Cabbage Soup
Pity the poor cabbage. It gets a bad rap. Too many people are scarred by bad cabbage experiences: boiled beyond recognition….or the cabbage soup diet. Lacking illustrative photos of overboiled cabbage or the soup diet, I give you San Francisco’s Union Square. More accurately, a street near Union Square. Handled…
Brown Sugar Chicken Thighs with Herbed Pasta
According to my kitchen notebook, I recently prepared a version of Diana Henry’s Israeli Chicken with Mograbieh, Harissa-Grilled peaches, and Mint. I write “recently” because the entry is undated. There is a helpful note: “winner! adding lemon after cooking a yes!” The lemon was added afterward because, um, I’d forgotten…
Chicken with Red Pepper Sauce
About a week ago I was rereading Diana Henry’s The Gastropub Cookbook and landed on Chef Peter Robinson’s recipe for Squid with Piri Piri Sauce. I page through my cookbooks a lot. Do other people? I hope so. It’s amazing how often you find something you missed the first…
Squash Fritters
In reviewing the IK’s vegetable posts, I realized: 1. there aren’t many, and 2. what few there are skew fritterwards. We of the IK consume a varied vegetable diet. Yet here we are, about discuss squash fritters. Were that not enough, today’s variant recipe is….a red pepper fritter. In all…
About Bitter Melon (Stir-fried bitter melon)
To this day, the post for bitter melon curry remains one of my most popular. Every time I post a picture of bitter melon on Instagram, people ask about it. So I thought I’d discuss it a bit more here. Bitter melon is a member of the gourd family. Jennifer…
Patatas Bravas
Long ago, when your hostess was a baby cook with a very skinny boyfriend, she tore this patatas bravas recipe from a magazine. I made patatas bravas a few times, and we enjoyed them, but the instructions call for a food processor. Lacking one, I instead used a mini-chopper,…
Spinach with cheese and garlic
A few nights ago your hostess was paging through Ruth Reichl’s Comfort Me With Apples when she happened across a recipe entitled “Dottie’s Spinach.” The original recipe fed six people and calls for a head of garlic, an amount some may find overwhelming, especially during the holidays, generally considered a…
Pasta with chickpeas and spinach
Pasta with chickpeas and spinach came about because I could barely walk. Not the most felicitous of culinary circumstances, but there you are. One never knows where a good dish will come from. Your hostess has a bursitic knee, long treated with cortisone shots. Last week the doctor decided further…
Spicy Cold Chinese Noodles
More properly referred to as Spicy And Numbing Cold Noodles, Spicy Chinese Noodles hail China’s Sichuan Province, a place known for hot, muggy summers and the ingestion of chile-laden foods to counter said wet heat. I’ve prepared Spicy Cold Chinese Noodles with corn, wax beans, red peppers, chile peppers, fresh…
Chicken Salad with Vermouth and Paprika
I am married to somebody who is deeply interested in plants. This is not an interest I share. Nor do plants seem interested in me. Vita at Sissinghurst I am not. Last weekend, John wisely accepted my advice and brought a plant whisperer to our yard. The two of them…