filled with umami. They just melt in your mouth and they taste divine making any dish you use them in even better. Couple that with the best garden fresh tomatoes of summer, some garlic and basil and you have a super easy, super tasty side dish that just screams of summer. I discovered this dish when we lived in England. It makes me think of long summer nights, children playing outside and dinner with friends. I can remember the first time I served them to my father. He was a man who ...
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GAD ZUCCHS! (Part 1): OLIVE OIL ZUCCHINI BREAD WITH CARDAMOM AND DATES
I have such a conflicted relationship with zucchini. I have read countless tales of neighbors passing off the excesses of their zucchini crop to one another. I have seen beautiful expansive plants in my friend’s gardens. I have lusted after their zucchini blossoms and loved the gifts of zucchini bread. How hard, therefore, can it be to grow zucchini? Harder than you would think, at least for me. The first year, my plants never made it past a few feeble blossoms before developing a mold that had them brown, shriveled and goopy. The second year I moved them into raised beds and watched ...
CRYING CHICKEN: PERUVIAN CHICKEN WITH GREEN CILANTRO SAUCE
How do you love someone who loves someone who is hurting? Twice removed from the source of the pain, how do you help the helper? You cook for them. Over the vast history of man and the evolution of cultures, bringing food to those in need, emotional or physical, has been a source of comfort to the giver and the recipient. On a purely practical side, people need to eat. Food gives us strength. The world is a darker place when one is hungry and emotions are more difficult to negotiate. It was not just a funny joke when someone coined the term “hangry”. From a loving and loyal ...
WATERMELON PUDDING
Somewhere, somehow, while I was living overseas, the watermelon of my childhood disappeared. You remember the one? It was red and juicy and sweet like today’s watermelons but the seeds were big and black and part of the fun (as a child) of eating the melon was spitting the seeds out, best to do it to the ground or a plate but on occasion at each other! The other thing about those watermelons? They were big, very big. So big that you could buy one whole or you could buy a portion of sliced melon at the store. I come from a large family so chances were the melon would get eaten, ...
HERB GRILLED SALMON WITH CAULIFLOWER RICE PILAF
Last year around this time I was in Greenlife (Asheville’s hippie supermarket which is actually a Whole Foods Market but we all pretend it’s not) and they had some salmon fillets on wood planks all ready for the grill. I really wanted to try it but at the time I had no grill and no place to put one. This year I have a place to put one and I have a grill so I went back to Greenlife and even though they had nothing prepared I managed to score an already soaked plank and some salmon. And when I got home I went to town on it! Truthfully, I wasn’t expecting much so I didn’t take many ...
TURN THE BEET AROUND: BLUEBERRY AND BEET MUFFINS
I like beets well enough. I am not someone who raves about beets but I enjoy them in salads. That sentence pretty much encapsulates my relationship with beets. Outside of a salad, what can you do with them? The last time I tried to do something different with beets I used them in a 1980’s British dish called “Ruby Beef”. It was not a success. My family (read children) took umbrage at being offered beef in a pale pink Play-Doh colored sauce and, bolstered by their father’s similar refusal, held a full-scale rebellion. And that is where my experimentation with beets ended. Until this ...
CORN, TOMATO AND ZUCCHINI MUFFINS, DON’T FORGET THE CHEESE!
A friend recently asked me why I grow vegetables and get a CSA share from my local market. It’s a fair question. But for me the two things serve completely different functions. My CSA share stretches me. Left to myself I would spend the whole summer eating my holy trinity of vegetables: tomatoes, corn and zucchini. I would, and do, walk happily by the produce shelves loaded with greens, root vegetables, and other less favored foods straight to my go-to’s. I can’t do that with my CSA. The dang things are in my home! In my refrigerator right now are Japanese eggplants, radishes ...
PEACH MINT JULEP HAND PIES
(It's Summer and things are heating up. So in order to bring you seasonal recipes when you need them most I will be posting twice a week from now on. Look for my new posts on Wednesday and Sundays. Sign up to receive notification of new posts above. I promise I will never, never, never give your email to anyone else!) You might not think it based on this but there are other things I like beside food. Food just always makes good times even better! One of the things I like a lot is the theater. I have always been involved in theater: acting, directing, teaching, working with kids, ...
COOKING WITH FRIENDS: A SMASHINGLY BEAUTIFUL TOMATO GALETTE
It’s tomato time! Happy dance everyone! First off, let’s just agree that a big, ripe, juicy tomato right off the vine is one of the best things out there. But after you’ve filled yourself with tomato sandwiches and made pasta sauce by the bucket loads what else can you do with these beautiful babies? Fortunately, my friend Billy and I can help! Remember Billy and his wonderful Baked Goat Cheese Rolls? You may recall that I mentioned that he had made a “smashingly beautiful tomato galette”, the recipe for which I was going to share with you when tomato season was upon us. Well, ...
FRUSTRATION CAKE
Lately, I have been running into a lot of frustration in my life. Things aren’t happening the way I want them to, when I want them to or how I want them to. Do you ever look up the meaning of words you know the meaning to? I do. My definition of frustrating is having no power to change or fix the problem. The dictionary definition is to “cause (someone) to feel upset or annoyed, typically as a result of being unable to change or achieve something.” And the list of synonyms includes exasperate, infuriate, annoy, vex, irritate, irk, try one’s patience, disappoint, discontent, ...
