It's winter, so our CSA boxes are packed with citrus: oranges, lemons, grapefruit, to name just a few. Most varieties are great for juicing, salads and main courses, too, like risotto! I never would have guessed that barley and citrus make beautiful dinner together, but they do, especially when paired with other winter superstars like arugula, walnuts, barley and chicken stock.
Mushrooms aren't something my family eats often, for two reasons. First of all, our weekly produce boxes never contain them. Secondly, our kids don't like them. But I like them! So to celebrate the first soggy weather we've had in four years of drought, I slow cooked a pound and a half with coriander, black pepper, bay leaves, thyme and rosemary in wine.
Tatsoi is a gently cabbagey asian green that looks like bok choy with longer, thinner stems and smaller, rounder leaves. Bok choy is another asian green, with thick white stems and long green leaves. It is typically found in wonton soup.
Hot and steamy from the oven, what's not to love about a crispy-chewy slice of bread slathered in salty butter and garlic? Old school garlic bread is the perfect accompaniment to soup on a cold, wet, day. When I was a kid we ate it alongside a variety of things, including (gasp) spaghetti. A double dose of carbs like that would never fly in today's world of paleo starch rejection!
An incredibly satisfying yet deceptively simple soup that is perfect for a cold, wet, fall day, it gets even better with a side of old school garlic bread like my mom used to make. Warms you right up!
Jenny Rosenstrach's Back Pocket Pasta recipe is a great way to get dinner on the table really quickly without prepping ahead. I added ground pork for protein and mizuna from this week's CSA box, instead of tossing a salad. It's not the most generous serving of vegetables, but then that isn't the point.
This salad is really delicious even though it has the strangest combinations of ingredients I've ever seen. Green tomatoes, peaches, cucumbers, parsley and basil dressed in vinaigrette are the perfect thing for a hot summer's day.
This salad comes from the days of castles and knights in shining armor - the fourteenth century, or 1390 to be exact. It is surprisingly modern and you can find something similar on the menu of many San Francisco restaurants right now: the ingredients are fresh, simply prepared and able to speak for themselves through a light dressing.
This was a surprisingly successful way to feed my kids kale! The soup starts with sausage, which you fry up in a pot, then add garlic, onion, potatoes, chicken stock, kale and salt. It's really that easy and would probably work fine with any type of greens.
Back in 2013, Liza Shaw joined me at Food Lit to discuss Charlotte Druckman's Skirt Steak: Women Chefs on Standing the Heat and Staying in the Kitchen. Since then Liza has taken on more heat by opening Merigan Sub Shop and was recently featured in the Chronicle's food section. My family loves beans and greens are often in our CSA box, so I had to try her recipe.
This is a Senegalese dish that Marcus Samuelson likes to get in South Harlem. I was pretty excited to find a one pot meal recipe that calls for cabbage, and to see peanuts referred to as ground-nuts, since I've long wondered what ground-nut oil is. It often shows up in British cookbooks.
We all love pesto at my house, though it is usually made with basil and pinenuts. This one is made with arugula and parsley instead. Both have parmesan cheese, olive oil, garlic and salt. I used the blender tonight, instead of the food processor, and I think the latter is better: the blender makes it too smooth.