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Building a Great Summer Dinner Salad
Summer’s here in the northern hemisphere! This is the time of year when we hanker for a nice, refreshing salad at the end of the day – when we don’t feel like a big meal or working in a hot…
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No Small Potatoes When It Comes to Salad
Memorial Day typically marks the onset of barbecue season – and the time to start thinking about potato salad. I grew on the mayo-heavy style made with cold boiled potatoes, celery, hard-boiled eggs, vinegar, and celery seeds. I took every…
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So Many Different Ways to Relish Mustard
Some people just love mustard, and I’m one of them. My earliest recollection was smearing some mustard (and only mustard) on my hamburgers. Now, I can’t imagine cooking without it. Adding mustard to sauces, salads, soups, stews, and so much…
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Trending Now: Korean Barbecue
The arrival of 70-degree temperatures here in New England means that it’s outdoor cooking season. Over the next few months, I’ll be grilling burgers, sausages, steaks, kebabs, and, of course, smoked pork butts, ribs, fish, and brisket. But how about…
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Fresh Ideas for Early Spring Vegetables
After months of dining on stews, braises, roasts, and other rib-sticking meals with potatoes, parsnips, and winter squash, the arrival of spring heralds a whole new crop of fresh vegetables. Here in New England, in addition to the early-spring salad…
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Garlic: The Magic Ingredient
After writing more than 200 blogs, you’d think I would already have featured this key constituent. Garlic is among the most important ingredients in most cuisines around the world. And besides, I love it. Good and evil Like many things…
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Crunchy, Chewy, Creamy, Flaky, Crispy, Tender
When I think about my favorite sandwich, a breaded pork tenderloin, what comes to mind is a complex taste sensation. As I bite into it, first, there’s the fresh bun, then the crunch of the crust of the fried pork…
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Down in Jamaica
Now that the days are getting warmer, we can start to think about outdoor grilling. One of the favorite grill recipes in this house is Jamaican jerk. We served our own homemade jerk chicken at our wedding (although we had…
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Pulling Up Free Veggies
When I was growing up on the farm, weeds were the enemy. A noxious-weed commissioner would regularly patrol the area, perusing fields to make sure that none of those offending weeds were going to seed and multiplying. Offending farmers were…
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Eat Your Spinach!
One vegetable that seldom appeared on our family menu when I was growing up in the 1950s was spinach. Fresh spinach was not on the shelves in the local supermarkets, and we didn’t grow it. We could buy canned spinach,…
