Food
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Ruby Pasta
Rich, ruby-toned pasta works with the strengths of the red beet, which likes to stain everything it touches. If you’ve ever cooked with beets and lamented the marks they left on your wood cutting board, fingers, and possibly apron, this is your opportunity to let their ruby red juices work to your advantage. In fact, all elements of this recipe work with the essential qualities of the subtly sweet, earthy beet. To play up those sweet qualities and brighten them, I opted to add crushed fennel seed and marjoram, a delicate aromatic herb that is best introduced toward the end of cooking. Citrus also works well to brighten up the…
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Asiago Polenta Sticks with Rosemary Salt
Baked until the outside is crispy but the inside retains its creamy texture, a polenta stick gives you the best of both ways to eat this Italian staple. Often we think of polenta as a porridge served warm, but it can be grilled or baked to become a crisp surface for a host of toppings or a way to sop up every delicious drop of a pan sauce that’s lingering on the plate. Sprinkled with seasoning before being baked in the oven at high heat, these polenta sticks give a nod to another Italian staple, focaccia. While there are many ways to season loaves, rosemary is a must for me.…
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Tomato Jam
The perfectly balanced sandwich is a comfort food that relies heavily on the right condiment. With picnic and grilling season right around the corner, put this tomato jam into heavy rotation. It’s mostly savory with just the right amount of sweetness to make you swap out the ketchup on your next burger, and it’s equally satisfying on sandwiches of all kinds. Since honey has a more complex sweetness than sugar, I use a combination of both to create a jammy consistency with plenty of robust tomato flavor. Layered with soft cheese and peppery arugula, the jam is part of a satisfying trio that makes my list of go-to toppings. After…
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Honey Roundup
“My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn.” – Louis Adamic Over the weekend, I attended a tasting event featuring the fermented honey drink known as mead, which sparked me to think about all of the ways to cook with honey. When I write honey, I may just as well write sweetness, for the ingredient is most always that, but it can also be mildly spicy, floral, even buttery in its raw form owing to the blossoms visited by the bees. Recipes follow below, but first a note about mead. Steeped in legend, mead has been at various times medicine or holy drink, sometimes both,…
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Stuffed Jalapeño Skins
Perhaps the coziest time to be in the kitchen is after the snow falls, bouncing light between its crystals and making everything just so quiet. While I was working on this recipe, gorgeous light filtered through the window, allowing me to capture the smooth green of jalapeños which would soon be split and seeded. Harvested when young, they were the color that comes to mind when we think of this type of chile, but scarlet jalapeños can be found as well, their redness a sign of maturity and growing heat. In the middle of winter I crave foods that bite, not only with heat but with crispness that stings just…
