Produce Primer: Asparagus

Asparagus is the culinary sentinel of spring.  The fresh asparagus available during April and May is the best argument for eating seasonally.  If you’ve been eating asparagus from South America in February and get a taste of the fresh local stuff from the farmer’s market, they hardly seem like the same vegetable.

Because of its versatility, you can eat it every night of the week, prepared a little differently, so that you never get sick of it.  By the time you start to get a little weary of it, the season will be over.  Below are four different very basic methods for preparing asparagus.  Play with these ideas to suit your own tastes. Read more

Creamy Asparagus Soup

I think the best cookbook title ever is “Happy in the Kitchen.”  The book is by a very interesting chef named “Michel Richard,” who made the amazing leap from being an acclaimed pastry chef to acclaimed savory chef.  This is comparable to Michael Jordan joining the PGA tour.  Michel’s happiness in the kitchen infects the recipes in his book: they are playful, imaginative and spirited.

Happy in the Kitchen contains a simple recipe for a white asparagus soup- well, kind of simple.  Most folks don’t have access to white asparagus, which is expensive even if you do have access to it.  We also don’t have access to quality fresh corn at the same time of year as asparagus.  Finally, his recipe only made a small amount of soup.  So I turned Michel’s idea into something a little less glam and a bit more homey. Read more

Persephone’s Risotto

Persephone is the Greek goddess of spring.  This risotto features the most divine, sublime produce of springtime all in one dish.  Admittedly, the artichokes and favas have a diva-like quality as they play “hard to get” with their hearts. Read more

Tastes Change

A couple of weeks ago I had a speaking gig with a crowd of moms with very young children.  Inevitably, I spent a large portion of my allocated speaking time advocating an approach to eating that can be summed up in one word:  variety.  I believe this is our number one goal in educating our children about food and its importance to their bodies.  We must be as committed to teaching our children to accept variety and the unfamiliar as we are to getting them to read and share their toys.  I’ll elaborate on this in a future post.

I got a number of questions during the Q&A time, but the underlying theme was the mothers’ predictable anxiety that there is something abusive about compelling their children to eat foods with which they are at best uncomfortable and at worst don’t “like.”  I tried to assure them and talked at length about the importance of repeat exposures and expectations.  Most “pickiness” is really more about a food anxiety than it is about actual preferences. Read more

Pink Pickled Onions

Adapted from Recipezaar.com recipe number 73203.  Originally published on Epicurious.com

A week or so after I made these, Sally, my five-year-old, was griping that she didn’t want to eat pizza for dinner.  We were ordering out that Friday night and she actually hates pizza.  When I told her to find something in the fridge that she’d prefer, she said she just wanted to eat the “onion pickles.” Huh?  “Sure,” I replied, convinced she’d figure out that this was not a good idea on her own.  Invariably distracted, I never realized that she ate the whole jar until I found it in the dishwater. Read more

Puerco Pibil (Yucatan-Style Slow Roasted Pork)

Adapted from Recipezaar.com recipe number 86448

Here’s a little something to consider for the upcoming Cinco de Mayo.  It’s a dish that’s a bit of a hybrid of braising and roasting.  It isn’t really roasting because you are containing the juices of the meat to keep the meat moist and flavorful.  It isn’t really braising because the meat isn’t sitting in a braising liquid.  It’s very flavorful and versatile. Read more

Meal Planning for the Organizationally Challenged

Somehow you’ve failed to launch.  You know the difference between a boil and a simmer.  Your home is a fruit-leather-free zone.  You’ve got a freezer filled with high-quality meat and shelves of cookbooks. But there will be no dishes to do tonight.  Dinner will be prepared in someone else’s kitchen and conveyed in Styrofoam.  You’ll endure that same old internal dialog again. Read more

Yeast-Raised Malted Waffles

Adapted from the King Arthur Flour website

I’m one of few people who get genuine amusement from learning she’s been an ass.  I mean, really, isn’t it a wonderful thing to know that life is so varied and unpredictable that you can never be sure of anything?

Most Sundays my family goes to a local brunch place after church.  While I rarely order them for lunch, I’ve been a bit obsessed with the waffles at this place.  They have a malty flavor, are crisp on the outside and soft and light on the inside.  I’ve spent the better part of a year trying to replicate their texture and flavor.  I’ve played with malt syrups and grains.  I’ve played with raising techniques.  I’ve never exactly replicated them, though I’ve come up with some otherwise great waffle recipes in the process. Read more

Cook like it’s a Rental

Hmmmm.  Six rubber scrapers and two meat thermometers.  No vegetable peeler.  No blender.  The tiniest box grater.  Whatever.  Let’s make it work.

Before I had kids- which was before I even really knew how to cook- I figured out that cooking for myself when I travelled was the key to a great vacation.  It’s fun to play with the local ingredients.  You meet all kinds of interesting folks at the beachside grill when you’re all standing around with cutting boards full of meat in one hand and beers in the other waiting your turn.  You can eat and drink what you want when you want for a fraction of the cost of dining out.  And frankly, you don’t spend a week getting bloated and constipated. Read more

Accessories for Your Recipes

I apologize in advance to all of the loggers, crabfishermen, and construction tradesmen who might be among our readers.  This article is probably only going to make any sense to women and those men among us who’ve got the “queer eye.”  I love this analogy, though and think it might really help many of the folks who can relate. Read more

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