Adventures in Eclectic Home Cooking
Unfortunately for me, growing up I never knew a good pea soup, let alone one outside of the school cafeteria. My mom didn’t make pureed soups from scratch often, so for me the words “Split-Pea Soup” conjured up images of gelatinous vats of over-salted green-gray mush, not unlike in the Exorcist, that would send me [...]
Posted in Food Features, Recipes, Technique on Dec 5th, 2009
Of the three kinds of cucumber pickles I experimented with since the summer, the most successful were the “bread and butter” pickles. Because of their sweetness, these usually aren’t on my crave list. When I think of bread and butter pickles, I think of almost-neon manufactured, sickly sweet, acidic spears that seem to last indefinitely [...]
I was a pretty adventurous eater as a child, but not all of my cousins and siblings were. Every kid has at least one food they won’t touch with a ten-foot fork. From what I remember, it didn’t have much to do with taste. We just picked a food we were going to hate (mine [...]
Posted in Food Features, Recipes, Technique on Oct 22nd, 2009
This post has been a long time coming. I really wanted to make sure I liked these little guys before posting them. Last night, we finished the jar of lemon pickles we made around the time we had Iron Chef Lemons at work. That’s how many lemons there were – it took over three months [...]
This post was a guest post on a blog that I love, Just Bento, during their Frugal Bento Month. I’ve posted it here for continuity and posterity. I encourage you to check out the other posts on Just Bento (and Just Hungry) as Maki has some of the clearest Japanese recipes you will find on [...]
Posted in Guilty Pleasures, Recipes, Technique on Apr 7th, 2009
Brussels sprouts have a bad reputation. At some point when we were kids, we heard a rumor that they were gross. They were the “punishment” vegetable kids on TV were always forced to eat. Surely they were part of a nationwide parental scheme to fool children into being “healthy.” And who even knew what they [...]
Posted in Guilty Pleasures, Technique on Feb 4th, 2009
I’ve been having unstoppable cravings for avocados for the last month. Avocados sometimes have a bad rep: it can be hard to tell if they are ripe, they can be confusing to open, once you do open them they turn brown, they have more fat than other fruit, they are an awkward shade of green, [...]
This recipe was adapted from Jeff Nathan’s “Syrian Lemon Chicken Stew” from his Adventures in Jewish Cooking. I’ve shortened the process by using chicken breast and played around with the seasonings a bit. This dish combines Mediterranean flavors of cumin, lemon and olive to create a savory but light stew. I love this because it [...]
