Sometimes when I have a baguette at home, I’m too lazy to grab a serrated knife and instead just tear a hunk of bread right off and shove it in my mouth. I used to think that made me a lazy slob, but then I went to Roberta’s Pizza and realized it just makes me adorably rustic! If the most acclaimed restaurant in Brooklyn serves bread that way, it must be classy, right?
More artsy photos from Roberta’s after the jump.
Read More›
Down here in Texas it’s already feeling like summertime. Days have been in the 80s-90s, which means long afternoons of day drinking and barbecuing. The other weekend I decided to make a potato salad for a backyard barbecue party, but I wanted to do something a little more exciting than your average white potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and celery. (You will never find celery in my picnic foods, actually! It’s the bane of my existence.) I was inspired when I found some beautiful Texan collard greens at the store.
One thing (out of the katrillion things) I love about Austin, that you might not expect if you’ve never been here, is how strongly this community promotes buying and eating locally. I decided to take these greens and incorporate them into a potato salad celebrating all my favorite aspects of southern sides… namely, sweet potatoes, collards, and pork fat.
This is a “salad,” according to Texas.
Yep. Spicy chicken on a thick bed of refried beans and deep-fried tortillas, smothered in cheese and pecans (yes, pecans).
To be fair:
(a) When I mentioned I was trying to eat healthy and would therefore be ordering a salad, I was warned that “the fajita salad isn’t really a salad-salad.”
(b) It does have some sliced vegetables on the side, plus a small scattering of shredded iceberg lettuce.
(c) Probably the most delicious and filling “salad” I’ve ever eaten. I’m into it. Props, Tex-Mex. Thank you for continually improving my life… and challenging my preconceived notions of what I can classify as a healthy dining option.
At Atelier Crenn in San Francisco, the salads are as sexy as any steak around.
In September I could already see winter and I vowed to enjoy eating quick to prepare, raw salads as much as I could. But now it’s November, the darkness swings in earlier, and I’m still compiling uncooked greens.
Cabbage is quite wonderful raw, actually.
I sliced one large savoy cabbage leaf into confetti, letting the slim greens better succumb to a heavier dressing. However I decorate the greens, I let it sit for about 10 minutes to gather together before eating.
Yesterday I added bulgur wheat and butter beans (I had cooked a big batch of both earlier in the week), diced avocado, oven-dried tomato and parsley with a feta-cumin dressing.
Sometimes I add other vegetables, but I always try to cover the cabbage in a fairly substantial dressing, otherwise it’s just a bit too coarse.
(PS – Does anyone else think of their Cabbage Patch dolls when eating cabbage? And maybe feel a little guilty?)
More in>>> Dark Green Raw Salads
Read More›
Bennett, in a post-hangover primal urge, ordered a pepperoni and onion pizza. After flipping through a few cookbooks (Cook with Jamie, The Ginger Pig Meat Cookbook, Cook This Now) earlier that day, I wanted to be in the kitchen. But only for a second.
I washed some spinach and let it drain in a colander. I also threw in some flat-leaf parsley and—my latest experiment—carrot tops. I’ll stop there for a second. While buying said spinach, which was next to the carrots, at Truck Patch’s stand at the farmers market, there was a whole stack of carrot tops. Without carrots.
Apparently someone didn’t want the tops, so somehow they got chopped off and they were just sitting on the table. Looking pretty sad and lonely, actually.
That’s when I remembered this article touting the uses of vegetable parts usually discarded, like cauliflower leaves and apple cores. I asked what could be done with them and the lady said “juicing.” I didn’t have a juicer, but she gave them to me anyway. They tasted exactly like carrots. I know it’s not shocking, but it was kinda weird not to be eating an actual carrot and still tasting a carrot. Almost like smelling strawberries in wine and knowing strawberries never actually touched that drink. (I just watched Sideways, go with it.)
I finally get to the fuck-up after the jump.
Read More›
Soon the days of easy prep meals will be over, when you could walk into a kitchen, slice a tomato, wash some greens and be eating in 5 minutes.
Instead, we’ll be forced to wait an hour as thick winter squash bakes to tenderness in a hot oven. In winter it’s easier to wait for dinner, as the cold air doesn’t tempt for evening walks and late-night drinks on a rooftop.
But while it’s still lovely outside, and the season’s produce remains quick to prepare, remember that a raw salad is pretty rad.
This salad is ripe for flexibility, so throw in what you’ve got in the fridge. The taste of raw vegetables are much different than their cooked counterpart, so it’s fun to remember the snap of a bell pepper and the nose-tingle of a raw onion. With produce so fresh I didn’t even need a dressing, especially as the fatty whitefish salad complemented the clean vegetables.
I sliced up a yellow roma tomato, half a cucumber (peeled), half of a mutli-colored bell pepper and one tiny, tiny onion. I heavily seasoned all of the cut pieces with kosher salt and pepper and then quickly charred a corn tortilla on the burner. I lumped a few spoonfuls of smoked whitefish on top and called it finito.