Food, Photography and Bons Mots
I’ve used the analogy before. There are simple recipes for cooking staples that I’ve compared to that little black dress in your closet. You know the one; it anchors your wardrobe whatever the crisis. This is another one of those anchors, a delicious and simple…
I subscribe to an interesting app. It is titled Eat Your Books (https://www.eatyourbooks.com/myhome). Eat Your Books allows me to intelligently (and efficiently) search my burgeoning cookbook collection. Here is how it works. You enter the titles of the cookbooks you own. Once that is done,…
I remember first encountering bok choy years ago on a trip to China. Whether we were in Bejing or in The Stone Forest, bok choy was on our plates. It’s a staple in the Asian kitchen. Today, back in the United States, bok choy is everywhere from your local bodega to the local Costco.
If you haven’t tried it, you are in for a real treat. Bok choy is a type of Chinese cabbage. It’s flavor is sometimes described as spinach-like. Believed to have originated as early as the 5th Century AD, bok choy is believed to be related to cabbage, broccoli and kale. It is low calorie but rich in vitamins and minerals. It’s versatile, too; you’ll find it widely used in stir fries, soups, salads. It can be boiled, steamed and stir-fried.
This is a delicious soup recipe featuring bok choy in a star anise-flavored broth.
This recipe is from Hetty McKinnon’s cookbook Tenderheart. You can order the book through your local bookstore or find it on Amazon here.
McKinnon, a James Beard Foundation finalist, is the author of a number of cookbooks including To Asia, With Love and Family: New Vegetarian Comfort Food. Brooklyn-based, you can find her work in The New York Times, Bon Appetit and The Guardian.
Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen.
Jose Andreas. Marcella Hazan. Jacques Pepin. Elena Zalayeta Masaharu Morimoto Marcus Samuelsson. And on and on and on…and on. These women and men have enriched the American culinary world. Immigrants all. So here, in the spirit of recognizing and celebrating the creativity, drive and good…
These cheese blintzes were a walk down memory lane for me. I used to serve them for brunch all the time, but somehow they fell off my menu in recent years. I have a local supermarket nearby that specializes in Eastern European foods. I kept…
As I sat steaming bowls of this beautiful soup in front of my New Year’s Day guests, I remember saying “This may be the most beautiful soup in the universe.”
And it is.
The intense orange color of this soup is spectacular. And the edgy spicy hot flavor of this soup soars.
Unfamiliar with red kuri squash? Here is a piece from the magazine Food and Wine that mentions the squash.(http://Food and Wine Magazine: Red Kuri Squash). Admittedly, this is not a common type of winter squash found in your local market, but it is sometimes available at your local farmers’ market.
Hope you will try this soup. It is perfect for cold winter nights and makes for a dazzling party soup course
For just about every basic recipe, you need “the little black dress”–the basic fall-back recipe that never fails. Here is a wonderful vinaigrette that hits all the right notes. It is tangy with just the right amount of sweet. This was a gift recipe from…
Persimmons! My kitchen fruit bowls are brimming with persimmons this year. In the past, finding myself with persimmons in the winter, I’ve pretty much defaulted to making the usual fruit-cake-like loaves of persimmon bread. Those loaves have been good–sometimes very good–but eventually that iteration…
Have I ever mentioned that I love soups?
OK. I know I have—over and over and over. Forgive me.
Here is a new favorite. This is a Deborah Madison recipe from her cookbook Vegetable Soups. This is her recipe for Broccoli Soup With Garlic, Ginger and Chile. That constellation of ingredients sounds (and is!) wonderful. You’ve got to try this one! It will sooth away those holiday jitters that are coming on about now. (Vegetable Soups is available through your local bookstore or on Amazon here.)
Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen.
Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.” Today’s Oldie But Goodies recipe is for Caramelized Carrots. Here is the recipe: Caramelized Carrots. Want to dive deeper into our recipe archive? Just…
