Blue Cayenne

Beans! Glorious beans!

This is an enthusiastic repeat recipe for Blue Cayenne. We originally featured the recipe back in May of 2024. Here is the link and the recipe: Turkish White Beans.

This recipe is from Yasmin Khan’s cookbook, Ripe Figs: Recipes and Stories From Turkey, Greece and Cyprus. You can buy the book through your local bookstore or on Amazon here. By the way, the author recommends using dried beans for better texture and “the best olive oil you can afford” for flavor. I used Rancho Gordo’s Marcella beans and Antica (Los Alamitos Ca) high polyphenol olive oil. I love and recommend both products. Here is a link to the Rancho Gordo site Rancho Gordo Beans and here is a link to the Antica Olive Oil site Antica Olive Oils and Vinegars..

About the Ripe Figs Cookbook, it is an exploraton of the cuisines of the eastern Mediterranean and the impact of migration (past and present) on those areas and their cuisines. Of the book Yotam Ottolenghi wrote, ” Ripe Figs is a dazzling cookbook that celebrates an ever-diversifying region and imagines a world without borders.” 

Here is a great comfort food to get you through unsettling times: Cream of Mushroom Soup.

I used small brown baby bella mushrooms in this soup but you could mix things up with other mushroom varieties. This recipe uses a lot of mushrooms and yields an intensely mushroomy (is that a word?) soup that you and your guests will savor. I served my soup with a cucumber salad in a tangy vinaigrette dressing. I’ve also served this as a separate course in a formal dinner menu. Casual or fancy, this is a great soup. 

This recipe comes from the cookbook Soup for Syria, a compilation of  chef’s recipes to aid refugees. This particular recipe was contributed by Candace Lorfing. Lorfing is identified as half Bosnian and half Lebanese, a mother and an avid cook. This is a repeat recipe for Blue Cayenne. We featured this recipe back in January 2025 when the wildfires were devastating Southern California. Here is the link: Finding Comfort in Food: Cream of Mushroom Soup. This time we added a bit of sherry to intensify the mushroom flavor. Pretty wonderful.

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

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 marinara sauce.

Unexpected guests. Stinking work day aftermath. Whatever. This Simple Marinara has got your back.

This recipe is a Samin Nosrat recipe from The New York Times. Here is the link to the original recipe: NYT Simple Tomato Sauce. This sauce is thick and a bit sweet from long cooked onions, lots of them!, and a bit hot from chile pepper flakes. It’s perfect for an improptu plate of pasta on a stressful day and perfect, too, saucing your fanciest lasagna.

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