Category Archives: recipes

recipes, summer

Grilled Pizza with Eggplant and Pesto

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Grilled Pizza on a Cutting Board

Pizza night is the best. A round of crispy dough topped with melting cheese and salty meats and fresh, just-cooked vegetables? It never fails to bring a smile to my face. I went through a period a few years ago when I might have been a tad bit obsessed with making the perfect pizza. I was obsessed enough to crank our oven up to 550 degrees in the middle of a Boston summer, making our apartment basically uninhabitable. I did not care. It was all in the service of pizza.

We might not be dealing with record temperatures and humidity here in the Bay, but I’m still wary of forcing the oven to its highest limits in the summer. But pizza on the grill? Totally do-able. I’ve been wanting to try making grilled pizza for ages, but…gah, it seemed so finicky. Pizza dough can be insufferably sticky, and visions of grill grate disasters plagued me. I was worried for no reason. Pizza on the grill is way easier than you might imagine. And fun, besides.
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recipes

Millet Salsa Salad

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Bowl of salad with millet, tomatoes, jalapenos, onions

Our cupboards are overflowing with grains. Sean and I went on a bit of a bulk aisle shopping spree, and we’re fully stocked up with millet, spelt, kamut, barley, kasha, rice…it’s a good thing I love grain salads so much. It’s going to be a whole grain kind of summer.

Last I week I was inspired by the tomatoes and jalapeños that came in our Full Belly Farm box. I thought about making salsa, but I’m trying to stop pretending that tortilla chips are health food. Then I had a sudden salad brainstorm. I’m so glad I did. This salad tastes exactly like summer. I served it with some grilled salmon and little smidgen of chipotle crema, and it was the most standout dinner of the week, hands down.
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recipes, summer

Strawberry Peanut Butter Milkshakes

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strawberry peanut butter milkshake

I am a person who re-reads. I will read a book over and over again if I love it, whenever I need something familiar and comfortable, when I want to escape into a favorite place or remind myself of something that I think is important and meaningful. The details of these stories become part of the fabric of my own life, they weave themselves in in sometimes unexpected ways. This month, I decided I need to read something magical and transporting and very, very familiar: I picked up Harry Potter again.

I’ve read all seven Harry Potter novels so many times it’s actually a little embarrassing. What can I say? At least I know I’m not alone. Reading Harry Potter has become a certain kind of custom for me, in some ways. I appreciate re-reading these books for so many reasons: for the story, but also for the things it makes me remember, and even for the aesthetic experience of lifting each heavy volume off the shelf smoothing the pages. I even love the fonts, dude. I’m a dork.
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recipes

Summer Tomato and Feta Salad

Tomato Salad with Feta

Do you ever do that thing where you buy tomatoes before it’s really and truly time, because you just want it to be summer so badly, but you end up sad and disappointed because they’re inevitably mealy and flavorless? Yeah, I did that a few months ago. It was a bummer. So when tomato season hit for reals, I knew I had to make up for that earlier sad scene. I had to showcase these beauties in a way that was deserving. This salad is so deserving.
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recipes

Whole Wheat Maple Banana Bread

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Banana Bread on a White Plate

When I’ve been away for awhile, and my routines are out of whack, and I feel a little ungrounded, I like to bake something homey and simple to bring me back home. Banana bread is perfect for this. It feels like slipping on that worn, comfortable sweater you’ve had for 15 years and won’t ever get rid of. And it also has the virtue of being a baked good that can be mostly healthy. This version is a case in point.
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goals, recipes, summer

Sweet and Salty Cake

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Chocolate Cake on a white Cake Stand, garnished with sea salt

It was on my summer bucket list: Make my first layer cake. And I did it! My birthday was this past weekend, and I made myself a cake. I had in mind a pretty little chocolate peanut butter number, but when it came time to start making grocery lists, I spied a cookbook on my shelf that I’ve often drooled over, but never used: Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. And after perusing it for a few minutes, I knew the Sweet and Salty cake was the way to go. This is a rich chocolate cake made even more decadent with salted caramel and caramel chocolate ganache. For reals.
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recipes

Any-Way-You-Like Salmon Burgers

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Salmon Burgers

It’s summer, and totally time for grilling. And that means burgers, of course. But what do you do if you’re trying to cut back on red meat? You make burgers out of other things that are not meat. Like salmon! (Ok, I know some people do consider fish a type of meat. I consider it health food, and these are a lighter, healthier alternative to beefy burgers, even if they aren’t straight up vegetarian.)

This basic recipe is from Mark Bittman, and what I love most about it is that it’s so adaptable. I made this recipe once as written, and another time with a teriyaki and ginger bent. I’m looking forward to experimenting with many combinations of flavors this summer. We are going to stretch the limits of burgers, my friends.
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recipes

Lime and Honey Beet Salad

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Lime and Honey Beet Salad

Beets can be challenging to cook with. They don’t play well with other foods, and will dominate an entire dish with their vibrant pinkness. Their flavor is distinct: deep and earthy and sweet. They have a wonderful texture, so silky smooth, but firm. When we get them in our CSA box, I think, crap. What am I going to do with these guys? Then I discovered Dorie’s recipe for Lime and Honey Beet Salad. Now I always know what I’m going to do with the beets.
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recipes

Mushroom, Broccoli, and Goat Cheese Pasta

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I usually consider cooking to be a relaxing, almost meditative activity. But sometimes, life needs to be easier. There are days when I want dinner to be quick and to require very little thinking, and that’s often when I (and you, too, I suspect) turn to pasta. Pasta is the king of the quick and easy dinner. You can mix almost anything into a bowl of pasta and it will turn out great. It requires few dishes, and a minimal amount of time, leaving you the rest of your evening to unwind and feel refreshed enough to face the rest of the week.

The best easy pasta dishes bring together different flavors and textures, and end up so wildly colorful and bright tasting that you can hardly believe it only took 20 minutes to get it on the table. This particular pasta dish absolutely achieves that objective. The mushrooms and pasta are chewy and tender, the broccoli big and crunchy, and it’s all tied together with a little slip of cream and goat cheese. The sun-dried tomatoes and basil bring big blockbuster summer flavor to the party.
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recipes

Classic Beef and Bean Chili

I think it is fairly well documented that I am a fan of chili. It’s one of the foods I remember most from my childhood, and might be the first thing I learned to cook. I’ve hosted an annual chili party for at least five years. I’ve tried many different recipes, and one of the things I love most about chili is its versatility, but there is one recipe I come to again and again, the recipe that I’m ready with at a moment’s notice, the chili I can make in my sleep. And somehow I have never shared it. I think it’s time to fix that.
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