Early Spring Vegetables Are Great on the Grill

5|21|10

By Cathy Erway

[Cathy’s approach to early-season grilling. (I had to look up “appetant,” by the way.) – mb]

If your social calendar looks anything like mine, this weekend marks the debut of many appetent backyard owners’ barbecues. Seriously, don’t all shout at once! (Or do, but please stagger your times and locations conveniently, because I can’t wait to get to them all.)

So we all know and love to grill peppers, eggplant and corn on the cob, but since it’s still spring, our choices for local produce are more limited. Fear not, locavore: almost anything can be grilled. And better yet, slicked with a sweet-and-spicy sauce first. Just because spring and early summer vegetables don’t all have the vibrancy and flavor characteristic of those later on, with a little torching and some tweaking, they really shine. Here are some of my favorite, less-expected things to throw down. Continue reading →

An Eating Meditation (Literally)

5|20|10

By Suzanne Lenzer

I refer to one close friend, affectionately, as a tea bag. She needs time to seep. She moves more slowly than I do, her stories take time to come out (they’re worth the wait), and it’s remarkable that she hasn’t missed more flights over the years, meticulously and methodically packing her bag as the clock ticks ever closer towards departure time.

I am not a tea bag––my inner rhythm is more coffee than chamomile. Being naturally caffeinated can be a blessing (I rarely miss a deadline), but in moving so fast I’m sure I miss important things along the way. Continue reading →

Ribs for One and a Revelation

5|20|10

By Edward Schneider

My eating habits deteriorate when Jackie is away visiting her father. I rarely dine out, and I cook only occasionally and at a very basic level, often defrosting and modernizing old leftovers rather than starting from scratch. Once in a while I make something a little more ambitious, like a ramp pizza.

So for these short periods I become more like a typical Manhattan apartment dweller: I order in. Cheese steaks (I get two, one with Whiz and one with provolone and peppers, and both with onions, eat half of each and save the rest for another day); deli (again, eat half, but this time freeze the rest for corned beef hash upon Jackie’s return); and sometimes middling pizza, though I’ve become fussier about this in recent times. (It is interesting that this regime involves far more meat – and meat of dubious provenance – than our normal diet.) Continue reading →

Who the Hell Uses Onion Juice?

5|19|10

By John Thorne (http://www.outlawcook.com/)

The other day I was leafing through a vintage edition of The Fannie Farmer Boston Cooking School Cookbook looking for American chop suey (a story for another time), when my eye fell on a recipe with an ingredient list that included a “few drops onion juice” — and suddenly I was a child again, poking around in my grandmother’s kitchen.

It was an odd little room. The family lived on the bottom floor of a large duplex, built by my grandfather in the 1920s in Wollaston, on Boston’s South Shore. Long before I came along, my grandmother purchased a piano and turned the dining room into the piano room. Thus, the kitchen became the dining room and the adjoining pantry became the kitchen. It was just wide enough to hold the kitchen sink at one end and the gas stove at the other. (The refrigerator sat in the dining room.) Between them ran a narrow counter and, above and below it, storage shelves for cookware and food. This was the kitchen in which Nana prepared meals for a family of five children (my mother the only girl).
Continue reading →

Rhubarb: Beyond Pie

5|19|10

By Ben Kaufmann

[Ben Kaufmann is the first mb.com visitor to submit a post we're running. He's an architect, who says "I no longer follow recipes and seldom consult cookbooks. This is not a point of pride for me but rather an indication of my laziness." I've been saying that, or at least the latter part, for years. But it's an indication not only of laziness but of skill and creativity, as I believe he demonstrates here. Visit Ben's blog at (http://gutblog.com). As for my recent adventures with rhubarb, check out today's Minimalist column.]

I was standing in line the other day to buy some ramps. Yes, that’s correct, I was waiting in the hot sun to spend three dollars on 2 oz. of wild baby leeks. People have gone a little crazy for ramps here in New York and I felt compelled to join in the fun. I worried they would sell out when a bicycle (actually a large tricycle) from a local restaurant arrived and loaded up several crates of them. They skipped right past the line.

But as I was making my purchase, (“No, no. I don’t need a bag. I brought my own.”) I spotted some rhubarb. The folks in line behind me were already shoving their items toward the rampmonger. So I panicked and set some rhubarb on the scale. Like ramps, rhubarb must be had locally, and must be very fresh. They also herald the full arrival of the spring growing season. And I think there was a time when people were just as crazy about rhubarb. Some of us still are. Continue reading →

Late Frost and Two Spring Dinners

5|19|10

By Clotilde Hryshko

[Clotilde began chronicling her Vermont farm last week. Here she brings some of her earliest crops into the kitchen, and it sounds wonderful. -mb]

Last Sunday it spit snow until mid-afternoon. I spent some of that time finishing my onion transplanting, going inside twice for more layers. Before heading in I planted two Ann Magnolia trees I had received that morning for Mother’s Day. But the evening meal was mine to make because the previous week I had been unable to find the time to cook a proper birthday dinner for Jim. I had made wontons stuffed with a pea-shallot filling that would be served in a garlic-lemon broth and a fun appetizer of jalapeño poppers, and I was rounding out the offerings with a farm version of spring rolls.

We were expecting a cold week with several nights of frost. I picked all the asparagus I could, snapping off anything above the ground (these would be lost otherwise); I sautéed them in sesame oil. Other fillings for the rolls were rice, pan-fried tofu, cashews, carrots, and pickled ginger. I had cilantro to make a dipping sauce with. I had extra seedlings of Thai and lime basil that I snipped to also contribute. Continue reading →

Vietnamese Food to Go

5|18|10

As I said last week, my intention was to go back to Turtle Towers the next morning for another bowl of pho; that happened. This time I ordered chicken. (It was certainly not going to be a vegan-before-six day; my travel days rarely are.) The broth was deeply soothing, the noodles silken, the chicken itself not overcooked. And I wisely ordered a “small” this time.

Then I headed across the street to Saigon Sandwiches (560 Larkin). I was after a few bánh mi, and I got them. They were good, though I’ve had better. (Sorry. I’d like to be raving, but if you rave about everything the truth loses impact. And they were a helluva lot better than the junk they were serving on the plane. Sheesh.)

Continue reading →

Politics of the Plate

5|18|10

By Barry Estabrook

Organic Economic Indicators

Looking for tangible signs that the recession is loosening its grip? Last week, major organic food producers, wholesalers, and retailers—who had taken hits during the meltdown as consumers lost their appetites for their pricey fare—announced heartening financial news.

A rundown:

●United Natural Foods, Inc., a wholesaler of natural and organic foods, saw its share price hit its highest level in more than three years.

●Whole Foods Market, Inc. reported that its earnings were the best “in several years” as sales for the quarter came in at more than twice what they were during the same period last year. Its stock is trading at nearly five times the 2008 low. Continue reading →

Abundance in Berlin

5|18|10

By Laura Virginia Anderson

There is an open-air Turkish market every Tuesday and Friday just across the canal from my apartment in Berlin. Today I went there, with 12 euros in my pocket. I came home with two small loaves of whole grain-sunflower seed bread, five organic bananas, three organic apples, six organic eggs, two fat bunches of radishes, a bundle of white asparagus, two kohlrabi, and 16 euro-cents.

It’s not my intention to gloat, nor do I expect anyone to be particularly surprised by this bargain bounty—Berlin’s low cost of living is hardly a well-kept secret. But I’m still in that dreamy, delirious first phase of being an American in Europe, when every discovery feels like a miracle.

Continue reading →

This #$!% Has Got to Stop: Part Two

5|17|10

[Ideas welcome, and we will credit you: mark@markbittman.com]

Hard to believe: McCormick, who’s brought us spices since its inception in the late 19^th century (though I suspect the quality was considerably higher then) has a new bad idea: Recipe Inspirations.

What is this? A recipe card with a not-especially-great-sounding recipe – like Shrimp Pasta Primavera – with ¼ ounce of spices, pre-measured and bubble-packed individually, so that you can be “inspired” to cook dinner, and not bother to buy or store or measure spices. For a mere two bucks. Of course, you probably have at least three of these spices already – in this case garlic, onion, and black pepper – and you can buy what’s probably a year’s supply of higher quality versions of the other two for less than four dollars at someplace like Penzey’s. Or a supermarket.

Continue reading →

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