Tag Archives: cooking

Radishes with Butter and Salt

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Today was the first day of the season for the farmer’s market in my neighborhood.  The five of us meandered over the hill in the sunshine, with frequent breaks for ant-watching, water-drinking, and rock-, stick-, and leaf-collecting (“for our nature collections!”).  The round trip, about three miles, took nearly four hours.  To mix metaphors rather unforgivably (forgive me!), we were living the good life in the slow lane.

I think I expected to find a few beat-up storage carrots, early radishes, and a lot of dried apples, but I was pleasantly surprised.  Those farmers have not been lollygagging about in their gardens as I have.  There were tables brimming with greens, radishes, turnips, leeks, rainbow chard, and rabes!  Plus plenty of baked goods, of course, and delicious local honey.  I wanted one of everything but I contented myself with a few big bags of veggies (we could only hang so many bags off the stroller and still have room for children).

I realized a few years ago that, to my surprise, I had grown to love radishes.  Eating them with good butter and flaky salt is one of life’s simple pleasures.  Even if you don’t think you love radishes, give it a try sometime.  You might be pleasantly surprised to find that you love a new vegetable. Continue reading Radishes with Butter and Salt​ (click for recipe)

Smoked Salmon Salade Nicoise

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Dinner outside again!  I lived in LA for three years and appreciated the weather every single day.  You can be sure that I’ll also be able to sustain this glee through every single outdoor meal of Seattle’s short summer.  Especially since it’s supposed to go right back to raining this week.

I took the picnic theme one step further by making a big main-dish composed salad, isn’t that summery?  And I was quite pleased to be one-upped in the pretending-its-summer department by our friends who served a rum punch on the deck before dinner.

Continue reading Salade Nicoise (click for recipe)

Kale Salad with Apples, Currants, and Gorgonzola

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It’s time for another hearty vegetable salad, although if you want this one last long enough to have for lunch the next day you had better at least double the recipe. It’s that good, and beautiful to boot.

Raw kale salads are run-of-the-mill these days, but this salad hails from an era when even people like us were a little skeptical about eating raw kale. It is a “massaged” kale salad that appears to have been all over the internet in 2009 with earnest promises that massaging the kale with salt would break down the cell wells and render it so tender as to be virtually cooked.

Somehow, however, this precise salad didn’t come to my attention until today, when my friend sang its praises and urgently requested the recipe from his sister via text message. Thank goodness. And now I’m sharing it with you in case it also escaped your notice in 2009.

As far as I can tell, this recipe is originally from Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair, and she got it from a colleague of hers at Bastyr University. If you want a demo of the technique, you can watch her video here, but it’s pretty basic: add salt to kale ribbons and gently knead and squeeze it in for a couple minutes, then add a ton of other delicious stuff, too.

Continue reading Kale Salad with Apples, Currants, and Gorgonzola (click for recipe)

Granola with Orange Zest, Currants, and Walnuts

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I mean to bring something nice over when you invite me to your house. Hopefully I will at least show up with a bottle of wine or a six pack of drinkable beer. But sometimes getting out the door with shoes and coats and all three children is all I can handle and on those occasions, sorry, I owe you. I’m lucky to have understanding friends (and reciprocity agreements in place).

Last weekend, I got about halfway to my goal of bringing some kind of nice baked good to our weekend hosts. Which brings us back to the topic of traveling with oats. I didn’t manage to actually bake the batch of granola I meant to take to our friends in Portland, but I did get as far as packing two jars with the ingredients for this olive oil granola: one big jar of dry ingredients and another smaller jar of wet ingredients. It wasn’t quite like showing up with a perfect cellophane-wrapped treat with a ribbon on it (just kidding, I’ve never done that), but at least the house smelled good while it baked.

We have eaten a lot of that olive oil granola in recent months.  (Here’s a variation with pistachios, dried apricots, and cardamom.)  J claims he could eat it for every meal, but it’s so sweet that his teeth might fall out. Here’s another option, a bit less decadent and perhaps therefore better suited to eat as an everyday breakfast.  Or for three meals a day, your call.

I am an orange zest junkie (have you made this bread yet?), so this recipe appealed to me immediately. Orange zest, currants, walnuts. I was intrigued by the fact that the recipe (mine is adapted from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Every Day) calls for butter in place of oil, but I really didn’t taste any difference and will probably just make it with oil next time. Maybe even olive oil.

Continue reading Granola with Orange Zest, Currants, and Walnuts (click for recipe)

Eggs and Rice with Harissa

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I love the harissa oil from that Broccoli and Ravioli salad.  When it’s in the fridge, I drizzle it on everything (including green salad).  It’s the perfect combination of spice, lemon, oil, and salt, an all-around upstanding condiment.

It’s great on roasted potatoes or fish.  Try it smeared onto whole wheat bread and topped with a slice of leftover frittata.  Or stir it into scrambled eggs, of course.

I know I promised to stop making scrambled eggs for dinner all the time, but two things: first, I made this for lunch, and second, of course YOU can still make scrambled eggs for dinner!

Use what you have, as usual.  One of the many benefits of being a cook is that you usually have pretty good things hanging out in your fridge.  I had this harissa oil, leftover jasmine rice, and the bottom half of a bunch of green onions.  And eggs, of course. Continue reading Eggs and Rice with Harissa (click for recipe)

Overnight Oats with Apple, Currants, and Walnuts

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When we travel, we like to have a fridge in our hotel room.  You know?  Scoping out the local restaurant scene is all well and good, but a family of five (with three members under the age of six) emphatically does not want to spend too much time in restaurants.

So we stock up on arrival: milk and cereal for the morning, PB&J fixings for lunch, a pile of fruit and some choice snacks to keep everyone’s energy up for adventuring.  But this time I had a little idea when I stopped into the natural foods store and I swung by the bulk bins for the fixings to make overnight oats.

A handful of oats, milk and/or yogurt (both could easily be vegan–or water or juice, for that matter), toppings.  The oats get creamy with an overnight soak in the fridge, and although I sweetened mine with fruit, it wouldn’t be wrong to drizzle a little maple syrup or honey on your bowl.  If you travel with that sort of thing.

This is definitely going to be my new breakfast of choice on the road.  What’s yours?  What are your travel tips for eating well?  I am really enjoying all the good ideas and advice I am getting in the food blogging world.

p.s. I should really let you know about the great latte and ace baked goods I found at Sleepy Monk Coffee Roasters in Cannon Beach, OR.  Check it out if you’re passing through!

Continue reading Overnight Oats with Apple, Currants, and Walnuts (click for recipe)

Thai Greens and Tofu

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I write an occasional home cooking column for my friendly neighborhood blog, and last weekend I told all my neighbors about a recipe that came from the nice folks at my favorite not-quite-a-restaurant (it’s really just a streetside stand), Little Uncle.

So I thought it was only fair to tell you, too.  Because we are going to be making this a lot at our house.  Partly because I bought a huge bottle of yellow bean paste, and this recipe requires 2 Tbs., so I have a lifetime supply (it’s like that beet powder!).  But mostly because it took 17 minutes (that was for the jasmine rice to cook), made the house smell divine, and yielded a savory-spicy-garlicky vegan bowl of goodness.

You can read my Capitol Hill Seattle post here, but just in case you don’t, here’s the important thing you’re missing: track down some mangosteens.  Yum, mangosteens.

You can also substitute chicken for the tofu, or make a greens-only version of this dish (pictured below) as one component of a bigger Thai meal.  More Thai recipes to follow, I think!  In the meanwhile, if you are in the mood for Thai flavors, you could also check out this Noodle Curry or this Green Fish Curry to hold you over.

Continue reading Thai Greens and Tofu (click for recipe)

Leek and Mushroom Pizza with Blue Cheese

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I can never resist the cheese counter at my local co-op.  It has a small selection of cheeses, but they’re meticulously curated by a cheese enthusiast whose palate seems in tune with my own, and I always love everything he recommends.  Last time I was in the store I browsed by myself, however.  I know I probably should have chosen a cheese based on the type of milk used, or the region from which it hailed, but I will admit to having used one criterion only to select this cheese: its name.

Oregonzola.  Isn’t that cute?  See how they did that?  A blue cheese, a local spin, a clever pun, and I’m sold.  And it was quite nice, I must say.

It’s the weekend, so make your pizza crust today (recipe here) to have it handy in the fridge for a speedy weeknight dinner.

Continue reading Leek and Mushroom Pizza with Blue Cheese (click for recipe)

Parsley Pesto, with or without Whole Wheat Pasta

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Last night we bundled up for our first outdoor dinner of the season. Met the neighbors on the front steps, let the kids get dirty, slurped hot noodles with a fresh spring pesto. It’s not summer yet, but it’s coming.

Parsley is always one of the early springtime arrivals in my garden, but my plants are still just unfurling and getting their footing. This pesto made use of a lonely green bunch of store parsley. I like to keep parsley around for the perky boost it gives to the flavor and color of many dishes.  But in this pesto, it’s the star of the show. And it made for a flavorful and nearly effortless dinner; I just whirled the pesto in the food processor while my pasta boiled.

I saved my parsley stems for homemade stock, of course.

Continue reading Parsley Pesto (click for recipe)

A One Year Old’s First Birthday Cake, or, Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

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Our baby is one!

We’ve had her in our lives for a whole year.  And what a year the first year of life is!  A baby grows from a shapeless, snuggly bundle of tiny fingers, big eyes, and warmth into a little person who can play peekaboo and demand bananas.  It’s been a good year.

A birthday, at our house, calls for a cake.  I know there are birthday-pie people and people who think one-year-olds shouldn’t eat sugar (they probably shouldn’t), and we aren’t even really cake people so much but…. Birthday. So cake.  I have made this same cake for all three of my little ones’ first birthdays.  Here it is.

You can think of this particular cake in two ways.  If you want to feel virtuous, you can describe it as a tender, butter-free whole wheat cake, glazed with a maple-sweetened cream cheese frosting, chock full of carrots and tinted pink with beet.  If you want to feel honest, you can describe it as a total sugarbomb of a cake, well-suited to any celebratory occasion.

In the past, I’ve grated a beet and squeezed it in cheesecloth to use as pink food coloring.  This time, I came across powdered dried beet at my spice shop and gratefully took that less-messy route.  I bought about a quarter cup of the stuff.  Achieving the magnificently pink hue below required half a teaspoon.  Oops.  Does anyone need some powdered beet?  What should I do with the rest? Continue reading A First Birthday Cake, or, Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting (click for recipe)