Category Archives: Food

Pan-Fried Peppers

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I like a vegetable as much as the next girl, but I am the first to admit that they can sometimes be time-consuming to prepare.  (I’m looking at you, fava beans.*)  As a consolation for the minutes I lose shelling fresh beans or dicing winter squash or washing mountains of greens, though, there are the times when I can cook a vegetable whole (like that cauliflower!) with little or no preparation at all.  This is one of those times.  Pan, oil, whole peppers, salt, and they’re ready for the table.  My mother in law regularly makes these peppers to great acclaim, and I follow her method Continue reading →

Tomato and Nectarine Salad with Basil

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Welcome to Emmy Cooks!  You can see some of my favorite recent recipes by clicking the “My Favorite Recipes” category on the sidebar (here are May, June, and July).  If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive a daily recipe by email, or follow Emmy Cooks on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

It took us 11 hours to get out of the house today.  Does that happen to families that don’t have little children running around everywhere?  I can’t remember.  I don’t think so.There was playing to do in the back yard, the baby wanted to be rocked while she slept, and the bigger kids took long naps in the late afternoon.  Meanwhile, we picked through our blueberries (tiny snails were hiding in their blossom ends) and got a pot of blueberry jam simmering.  The children tasted it many, many times.  It doesn’t sound busy, does it?  Today, it was all-consuming.  We got to the park with all our bikes and scooters in the evening, just in time to ride the lakefront loop and have a picnic dinner on our girls’ favorite hidden beach at sunset.

We had a very good salad.  Continue reading →

Blueberry-Lavender Pancakes with Honey

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Welcome to Emmy Cooks!  You can see some of my favorite recent recipes by clicking the “My Favorite Recipes” category on the sidebar (here are May, June, and July).  If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive a daily recipe by email, or follow Emmy Cooks Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

In these lazy days of summer vacation, the girls think every day is Saturday. And Saturday often means pancakes.  Or waffles.  Or sometimes both; when the pancake and waffle factions are divided, it’s easy enough to placate everyone by making one batch of pancake batter and baking a few scoops of it in the waffle iron.  (Shh, don’t tell.)  Today, for example, was a both day.  We arrived home from a berry-picking excursion yesterday with a heaping flat of blueberries in our hands and a near-equivalent quantity in our bellies.  So today, again, we had a lot of blueberries we needed to eat.  For me, a day of excessive blueberry consumption naturally starts with blueberry pancakes.  Not so, apparently, for my big girls (make that “big” girls; the oldest is 5), who both stared at me, clearly baffled, and patiently explained the error of my ways.  Continue reading →

Steamed Fish and Bok Choy with Garlic and Ginger

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Yes, of course you can make this spunky 15-minute healthy meal with tofu instead of fish. Or halibut fillets instead of salmon steaks, which is what I usually do. Or any white fish, really. But lest you think that lean-protein-of-choice steamed with bok choy sounds too dull and virtuous, let me assure you that this dish is all about the zippy sauce. In fact, be sure to make some rice to sop it all up. (Brown rice is in keeping with the virtuous theme and usually my preference, but it makes this a 45-minute meal instead. You do what you like.)

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Cucumber Salad with Fresh Mozzarella and Tomatoes

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My girls, or at least the two who are old enough to have opinions on the matter, have two favorite restaurants in Seattle.  One of them I don’t like at all.  The other is Tutta Bella, an excellent Neapolitan-style pizzeria.  Their pizzas are very good, but there’s an even-better salad that I order every single time I go.

To be clear, I also always eat pizza, but my loyalties are divided there: sometimes I have the roasted vegetables, sometimes a margarita pizza crowned with a tangle of arugula.  But I do not vary my salad order ever.  Because the salad is so good.  Mmm. Continue reading →

Israeli Couscous with Zucchini, Sungold Tomatoes, and Basil Oil

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Although I couldn’t grow a beefsteak tomato in a hundred years in my Seattle backyard, the smallest varieties grow reasonably well in a warm year (read: not this year).  So I’ve had the opportunity to get to know and love cherry tomatoes of every color.  The reds are reliable, the yellow pears add variety, the purpley-blacks are tangy and sweet.  But the loveliest of them all, for both flavor and looks, is the orange-bright Sungold tomato.  Use them here if you have them.  Grow them next year if you don’t.This is my kind of pasta dish because it’s equal parts vegetables and pasta.  Continue reading →

Basil Oil

52 Replies

Welcome to Emmy Cooks!  You can see some of my favorite recent recipes by clicking the “My Favorite Recipes” category on the sidebar (here are June, July, and August).  If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive a daily recipe by email, or follow Emmy Cooks on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

One of the saddest things that can happen inside my refrigerator is the demise of a gorgeous bunch of herbs.  It happens like this: I buy herbs, I have a grand plan to use them, I put it off for a few days, the herbs get bullied toward the back of the fridge, and by the time I find the basil or cilantro the leaves are black and mushy and I shed a tear.  Sound familiar?  It doesn’t have to be that way. Continue reading →

Fava and Ricotta Bruschetta

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I know I said that I find the task of preparing fava beans to be overly fussy, but I’ve found a way that makes it easy.  Graciously agree to let a girlfriend come over on a Saturday to make lunch together, and hope that she arrives with a bright little bowl of favas that have already been shucked, boiled, and individually peeled.  (Thanks, girlfriend!)  If she goes on to introduce you to a gorgeous recipe like this one, that’s just icing on the cake.

This is the second fava recipe I’ve posted on this site and both of them are for bruschetta.  (The other bruschetta topping is a rich fava and arugula pesto.)  Is this a coincidence?  I think not.  Continue reading →

S’mores, or, In Praise of Not Cooking Sometimes, Too

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I love cooking for my family, but it’s nice to have an occasional break everything, even things I love.  Like maybe once a year, when we go to family camp, stay in rustic cabins, and let the nice people there cook and clean up for us.

This is literally the only thing I made all week.  It was a good week. Continue reading →

Raw Broccoli Salad with Raisins and Walnuts

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So here’s a nice secret that I’ll tell you more about tomorrow:  I haven’t cooked a thing all week.  We arrived home late tonight after lucking out both with the ferry times and the three sleeping children in the car.  Smooth sailing of the figurative sort, which we appreciated tonight almost as much as we appreciated the placid waters when we were out canoeing in the lake this morning with a literal boatload of our kids and our friends and their kids.  A lovely ending to a lovely week.  And not only because I didn’t have to cook.

Continue reading →