morsels & sauces

We have been away--I have gone back to Illinois and then the husband and I went up to Mt. Shasta to see a volcano and to hike around. But we still need to eat.   Is it Tuesday? (Okay, truth here, it's Saturday, but this dish will do anytime during the week.) Do you, too, need something to eat? Are you willing to put in 30 minutes? Do you need a revelation in broth? Well here's the little soup for  you, no matter if you're traveling or hanging out at home. The meatballs are a snap. As many of you know, I am huge fan of Diana Henry , in part because she takes ordinary ingredients and whips them into fine flavor combinations. More importantly, though, she does so without a lot of fuss and fanfare. Just make a meatball. Then put it in a broth.  But before you do that, why don't you make your broth a little more flavorful? Don't have time?  Let's not talk nonsense. All you need is 10 minutes, some ginger and some chiles. If you have homemade bro...

And now for entry #2 in what appears to be a longform series.  In this  Cook Your Books  series, I have chosen 15 books to read in 2017 based on somewhat arbitrarily chosen categories. My theory (bogus it might turn out to be) is that all 15 of these books will somehow connect to food. And I plan to write about that food. This second installment is  a book with fewer than 150 pages. (Here's your second warning:  It turns out these entries on Cook Your Books are long ones. Time to settle in.)   In the Orchard, the Swallows    by Peter Hobbs appears on this list simply because of its length. My arbitrary category dictated a book with fewer than 150 pages, and a quick Google search for "Best Books under 150 Pages" launched this one to to the top of my possible books to read.  And what a book it was. The book opens with an unnamed narrator who has been thrust back into the world after having spent the last 15 years in a Pakistani p...

Oh my.  What a gorgeous drink from an equally gorgeous cookbook.  When this culinary treasure landed on my doorstep, I was hesitant to drag it into the kitchen for fear that I might slop some tomato sauce or coconut oil or just plain old water on it and ruin it. This may be a book for the living room table, not the kitchen table. Shane Mitchell, food writer extraordinaire and Saveur  contributing editor,  fills the pages with beautifully written essays that rival the photography of James Fisher. Each of the ten chapters focuses on global culinary narratives, from the food cooked on the  leitir  (the autumnal sheep roundup) in Iceland to the meals cooked by refugees and migrants in the Calais Jungle . Committed to documenting the traditions of (as she writes in her introduction) "people who are firmly rooted in their culture and landscape, in some of the most isolated or marginal communities, where keeping the foo...

Friends, there was rain. Oh, just the right amount of rain, and my great fear in writing about the rain is that I made it go away. I am superstitious like that.  (My superstitious streak was solidified this week as I watched my beloved Cubs win the World Series.  I won't tell you about my good luck charm for fear of messing it up, but let's just say she knows who she is, and she better be watching next year as well!) And in the rain, the husband and I have been north, to wine country to sip on some reds in the Rhone style. Didn't that sound pretentious? (I have no  idea what that means, by the way.) I would like to pretend that I know anything  about wine, but the reality is--and one might argue rightfully so--I only know what I like. And it ain't in any particular style that I can discern. Sometimes it's big and fruity and other times it is lip-smackingly dry.  But the husband I went to Sonoma last weekend and sipped ...

Black bean soup doesn't get the accolades it deserves. This unassuming little soup does what it needs to do--warm the bones on a fall afternoon--and then you go about your business. Little fanfare. Lots of flavor. Black bean soup can take as long as you would like: with dried black beans, this is a two-day affair. However, with canned black beans, you can have a quick cook. Further, black bean soup is naturally vegan (although, I wouldn't blame you if you threw some bacon in with the sofrito; truly I wouldn't!). Finally, you can spice it up any way you like it (did someone say fire-roasted tomatoes, ancho chile powder). Yet, for this particular recipe, I went with simple, traditional, and Cuban. No chiles beyond the requisite jalapeno. No fire-roasted tomatoes. Just beans, sofrito, stock, oregano, and lime crema. Recently, I received  ¡Cuba!: Recipes and Stories from the Cuban Kitchen   in the mail, and what a gorgeous little cookbook...