Author: Blue Cayenne

Avocado Caesar Salad Dressing

Avocado Caesar Salad Dressing

This is quite a good variation on traditional Caesar Salad Dressing, enriched as it is with a ripe oily Haas avocado.  This recipe is based upon one that appears in America’s Test Kitchen’s The Complete Salad Cookbook. The cookbook is available through your local bookstore…

Good Luck With These Cookies! Peanut and Black Sesame Sand Cookies

Good Luck With These Cookies! Peanut and Black Sesame Sand Cookies

This is a truly great cookie. This recipe is from Helen Goh’s new baking cookbook, Baking And The Meaning of Life. (Great title, by the way!) You can order her cookbook through your local bookstore or on Amazon. This is Goh’s debut solo cookbook. She…

Oldies But Goodies: Cranberries!

Oldies But Goodies: Cranberries!

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 a Thanksgiving classic: Here is the link: Cranberry Relish.

Want to dive deeper into our recipe archive? Just click one of the categories at the top of this page or use the category search drop down menu on the right side of this page.

And…here is a link to Blue Cayenne’s main page:Blue Cayenne. .If you are in the mood to cook (or eat!), we hope you will take a moment to look at the many excellent recipes we have featured.

Coconut and Corn Soup

Coconut and Corn Soup

It’s cold. It is pouring rain. I have a @!%!! roof leak.  I’m craving soup…again! Here is a recipe from Joanne Chang’s Myers + Chang At Home cookbook. You can buy the cookbook through your local bookstore or on Amazon here.  In the introduction to…

Vegetable Soup Au Pistou

Vegetable Soup Au Pistou

Got those change-of-seasons blues? This Soup Au Pistou is just the right soup to blast you right out of those doldrums.  It hits all those fall color vibes, too. Look at those orangey colors! Not visible in this photo is the dollop of basil pistou…

Bulgur Pilaf With Tomato and Eggplant

Bulgur Pilaf With Tomato and Eggplant

Bulgur? 

If you don’t know about bulgur, here is a quick primer.

Bulgur is partially cooked cracked wheat. Its use is particularly popular in Middle Eastern dishes. 

Bulgur has been around for a very long time– 10,000 years or so according to food historians. Durable, nutritious and versatile, Middle Eastern cooks have, over the many years, found all sorts of ways to incorporate bulgur into their dishes. They stuff vegetables with it, incorporate it into salads like tabbouleh, add it to soups and on and on. 

It’s good for you. Bulgar is high in fiber, protein and vitamins and minerals. 

 

In your local Middle Eastern market, you can find bulgur in various textures–fine, medium grind and coarse. 

This recipe for Bulgur Pilaf With Tomato and Eggplant is from Sami Tamimi’s widely-heralded cookbook Falastin. You can order the book through your local bookstore or from Amazon.

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen. 

Bulgur Pilaf With Tomato and Eggplant

October 29, 2025
Ingredients
  • 2 medium-sized globe eggplants (cut into 3/4 inch dice)
  • 5 T. olive oil
  • Salt
  • 1 large onion (thinly sliced)
  • 1 garlic clove (minced)
  • 1 T. tomato paste
  • 1 T. sugar
  • 3 medium tomatoes (roughly chopped)
  • 2 green chiles (chopped)
  • 1 2/3 C. boiling water
  • 2 1/4 C. coarse bulgur
  • 1 t. ground cumin
  • 1/4 t. ground cinnamon
  • Black pepper
  • 1/2 C. cilantro leaves (chopped)
  • 1/2 t. Aleppo chile flakes (or 1/4 t. regular chile flakes)
  • Greek yogurt (to garnish)
Directions
  • Step 1 Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment.
  • Step 2 Dice eggplant. Toss diced eggplant cubes in 3 T. oil and 1/2 t. salt. Spread cubes on prepared baking sheet and roast for 20 minutes in 450 degree F. oven. You want the eggplant cubes to be soft and a pretty brown when done. Remove from the oven and set aside.
  • Step 3 Saute onion in 2 T. hot oil until it has softened and is beginning to color. This will take about 8 minutes. Add garlic and saute for 2 minutes more. Add tomato paste and sugar and cook for 30 seconds, stirring. Add tomatoes, chiles and water. Stir.
  • Step 4 Return mixture to a boil. Add bulgur, spices, 1 1/4 t. salt and a generous pinch of freshly-ground black pepper. Stir. Again, return mixture to a boil after which you decrease the stove temperature to low. Cover and continue to cook for 15 minutes.
  • Step 5 Remove the pan from the heat and let the pan sit (covered) for another 10 minutes.
  • Step 6 Gently stir in the eggplant pieces.
  • Step 7 Spoon the dish onto a pretty platter. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro and the chile flakes. Top the dish with a generous scoop of Greek yogurt. Alternatively, you can serve this pilaf directly on individual plates.
Blue Cayenne is TEN!  We’re Celebrating With A Pretty Purple Cauliflower Soup

Blue Cayenne is TEN! We’re Celebrating With A Pretty Purple Cauliflower Soup

  NEVER saw a Purple Cow, I never hope to see one; But I can tell you, anyhow, I’d rather see than be one. –Gelett Burgess (1866-1951)   How about a purple soup? Ever saw one of those? Neither had I until I picked up…

Oldies but Goodies: Wedge Salad

Oldies but Goodies: Wedge Salad

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 Goodie recipe is for a classic Wedge Salad. Here is the link: Wedge Salad. Want to dive deeper into our recipe…

White Beans With Spinach and Parmesan

White Beans With Spinach and Parmesan

It’s October already and time to start thinking of cold weather comfort foods. 

Nothing fits that bill quite like beans.

This recipe combines Rancho Gordo alubia blanca beans with generous quantities of parmaesan cheese and chile crisp for a stewed bean dish perfect for those colder nights you spend in your bathrobe with a good book. Here is the link to the Rancho Gordo site and these great beans : Rancho Gordo.

This recipe based upon one that appears in Nagi Haehashi’s new cookbook Delicious Tonight. You can order the book through your local bookstore or from Amazon here.

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen. 

White Beans With Spinach and Parmesan

October 19, 2025
Ingredients
  • Lemon Oil
  • 1 T. lemon zest
  • 2 T. extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1/8 t. kosher salt
  • White Beans
  • 2 T. olive oil
  • 4 garlic cloves (minced)
  • 1 large yellow onion (chopped fine)
  • 3 fresh thyme sprigs
  • 1/2 C. white wine
  • 8 oz. dried white beans
  • 1 C. vegetable broth
  • 1/4 t. kosher salt
  • 1/4 t. black pepper
  • 5 oz. spinach (stemmed and chopped)
  • 1/2 C. Parmesan cheese (grated) plus more for serving
  • 2 t. lemon juice
  • Chile crisp (to taste)
Directions
  • Step 1 Rinse and soak dried beans overnight. Cook beans in a pot of salted water until beans are soft. Set aside.
  • Step 2 Mix all lemon oil ingredients together in a small container and set aside.
  • Step 3 Heat olive oil in a large pan and saute onion, garlic and thyme until the onion is soft and translucent being careful not to burn the garlic.
  • Step 4 In a large heavy pot, combine beans and some of their juices, vegetable broth, salt and pepper and heat to a simmer. Simmer beans at medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. You want the liquids in the recipe to reduce to a syrupy consistency. (You can remove some of the bean water at this point if you have too much liquid to get a syrupy consistency.)
  • Step 5 Add spinach to the hot bean mixture and stir until the spinach wilts. Add parmesan and lemon juice and stir until the cheese melts and incorporates into the bean liquid.
  • Step 6 Serve with sourdough toast on the side. Garnish each bowl of beans with additional parmesan and dollops of chile crisp to your heat tolerance. Garnish with sprigs of thyme.
Persimmons!

Persimmons!

My good friend Joyce does just about everything perfectly. She cooks, she sews, she grows orchids.  She takes gentle and loving care of her family and friends. Joyce is a keeper. Her nemesis for the last few years, however, has been a type of tree–…