I didn’t set out to veganize Cook’s Illustrated’s ‘Sichuan Stir-Fried Pork in Garlic Sauce’ – it just sort of happened. It’s not that I have anything against vegans, and if you are vegan and ever come to our house for dinner I would enjoy the challenge of preparing a strictly plant-based meal. Personally though, I’ve […]

The most striking feature of Wood Lake Nature Center in Richfield is the wetland that sits at its center. Even in winter – if you want to call this winter – when the pond is iced over and almost everything is dead, it brings a certain thrill of being an explorer or a pirate to […]

To paraphrase Sara Bareilles, I’m not gonna write you a ratatouille recipe. (I promise that will be the last Sara Bareilles reference – ever – on this blog.) I’ve done it before, and with farmers markets overflowing with more zucchini and eggplant than a blogger knows what to do with, you can be sure you’ll […]

I buy zucchini blossoms exactly once per year, and not because I want to. Sure, they look pretty, and I love the concept of fried zucchini blossoms – crisp and airy, redolent of fields of flowers – but I’ve never been able to deliver on that idea. Instead of light and crunchy my fiori come […]

It all started with an acute lack of pickles. As in, I had not a jar of pickles to my name, not even in the deepest back recesses of the middle shelf of the refrigerator. But golf-ball sized potatoes from yesterday’s Midtown Farmers Market were demanding to be made into potato salad and if there’s […]

I make as much an effort as anyone to feign enthusiasm for ramps, but the real excitement of spring and the produce it brings doesn’t begin for me until I see the first spears of asparagus at the farmers market. Asparagus is a bellwether crop, like the late summer tomato, that signals the arrival of […]

As I was wracking my brain trying to come up with a Saint Patrick’s day post for this blog that wasn’t corned beef and cabbage – because I had to post something, right? – I kept coming back to bangers and mash. I’ve never been to the Emerald Isle, and while like many Americans I […]

Some days, everything goes right: the sun is shining, you can ride your bike around town carefree after a winter full of slow ice-patch vigilance, you’ve just eaten a fine lunch and there’s nothing in particular to do that afternoon. You roll into your favorite butcher shop – just to say hello – and suddenly […]

Tilapia has a lot to recommend it: it’s cheap, grows fast, can be sustainably farmed, and is low in mercury. Probably the only thing not to love about tilapia is its flavor. Not that it’s actively offensive, just that even in terms of white-fleshed fish tilapia is pretty bland. That blandness can be remedied with […]

As a relative newbie in the world of cocktails, I find them totally mysterious. How is it that pouring apparently random amounts of ingredients that are often quite challenging to drink on their own transform in the shaker into a magical elixir? When I am cooking, at least, I have some confidence in my ability […]