With August’s arrival comes the abundance of fresh tomatoes. A slow-simmered dish like ratatouille is a delicious use of right-off-the-vine tomatoes and should be part of your summer’s repertoire.
Ratatouille, which comes from the French word “touiller,” meaning “to toss,” is literally a tossing in a pot of summer vegetables and simmering them in olive oil: tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers, onion, and seasoned with fresh garlic, basil, and perhaps a bay leaf. There are many varieties of ratatouille. There is the Disney version, made popular by the Pixar film “Ratatouille”; Julia Child sautées the vegetables separately; Alice Waters creates a “basil bouquet” bound with kitchen twine to enhance the flavors of the vegetables as they cook.
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Posted in Eating in season, Main dish | Tagged ratatouille, recipe, tomatoes | 4 Comments »
In the spirit of the Stir It Up! muffin mix-off, I was inspired to mix together a batch of these wonderful orange, date, and cinnamon muffins from “Sun Bread & Sticky Toffee: Date desserts from everywhere” by Sarah al-Hamad, just out this month from Interlink Books (July 2013).
I had found some dates in my cupboard that needed to be used up. Their sugars were crystalizing on their skin so including them in a baked good was really the best option. I first tried a recipe for date muffins I found on my box of bulger wheat, and while they were certainly tasty and served as a perfect pre-swim treat before swimming across Walden Pond last Saturday morning, they were somehow laking in their small, pale shapes. That’s when I remembered I had a copy of “Sun Bread & Sticky Toffee” sitting on my desk at work.
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Posted in Baked goods | Tagged dried dates, Muffins, recipes | Leave a Comment »
Do you have a favorite muffin recipe? Use that delicious muffin to win a signed copy of “Flour, Too,” the second cookbook by Boston chef Joanne Chang that features recipes for the savory fare that have made her four cafés Boston’s favorite stops for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Chef Joanne Change, contest, cookbook, Flour Bakery, muffin, recipes | Leave a Comment »
A few weeks ago I received a cookbook to review: “The No-Cook, No-Bake Cookbook” by Matt Kadey. With summer temperatures in Boston this year especially sultry for days and days on end, tonight seemed like a perfect time to test out one of the recipes.
Flipping through breakfast, starters and sides, main dishes, and desserts, Peach Salad with Chocolate Vinaigrette caught my eye. Fresh peaches, prosciutto, mozzarella, mint, dried cherries, and almonds drizzled with a chocolate dressing? What’s not to like? And it was considered a main dish. Chocolate for dinner, hooray!
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Posted in Salad | Tagged chocolate, food, peaches, Salad recipes | Leave a Comment »
When most people hear the words “New England dinner” their first thoughts usually run toward a lobster dinner, a clambake, or an oyster shuck. But there is another kind of seafood that has a long association with the Fourth of July, and that is poached salmon with egg sauce.
The legend has it that Abigail Adams served Atlantic salmon, fresh garden peas, and new potatoes to John Adams on the first Fourth of July in 1776. And while many New Englanders admit to eating salmon on the Fourth of July, finding strong ties to Abigail Adams remains, well, fishy.
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Posted in Holiday dishes, Main dish | Tagged Fourth of July, recipe, salmon | 1 Comment »
Remember Pop Rocks and how fun it was to have a little explosion taking over your tongue?
Molecule-R, which makes molecular gastronomy kits for the “amateur chef” to make edible and unusal delights in your own humble kitchen, has packaged popping sugar in 2.8-ounce canisters. I thought popping sugar would be a great treat for the Fourth of July – fireworks in your mouth!
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Posted in Dessert, Holiday dishes | Tagged chocolate, Fourth of July, popping sugar, recipe, strawberries | 3 Comments »
Red, white, and blue shortcakes are a standard Fourth of July treat in our family. Just a simple, warm shortcake topped with red strawberries or raspberries and blueberries with whipped cream. This year I got to dreaming a bit. What if I kicked up the flavors a notch? And that is how candied ginger shortcakes with strawberry rhubarb sauce came to be.
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Posted in Dessert, Holiday dishes | Tagged Fourth of July, rhubarb, shortcake recipe, strawberries | 5 Comments »
My colleagues in the newsroom tease me about my lunches. Not in a bad way. They like to peer over my cubby wall and look at my salad during lunchtime while I eat at my desk.
“Look!” they will exclaim. “She is using a real plate!”
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Posted in Salad | Tagged Salad recipe | 2 Comments »
In the webinar I am currently teaching “An American culinary journey: From succotash to urban chickens,” we are spending an entire section on Julia Child.
In many ways Julia’s own journey (and I feel like I can be on a first name basis here, since her genius lay in her ability to be accessible and engaging) epitomizes the transition of American cuisine – from one that was recovering from war rations and Jell-O molds into the discovery of cuisine, food as an element able to delight the senses, engage the mind, and empower a cook to exude creativity.
Her own awakening, as it is widely known, came in Rouen, France with sole meunière.
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Posted in Main dish | Tagged fish, food, Juila Child, recipe, sole meuniere, The Way to Cook | 5 Comments »
Come join me for a four-week webinar seminar An American Culinary Journey: From Succotash to Urban Chickens in partnership with Principia College. The course will meet online for one hour every Monday night, beginning April 1. No homework required! Just learn, share, and have fun.
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Posted in Food musings | Tagged culinary history, food, Principia College, The Christian Science Monitor, webinar | Leave a Comment »
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