Stand Back When Snapping Turtles Crop Up In The Garden
Late spring in a New England vegetable garden is usually a time for the last asparagus, the crisp lettuce and arugula, the first pea shoots, and the first sprouting of warm-weather crops like peppers...
View ArticleJust Add Water: The Miracle Of Seaweed
A while back, a craze hit my kids' school. It seemed as though everyone in the lunchroom was bringing in those little green packs of seaweed from Trader Joe's — roasted, salted nori, sometimes flavored...
View ArticleZucchini You Actually Can't Resist
"Ugh," my sister exclaimed one evening as we were making dinner. It was supposed to be an easy poached chicken with a ginger-scallion sauce, eaten with cold cucumber wedges, and we had just discovered...
View ArticleA Roll For All Seasons, Wrapped In Rice Paper
It all started several months ago, when I was fishing around for something not-too-unhealthy for lunch. Spring was over — the once-tender lettuces now milky-hearted and stiff-leaved — and I was bored...
View ArticleThe Hard-Boiled Truth About Egg Soups
The chicks arrived five months ago — eight gray, blond, black and tawny puffballs no bigger than the eggs they'd been hatched from a day earlier. They had a slavishly devoted audience within minutes...
View ArticleRecipe Rebellion: A Year Of Contrarian Cookbooks
"Just throw the whole lemon in the food processor for lemon bars.""Don't just soak your dried beans — brine them!""You don't need a whole day (or two) to make a good sauce."Some of the things this...
View ArticleUnderstanding The Brussels Sprout
"What are those?" I asked my mom, suspiciously eyeing the little cardboard tub with its cellophane cover. It held a heap of pale, miniature cabbages. "They're Brussels sprouts," she said. "They're...
View ArticleIn Praise Of The Humble Lentil
The year I discovered lentils, I was broke and lonely and didn't know how to cook. Lentils, it turned out, would have gone a long way toward providing the solution to some of these problems. However,...
View ArticlePreserved Lemons: Older, Wiser And Full Of Flavor
On many occasions in my longtime relationship with cookbooks, I have had this experience (which will sound familiar, if you like Middle Eastern flavors as much as I do). I'm happily paging through my...
View ArticleTry A Do-It-Yourself Mother's Day
My mother didn't plant a great many spring bulbs. But over by the pachysandra patch, there was a single lovely pink tulip, and I kept my eye on it for two weeks before Mother's Day. When that Sunday...
View ArticleFeast For The Eyes: 3 Cookbooks Just For Looking
I'm a cookbook reviewer, which means that every night I try recipes from far-flung cuisines or idiosyncratic food bloggers or test-kitchen perfectionists. I've always made a point of steering readers...
View ArticleScape Velocity: Green Garlic Takes Flight
If you've never grown garlic, here's how you do it: On a bright cool fall afternoon, before the ground has frozen, you pry an ordinary, unpeeled clove of garlic off the bulb. You plant it in the...
View ArticleButtermilk Makes Everything Taste A Little Better
It started happening about 15 years ago. I'd be paging through a new cookbook or browsing through recipes online, and I'd suddenly stop. "Mmm, buttermilk biscuits. Doesn't that sound good?" I'd...
View ArticleWandering Appetites: Hunting The Elusive Noodle
On the Noodle Road is one attempt to answer an old chestnut: Did Marco Polo really bring noodles from China to Italy? If not, where did they really come from? Or — to put it another way — from what...
View ArticleRoasted Tomatoes, The Perfect Accessory For Summer Dishes
At this time of year, we all love tomatoes. Many of us claim we'll "take a big juicy tomato and bite into it like it's an apple," although you won't often see that happen in actual fact.Yet, even...
View ArticleThe Stars Come Out For Holiday Bakers
As a young woman, I had an attack of nostalgia for a possibly imaginary cookie. It was prompted by a walk up New York's Third Avenue, where I saw in the bakery case of a local delicatessen a stack of...
View ArticleValentine Hearts That Are Meant To Be Broken
In first grade, my heart was stolen by Mark, who sat next to me and had an advanced phonics book (which I also craved). Then there were Peter, Eddie, Raja and Michael. These serial crushes continued...
View ArticleOranges: Secret Agents Of The Food World
For me, the citrus fruits of winter have been bright spots in a long, frost-bound season. The lemons, the oranges, the sweet little clementines, the tart, brawny grapefruits — they glow like miniature...
View ArticleSous Vide Makes Its Way To The Home Kitchen
Sous vide. Not that long ago, it sounded so exotic — or, at least, so French. It was a phrase that belonged in restaurants, amid white tablecloths and flower arrangements and hushed conversations....
View ArticleThese 10 Summer Cookbooks Will Make The Good Life Even Better
Toss out the china and pick up the picnic basket! Summer cookbooks are fanciful creatures — high on whimsy and shamelessly devoted to making a good life better. For some, that means lingering in the...
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