Category Archives: recipes

recipes, spring

Roasted Carrot and Avocado Salad

A white bowl filled with salad greens, roasted carrots, and other vegetables, drizzled with yogurt dressing.

You guys, I made this salad last night, and I think you should try it immediately. Sure, it’s a little fussy for a salad. But it is worth it. So worth it.

First, you poach some carrots. You make a vinaigrette of sorts, with dried chiles, cumin, and garlic, and then you drizzle it all over the warm carrots, and toss them in the oven to roast, along with an orange and a lemon (what?!). You toast some crusty bread, and slice up an avocado. Then, you make a simple, simple dressing with the roasted citrus, and you assemble everything into a big ol’ lovely salad, and you eat it, blissfully.
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fall, recipes

Albacore Tuna with Citrus and Chiles

A few weeks ago, the guys over at The Bitten Word proposed a challenge: They requested volunteers from their readers to try to cook every recipe in six different food magazines, to be pulled together and featured on their blog mid-October. I always mean to cook recipes from my food magazines, and rarely actually do, so I decided to sign up for the challenge. They put me on Team Food Network, one of the few food magazines I don’t actually subscribe to or read. Thankfully, the recipe is online. I was assigned to make Banana Leaf Mahi Mahi with Citrus and Chiles.

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fall, recipes, Suggested Servings

Suggested Servings: Fried Eggplant

Tonight, Sean is out of town. It’s warm in Oakland: We’re having our typical October summer. I decided to skip the gym after work, and ran a few errands instead. Good errands, the kind I love: crafting supplies and groceries. I stopped by A Verb for Keeping Warm to buy a zipper for a skirt I’m making, and then visited the big, overwhelming, farther away grocery store, the one that makes Sean anxious with its crowded aisles and huge, pushy carts. The one that makes me swoon with the possibilities of all that it contains. I browsed and binged on peaches and apples and pasta and avocados, and on my drive home, even the traffic on the 580 couldn’t irritate me.

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fall, recipes

Braised Chicken with Capers and Green Beans

Tomorrow I’m having my wisdom teeth removed, and resigning myself to a few days of liquid lunches. And not the fun, Mad-Men-martinis-at-lunch kind of liquid lunches, either. I have planned to make a bunch of juices and smoothies for these coming days, but before the pain begins, I wanted to make something very delicious for dinner, a kind of tasty send-off for my taste buds. This piquant, slow cooked chicken fit the bill perfectly.

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fall, recipes

Classic Spaghetti Sauce

I love fall. Love love love it. And I always have. I was that geeky little girl who was excited to go back to school. I was that geeky college student excited to go back to school. I love the crispness in the air, and sweaters and scarves, and fires in the fireplace. In New England, I always felt that fall was the only season that was bearable. And while it might not be quite as breathtaking here in California (we make up for it with the rest of the year being so phenomenal), it still makes me smile. We got our first acorn squash from our CSA last night, and I almost got giddy.

I knew I wasn’t the only one feeling excited for fall when I saw several recipes for slow-cooked , meaty spaghetti sauce popping up in my feed reader this week. Meaty spaghetti sauce is totally not a thing you cook when it’s high season summer. Meaty spaghetti sauce is fall food, and I fell for it, hard. Last night, it was the only thing I wanted for dinner. I scrapped my existing plans (I think they called for a lot of summer vegetables or something), and instead set about making my whole apartment smell garlicky and tomatoey and amazing.

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recipes, Suggested Servings, summer

Suggested Servings: Eggplant and Smoked Mozzarella Pasta

Most nights I throw together dinner based on what’s in the refrigerator and the pantry, cooking by the seat of my pants without a recipe. Sometimes these are the best dinners I make, and I want to share them with you. There are no proper recipes for these dinners and what I share is merely a suggestion. If the idea appeals to you, run with it and make it your own. Share your variations and the unique spin you put on it, and have fun in the kitchen, cooking without a book. 

We’ve been getting a lot of eggplant in our CSA this summer, which initially presented a bit of a challenge. Sean has never been a big fan of eggplant, so I had to find a way to make this sometimes tricky vegetable appealing to him. I’m pleased to say, I think I’ve succeeded in making him, if not an eggplant fan, at least a passing acquaintance. And this pasta might have had something to do with it.

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recipes, summer

Carrot Cherry Morning Muffins

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Weeknight dinners can start to feel oppressively repetitive. The constant need to think of something, anything to cook, and preferably something healthy, it can start to wear a girl down. When we had tacos YET AGAIN for dinner last Thursday, I knew a dinner rut was hitting our house big time. Inspiration was not striking, not even sneaking its way in with our bounty of coveted summer tomatoes and eggplants and melons. I wasn’t even getting a whisper about dinner. But these muffins on the other hand? I couldn’t stop thinking about them.

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recipes, summer

Eggplant Gratin with Saffron Custard

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Slice of eggplant gratin on a white plate, with a green napkin

Oh my. Oh goodness. Excuse me while I swoon. This unassuming little vegetable gratin is definitely swoon worthy. If you’ve been facing down some eggplant, wondering what to do with it, don’t think for a minute more. This is what you want to do with it.

I made this glorious thing last week when Sean was out of town and was immediately sad that he wasn’t there to enjoy it with me. Of course, there were plenty of leftovers, since this easily serves about six people. And he did enjoy it when he got home. But the night I pulled it out of the oven, with the kitchen smelling of tomatoes and garlic and olive oil, it felt almost magical. It was that good.
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recipes

Tunisian Chicken Pasta Salad

A red bowl filled with colorful pasta salad

I know what you’re thinking: Yawn, another pasta salad. You’ve probably seen a pasta salad at nearly every cook out you’ve been to this summer. They litter every grocery store deli case with their gloppy mayonnaise dressings, too-sweet pickle relish, and bland canned black olives. But don’t turn away yet! This pasta salad is different. This one is special.
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