Bread

July 14, 2009

Giant Escarole Calzones

These calzones, adapted from a recipe in the inimitable Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, are like enormous, portable pizza pockets.

January 21, 2010

Oat Bread

This bread is dense and nutritious, but somehow light, with just a touch of sweetness from the honey.

Breakfast

August 13, 2009

Olive Oil Granola with Ginger and Currants

Granola is a mainstay of my breakfast routine. To be honest, it’s a mainstay of my anytime routine.

Cakes & Quickbreads

April 30, 2009

Rhubarb Maple Muffins

These muffins are free of refined sugar — surprise! — and they’re packed with good-for-you ingredients like rolled oats and whole wheat pastry flour.

October 28, 2009

Apple Cake

I returned home from Vermont recently with a haul of apples and a burning desire for some kind of moist, sweet, spicy, cakey apple concoction.

October 30, 2009

Happy Halloween

Normally I don’t go for Halloween festivities. I’m an old curmudgeon, I don’t like candy, and costumes weird me out. But a few years ago I begrudgingly got into the spirit and whipped up a graveyard cake.

Dessert

July 20, 2009

Fluffy Cloud Meringue with Red and Black Raspberries

This is a really fantastic fluff-bomb: melt-in-your-mouth meringue, sweet vanilla whipped cream, caramel, and the freshest summer berries, sprinkled with tiny sprigs of mouth-brightening mint and crunchy toasted hazelnuts.

June 25, 2010

Strawberry Tarragon Frozen Yogurt

he nice thing about frozen yogurt — aside from its ostensible healthiness — is that it requires no cooking whatsoever. No heat in the kitchen, no cooling five-egg custards (which are delicious, by the way), and the immediate gratification of ice cream on demand.

Pasta

May 9, 2008

Herby Fiddlehead Ferns & Orechiette

Ultimately it seems that simple is best when it comes to fresh spring greens.

April 29, 2009

Linguine Rigate with Ramps and Asparagus

This is the kind of quick and dirty recipe that can take a lot of fiddling around, so if you don’t have what’s here, play with similar ingredients and see what you come up with.

November 2, 2009

Roasted Delicata and Cheddar Gemelli

An earthy, wintery, altogether grown-up sort of macaroni-and-cheese.

Pizza

January 25, 2008

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

One of our many pizza dough recipes, adapted from the Cook’s Illustrated Best Recipe bible.

May 1, 2009

Pizza with Ramp Pesto, and More

Ramps usually taste so mild in final dishes that the essential rampiness of them is completely obscured — that is, I assume there’s a rampiness I’m just not tasting, otherwise what’s the big deal? Here’s the big deal: Don’t cook ramps too much.

February 1, 2010

Broccoli Rabe Pizza

The broccoli rabe we used for this pizza was not, alas, grown locally. It’s hard to find much of anything grown locally here in the Berkshires during the deep January freeze. But! I mention it now not only because it was phenomenally delicious, but because it would probably taste just as fantastic if you have, growing in a cold frame, some frost-kissed lacinato kale, or another hearty green, in place of the broccoli rabe.

Rice & Whole Grains

May 12, 2008

Spring Ramp Risotto

I’d found it — a tiny stand of ramps in the woods.

June 3, 2009

Risotto-Style Barley with Baby Turnips and their Greens

Tamed with a bit of lemon zest and a heavy dose of pecorino romano, this recipe is somehow simultaneously light and filling, springy and hearty.

July 16, 2009

Quinoa-Stuffed Pattypan Squash with Summer Herbs

The pattypan is just so cute, and so bowl-like, it’s almost begging to be cut open and stuffed.

Salads

June 22, 2008

Early Summer Salad with Peas, Radishes, and Buttermilk Dressing

The tangy goat’s milk is the perfect accompaniment to sweet lettuces and peas, and the radishes have just the right bite to cut through the subtle creaminess.

May 12, 2009

Rhubarb Salad with Fennel and Goat Cheese

The rhubarb salad recipe below is simple, with a nice contrast of sweet and tart flavors, and the crunch of walnuts and fennel playing nicely off the smooth, creamy chèvre. Plus, it took at most 20 minutes to put together, and after a hard day, there isn’t much better than a quick, tasty meal.

December 11, 2009

Roasted Sweet Potato and Spinach Salad

What I want during this strange stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas is something warm and satisfying — hearty, even — but light and nutritious. Something filling, but not indulgent. How do I meld these seemingly contradictory impulses? With a warm winter salad.

December 23, 2009

Roasted Carrot and Avocado Salad with Orange and Lemon Dressing

Despite the bum of a summer we had this year — nary a tomato and few zucchinis to be seen — our CSA was somehow able to produce some of the most luscious carrots I’ve ever had. They are crisp and sweet. They are thick and even a little juicy. They are quintessentially, deeply carroty, and they require little more than a quick scrub — peeling is totally not necessary.

August 10, 2010

Summer Tomato and Grilled Shrimp Salad

This salad is ridiculously easy to make, strikes a just-right summery and savory balance, and keeps you from having to actually cook anything in the kitchen in the blistering heat of August. Serve it up with big, crusty hunks of bread for sopping in the dressing that remains at the bottom of the salad bowl.

Snacks & Sides

June 9, 2009

Easy Egg Salad

It took me a good six years to even contemplate eating a hard-boiled egg, and the smell, taste, and texture of store-bought mayonnaise sends a shiver of disgust down my spine. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

August 13, 2009

Olive Oil Granola with Ginger and Currants

Granola is a mainstay of my breakfast routine. To be honest, it’s a mainstay of my anytime routine.

August 20, 2009

Herby Potato Salad

A good potato salad, made with just-dug potatoes and a fantastic olive oil, doesn’t need to be encroached upon by that hated condiment, mayonnaise.

August 26, 2009

Fresh Tomatillo Salsa

Salsa verde is a simple Mexican green sauce made up of tomatillos, onion, and herbs. It comes together quickly, and keeps well for a few days, especially if you use fresh, young onions.

February 17, 2010

Preserved Lemons

In the deep of winter here in the Berkshires, I’ve found that lemons go a long way toward perking me up at dinner time. And the perkiest lemons are these preserved lemons.

April 20, 2010

Ramp Compound Butter

Compound butter is a snap to make, and is a most excellent way to preserve the fleeting flavor of those robust spring greens, the wild leeks known as ramps.

May 20, 2010

Speck-Wrapped Asparagus

As we approach the end of May it seems important to point out that you should perhaps high-tail it over to your local farmers’ market and secure yourself a bundle of asparagus before it — gasp! — goes out of season.

June 24, 2010

Rustic Asparagus and Goat Cheese Tart

This recipe comes from the wonderful Cooking with Shelburne Farms: Food and Stories from Vermont, a cookbook that strikes just the right tone between rustic and refined, simple and elegant. It is reverent of the seasons and the land, it’s written simply, and the photography is just right. The book is so very Vermont — [...]

Soups & Stews

January 22, 2008

Vegetable and White Bean Soup with Kale and Freekeh

It’s cold outside, and cooking keeps me warm.

January 23, 2008

Adzuki Miso with Shrimp and Udon

Miso is easy to make and almost endlessly variable. It’s a standby for lazy winter evenings when there isn’t much in the fridge.

May 18, 2008

Nettle Soup

Stinging nettles, as they are known, get their name from a foreboding cocktail of poisons that reside in their tiny hairs. Boil ‘em up, though, and they’re perfectly edible.

May 18, 2009

Green Garlic Soup

This soup is green-tasting and bright, almost sharp, and is even better the next day with a swirl of crème fraîche and a hunk of crusty bread.

September 11, 2009

Sweet Corn Chowder with New Potatoes

Grab a few ears of corn and cook up this somehow simultaneously light and hearty chowder, which is sweet with the taste of fresh corn and bright with herbs.

November 10, 2009

Thai Pumpkin Soup

This soup is insanely easy to make, and comes together quickly once the squash is roasted.

December 30, 2009

French Lentil Soup with Roasted Carrots and Mint

This soup, from Love Soup, is kissed with Moroccan harissa and fresh mint, two flavors that do not feature regularly in my very white, very suburban memories of home cooking. No matter. The nostalgic flavors of home aren’t necessary to evoke that feeling of warmth and belonging, and we can make our own impressions of home cooking with wild, fresh, and unexpected new flavors every time we cook.

March 29, 2010

Stracciatella with Broccoli Rabe

Stracciatella, despite its ever-so-fancy-sounding name, is a homey, nearly effortless Italian egg-drop soup. And actually the name isn’t fancy at all — it comes from stracciato, which in Italian means “torn apart.” Why? Because little torn rags form in the hot broth when you stir in an egg, semolina, and Parmesan mixture. This version of [...]

Vegetables

June 15, 2009

Stir-Fried Bok Choy and Mung Beans with Sesame Noodles

Bok choy’s mildly cabbagey flavor gets along well with stir-fry flavors like garlic, ginger, and red chile. Here, I’ve paired it with cold sesame noodles — one of my favorite, summery, not-quite-junk-food recipes.

June 16, 2009

Pickled Mustard Greens

This bright, pungent concoction would work really well as a condiment served alongside a rich stir-fry or rice bowl.

July 14, 2009

Giant Escarole Calzones

These calzones, adapted from a recipe in the inimitable Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, are like enormous, portable pizza pockets.

July 16, 2009

Quinoa-Stuffed Pattypan Squash with Summer Herbs

The pattypan is just so cute, and so bowl-like, it’s almost begging to be cut open and stuffed.

July 29, 2009

Zucchini and Potato Charlotte

It’s official, people. Zucchini season is here.

August 11, 2009

Sesame Green Beans

Try this very simple and compulsively eatable recipe with any green or yellow wax beans you have on hand. You may find that you can’t help but nip up the beans with your fingers, right out of the serving dish.

August 20, 2009

Herby Potato Salad

A good potato salad, made with just-dug potatoes and a fantastic olive oil, doesn’t need to be encroached upon by that hated condiment, mayonnaise.

June 8, 2010

Ginger-Braised Bok Choy

This simple, humble dish of braised bok choy isn’t dull — the ginger and garlic lend a sharp, savory note to the cabbagey-crisp bok choy, and the sesame oil imparts a little depth.

August 4, 2010

Curried Cauliflower and Cashews

Cauliflower is great in summer because it can be lightly steamed and served hot or cold. This recipe makes that transition well, going from warm dinner dish to leftovers without much fuss.