morsels & sauces

On my Foodie bucket list is the ability to make an amazing veggie burger.  As I have mentioned ad nauseam, I used to be a vegetarian. For a decade, people. And it was roasted Thanksgiving turkey that pushed me over the edge. And since then, I have been in free fall. That said, I do still love a great veggie burger.  Yet, I cannot seem to make them on my own properly. Enter in  Anna Jones's  A Modern Way to Cook , a vegetarian cookbook I have been looking forward to obtaining, as I love her other cookbook,  A Modern Way to Eat , so very much.  This latest output from Jones begins with the premise that we can all eat healthier no matter the time limitation we may find in the kitchen. From mere minutes to what she calls "investment cooking," this cookbook is delightfully arranged by the amount of time it takes to cook a meal. You might have only 20 minutes or a splurge-worthy 45 minutes, but no matter the time, you c...

What I love the most about my CSA box is the surprise every Tuesday. While Full Belly Farm sends an email newsletter on Monday announcing what they will be sending, I like to resist that siren call and to open the box to find tomatoes and grapes and basil and potatoes.  It's like my own Tuesday-afternoon version of Chopped. Recently one of my mystery ingredients was cabbage. As in more cabbage . As in this is the third time I have gotten cabbage this summer. I never knew there wold be so much cabbage in July.  While certainly this is the tail end of the season for cabbage, it is the key ingredient in all of your slaw needs this summer.  And what better way to make a slaw than one that accompanies an ahi tuna poke bowl?  Have you noticed, by the way, the recent popularity in rice bowl cooking?  They're  everywhere .  As in   everywhere .  Everywhere .  This fascination with servi...

We are in May: the month of exhaustion for teachers and students alike. And in the midst of said exhaustion, a simple, beautiful, and flavorful salad seems just the ticket. Because I don't have energy for much else. Seriously. Do not expect a lot from an educator in May. I snapped up this bright and peppy cookbook a few months ago at my local used bookstore. Marked down to a mere fraction of the cost of a new cookbook (and without a spot, scratch, or dallop of sauce on it!), this book basically begged to be mine. What, with it's beautiful photographs, Middle Eastern recipes, and association with Ottolenghi, how could I deny it? Honey & Co. is the brain- and love-child of Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich, acclaimed chefs who opened a small restaurant in London in 2012 after having done their time with the famed Yotam Ottolenghi  (among others in their storied culinary upbringing). Srulovich writes that they wanted their restaurant to be "a noisy, cr...

Yum, yum. Dim sum. I am a fan of dim sum, a statement that hardly needs be made here in a blog that extols the virtues of morsels and sauces. A few years ago, when (one of) the landlocked niece(s) came to visit, we took her out for dim sum; she declared that Cantonese food was not her favorite cuisine (instead, she insisted that she loved Ethiopian or Indian food more). While I do not necessarily share in her ranking system (Steamed Pork Buns! Har Gau! Turnip Cakes! Phoenix Claws!), I am glad we got to introduce her to one of my favorite ways to spend a Sunday morning. Dim sum comes from a Cantonese tradition of weary travelers eating morsels and snacks with a pot of tea in roadside tea houses. Typically these small dishes are served from as early as 5 in the morning all the way until mid-afternoon. Such a tradition is one I readily embrace, and this new cookbook,  Asian Dumplings , happily leads me on what is going to be one heck of a culinary journey, even if it i...

(I do need to iron this tablecloth, but let's pretend not to notice, okay?) Given my recent pea soup with cilantro recipe from Diana Henry , you may notice a recent and certain penchant for the soup of this spring climbing plant. You may also be asking how much pea soup can a woman eat. Turns out that the answer is a lot . You see, I know that I have a thing for pea soup. Not only have I posted the aforementioned Diana Henry recipe, but I have an old favorite split pea and ham soup from Best Soups in the World . However, I was not always a pea soup fan--indeed, no. Growing up, I knew that pea soup was my mother's favorite soup (and my brother's was New England clam chowder--I am not sure I had a favorite soup). However, for my mother, it didn't matter--homemade, canned, restaurant-ordered, split with a ham hock, fresh with cream--pea soup in all its forms was her favorite. I, on the other hand, found it heavy, almost dusty tasting. Yet, as we age, so ...

I have long celebrated the culinary chops of Yotom Ottolenghi on this here website, and Ottolenghi has gotten oodles of international attention for his amazing cookbook Plenty (which I'll admit I have crowed about time and again on this website). However, fellow British chef Diana Henry has her own cookbook Plenty that can stand sentinel on its own. I am delighted to crow about her as well. Certainly, in England, Henry is well known and well beloved; however, stateside, she doesn't (yet) seem to have the same following. Which is a shame, for her cooking is downright pleasurable in that wonderfully, simply satisfying way. Diana Henry, who originally hails from Northern Ireland, is a transplant to London, where she writes for  The Telegraph   and maintains her own luscious  website . Additionally, she has penned eight cookbooks (!) and has a brand spanking new one out that I am dying for someone to drop into my hands at just the right moment. Th...