The spinach we planted in March is starting to bolt, so I took that as an opportunity to yank most of it up and do something fun with it. We loves us some spinach pie here, so I made it the center of a warm day dinner (though it does need the oven, it’s better eaten once it’s cooled off a bit.) The haul from the garden also included bolting arugula, some lettuces, and a…
Category: Vegetarian or nearly
Chick peas soaked and simmered with coconut milk and spices. Roasted potatoes with thyme and garlic. Fresh-picked kale wilted with shallots and lemon juice. Cucumber salad with baby shiso. Humble, cleansing food that encourages reflection. I enjoy these meals as much as I do the decadent ones; it’s important to pare down sometimes and appreciate the basics. As fun as it is to get complicated and fancy, I need to be reminded sometimes that this…
Today it was sunny again. Today I felt normal again. And today, Christine’s Mom joined us for the week. So to celebrate a new chapter, and to move away from the heavy party food of the last few days, a super-clean meal tonight. We got some more of the incredible local 10-grain mix (millet, rye, winter wheat, oats, triticale, barley, spelt, corn, flax and vetch) so I made a broth from the smoked chicken carcasses…
The temperature dropped pretty precipitously overnight, and today (though it did eventually warm to balmy-adjacent, as a realtor might put it) was one of those raw English days where you just can’t seem to get warm. That, combined with the fairly empty fridge, suggested a simple, hearty dinner with an appropriate balance between clean vernal goodness and rich carnal pleasure. So I soaked beans. Most of life’s problems can be either solved or comfortably postponed…
Shopping with a kid can be a fun random-vegetable generator for the home menu. It can also involve many pleading lunges for the infinite variety of ghastly sugared crap all conveniently arrayed about three feet off the floor for maximum grabability. For the most part, though, it’s enjoyable, and we end up bringing home things I wouldn’t normally get, like eggplant in April. They were too big and shiny to resist, and it’s hard to…
There were some particularly beautiful organic artichokes at our local store yesterday, so I picked a couple out and today they came in super-handy. Milo wanted kidney beans, and we had white ones, so I put them in water to soak and then went to work, jumping back in around 3 to simmer them with sautéed onion, garlic, and rosemary so they’d be ready at 5 when I normally knock off for the day. (Pre-child,…
So today I was told, pursuant to Christine’s trip to the market, that a nice vegetable coconut curry would be a good idea for dinner; that seemed a doable, if predictable course, given the quantity of animals we’ve dispatched this week (last night, a lovely lamb stew at our neighbors’ house.) But then, upon throwing wide the fridge door, I did see shiitakes, and broth made from lamb and chicken bones, and our own kale…
I’ve been obsessed with this wine-braised fennel lately; I first “invented” it in Chicago a dozen years ago (although then I usually used muscat, because I liked the sweetness) and it’s so luxurious and wintry that it goes with everything this time of year, and I’m craving it. Fennel has this way of storing summer’s bright sweetness deep into winter, and now that spring is creeping up on us, I find myself craving it a…
The warm day and peek at the garden inspired a meal that would almost be more appropriate in Summer, but that nonetheless hit the spot in a nice comfort-food way. In the center of the plate is a salad of our own microgreens, surrounded by roasted beet salad with onions and feta, lentils with carrot, onion, and a bit of guanciale, the rest of the root purée from the day before, and steamed kale with…
Wanting something vegetable-based, and given what was in the fridge, I turned as so often before to Indian ideas. Vegetarian food is so often much more interesting with South or East Asian techniques (although dear Italy still offers pretty stiff competition.) Thus was born another tofu curry, with a little milk and half a baked sweet potato to thicken it, as well as carrot, leek, onion, and our own frozen peas. I turned some lavash…