Smashed Cucumbers with Sesame, Chile, and Garlic

In case you missed my last post, I've got a bit of an obsession with a certain new restaurant in NYC.  

It's really not feasible (or cost-effective) to eat there all the time, so I was struck one evening with the idea to attempt to recreate some of their dishes at home.

Spicy Stir Fried Spring Onions and Peppers

Ever since we ate there in San Francisco last summer, I've been in love with Mission Chinese.  I'll spare you the glowing praise that pretty much every single review has bestowed upon it, but they really do make outstanding food.  Even better, there are so many vegetarian options, nearly every single one of which is delicious.  And the new branch in Manhattan, to which we've already been several times, is just as good.

I don't think it's reasonable to eat there once a week (although I think there are plenty of people in this city who eat out on such a regular basis that doing so wouldn't be considered out of the ordinary), so last weekend, when I was craving their fiery, fantastic, food, I decided to make a dent in our CSA share and make some Mission Chinese-inspired dishes at home.

Roasted Beet Karamadu (South Indian Vegetable Stir Fry)

South Indian preparations of vegetables are often very simple in order to highlight the quality and freshness of the vegetables themselves. The most common preparation - at least one that I ate often while growing up - is a quick high-heat saute of finely chopped vegetables in oil that has been flavored with urad dal, mustard seeds, and dried red chiles, with a handful of shredded coconut added at the end to round out the dish.

Moghrabieh (Lebanese Couscous) Pilaf with Summer Squash, Sunchokes, Peas, Pistachios, Cherries, and Chermoula

Don’t let the long title fool you – although it sounds complicated, there’s nothing difficult or fussy about putting together this dish. 

Inspired by the pilafs my mom often made when we had guests over when I was younger, I took the idea of cooking the rice – or in this case, moghrabieh, aka Lebanese couscous (which I’ll get to in a second) – with a fragrant mixture of fennel, mint, toasted nuts, garlic, and bay leaves. But rather than use rice, I opted for a different grain to lend this dish a more Middle Eastern feel.

Polenta with Root to Stalk Radishes

Cooking with all of the parts of a vegetable - from the root to the stalk - isn't a new concept, but I think it's one that many people still don't embrace because they're not quite sure what to do with parts of vegetables that aren't included at the supermarket.  Just last weekend at the Carroll Gardens Greenmarket, I was given a gentle lecture on how to use the greens on the bunch of golden beets I had purchased.

I patiently listened but then told the purveyor that I always cook beet greens, sometimes roasting them like kale and sometimes sauteeing them like swiss chard - which he was surprised by, because apparently many people he talks to at the market ask him to cut off the greens and that many others ask him what to do with the greens aside from throwing them out.  Hearing this made me remember how underused (and wasted) so much of our food is, some of which is driven by simply not knowing what to do with it.

Early Summer Salad with Quinoa and Strawberry Dressing

I'll admit that there are weeks that I just don't feel like coming up with some creative way to use my CSA share.  Thankfully, produce that grows at the same time of year almost always tastes good together.

Our first share was a perfect combination of vegetables - leeks, lettuce, mizuna, radishes, asparagus, and strawberries - so I decided to keep things simple and incorporate most of it into a salad to highlight the textures, flavors, and freshness of the produce.

Celery Root, Apple, and Fennel Soup

I always make soup for Thanksgiving, and it's usually of the butternut squash or cauliflower variety.  As I mentioned before, this year I was really trying to use as much of my CSA share as possible for my Thanskgiving meal and make only a few supplemental purchases from the Carroll Gardens and Union Square Greenmarkets, which meant I had to be strategic about my menu planning.

My CSA share didn't provide us with cauliflower this year or the last (although though they do grow it at the farm) and I had already planned to make butternut squash ravioli and was making a kabocha squash cheesecake, so I didn't want to overdo it on the squash.  What else could I use for an autumnal soup?  The big celery root staring me in the face answered that question.

Grilled Peaches with Summer Greens

Here's yet another salad inspired by my CSA share.  Over the past year, I've gotten so much better about using each week's share more efficiently rather than attempting to make one dish with each ingredient and then buying a ton of stuff from the farmers' market or supermarket to supplement and support each ingredient.  A few weeks ago, I got all of these items (well, not the cheese or the dressing) in my share and I figured that since they're all growing at the same time, wouldn't they probably taste good together?  There was only one way to find out.

Chocolate Coffee Porter Cupcakes

Yesterday was my 2nd wedding anniversary, so I figured this would be a good week to share with you some cupcakes I made for another wedding.

Matt's brother got married in late June and, as you may have seen, our wedding present to his brother and his wife was the wedding cake.  Well, not exactly.  Instead of a cake, they decided to serve tons of mini cupcakes.

Chioggia Beet and Yellow Plum Salad

Well look who it is.  I'm back from my accidental hiatus, and I've got a ton of recipes to post courtesy of the cupcakes I made for Matt's brother's wedding and some excellent meals I've made courtesy of my CSA share.  I have no real reason for disappearing other than neglect and preoccupation with other things, but I've refocused and am hoping to get back into my regular blogging groove once again.

First up: this simple yet stunning salad.  It came together on a whim while I was searching my fridge for items to make into a pretty plated salad.

Zucchini Carpaccio with Lemon and Herbs

It’s nearly July but it feels like summer just started. [Probably because technically today is the first day of summer, and also because it was so chilly until just a few weeks ago.] My CSA share is still all about late spring - lettuce, strawberries, herbs, radishes - which further reinforces this "it's barely summer" feeling, but the Carroll Gardens greenmarket looked a little more summery this past Sunday, what with piles of zucchini and their blossoms.

As is now customary in my family, my parents came over for a homemade brunch for Fathers Day (and, yes, we have my mom over for Mothers Day). The menu consisted entirely of one of my dad’s favorite foods: pizza. I planned to make three different types, but realized only that morning that I really needed something else with which to start off our meal.

Vegan Coconut-Mango Pudding with Rose Gelée

My dad's birthday was a few weeks ago, and, as I do for everyone in my family, I make them a birthday cake.  In the case of my dad, I always make his favorite cake - my signature pistachio-cardamom cake with rosewater frosting - but even though I love it, too, I was starting to get a little tired of it.  I considered making a mango kulfi cake, but that's my mom's birthday cake, and I was also just not in the mood to make a cake this year (I blame it on the interminable stretch of damp grey days).

A few weeks ago, I had spent some time conjuring up a short menu of simple spring desserts (for a now-defunct project), one of which was a meyer lemon pudding with brown sugar-sesame seed tuiles.  For whatever reason, that one had really stuck in my head, so I ran with the idea of pudding and decided to make it mango.

Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes (with lots of variations)

This one's been in the works for a while.  I've gotten a number of requests over the years for an egg-free cupcake but I never bothered with it because the demand wasn't all that great.  But last month, I had a reason to finally give it a shot.

Let me back up a bit.  Egg-free cake?  Why not fully vegan?  A lot of people I know who are vegetarian don't eat eggs, but they're ok with milk and other dairy.  And those were the folks requesting egg-free cakes.   But I figured that if I were going to make an egg-free cake, I may as well just go fully vegan as I had also gotten a few requests for vegan cake recipes.

Blood Orange, Olive, and Arugula Salad

I've recently developed a minor obsession with citrus.  This may be (largely) due to the fact that, for more than a month now,  it's been freezing and snowy and slushy and gray.  When did I move to a strange hybrid of Seattle and Minneapolis?  But my daily 3 pm Cara Cara orange always seems to make me oblivious to the nasty conditions outside.

Despite of the lack of local fruit this time of year (I know there are lots of apples in cold storage, but I really cannot eat another apple for a long time - we were getting 8 pounds a week from our CSA for nearly two months and we ate every single one of them and I am surprised we did not turn into apples), February is the perfect time of year for out of the ordinary citrus: Meyer lemons and Cara Cara and Moro (aka blood) oranges.  All of them are head and shoulders above their run-of-the-mill counterparts, so I try to indulge in them as much as possible for the few weeks I can find them.

Whole Wheat and Oat Focaccia

We don't eat bread very often, but when we do, it's gotta be good.  No supermarket sandwich loaves here - only a freshly baked ciabatta from Caputo's or a bagel from Court Street Bagels will do.  Recently, we've added homemade focaccia to that list.

Bread baking is often thought to be a daunting task, but ever since I made the revolutionary no-knead bread, I've been less intimidated. 

Vegan Coconut-Oat Pancakes with Blackberry-Peach Compote

It’s January, which means many of us are attempting to eat healthier to negate the many calories packed on over the holidays.  I'm trying to eat better this year, but not because I overate this past month (or did I, hm), but because my detox diet last year made me more attuned to the types of grains I eat, so my sort-of resolution for this year is to eat less gluten and, if I do eat gluten, it should be of the whole grain variety.

Although there is no way I am giving up pizza at Roberta’s. So when I made pancakes for brunch last weekend, I started to scheme about how I could make them healthier. Add to that the fact that, for the past few months, I’ve been getting a number of requests for egg-free recipes, and I came up with this.

Celery Root, Fennel, and Apple Salad

This salad is a miracle for me. If you had told me just last year that I would be eating raw celery root and fennel, I would have laughed (and then possibly vomited). There are really only two foods in this world that I ever say that I strongly dislike: fennel and, even more so, celery.

My aversion to celery goes all the way back to kindergarten, where I would get in trouble on a daily basis for scooping the peanut butter and raisins out of my ants on a log, leaving the gutted celery sticks behind. (In retrospect, I wonder why my teacher didn’t stop giving me this snack when it was very clear that I hated celery and nothing was going to make me eat it.) My distaste for fennel developed recently, but that’s because I never ate it until a few years ago. I’m not a fan of anise/licorice flavors in general and huge fennel bulbs taste really strongly of that flavor and I just can’t stomach it.

Balsamic Marinated Beets

Well I've been a bit delinquent, haven't I. Life got really busy and, although I've been cooking just as frequently as I used to, I just haven't put aside enough time for blogging. That will be changing right...now.

I'll save the long story on this recipe. I just love roasted beets and I wanted to prepare them somehow that wasn't just plain roasted and then tossed into a salad or grain dish or pickled, as I wasn't really feeling all that vinegar. The solution: a simple balsamic marinade with a little twist - pomegranate molasses. You can't really taste it, but its tart-sweet flavor makes these beets special. Don't worry if you don't have this ingredient or can't find it - I've made these beets without it many times and they're still great.

Pasta with Fava Beans, Sugar Snap Peas, and Pistachio Pesto

It was 103 degrees in NYC yesterday so there was no way in the world I was going to stand in the kitchen any longer than absolutely necessary.  We live on the 4th floor of a small walkup building and it gets – and stays – really hot in our apartment.  Combine that with the fact our air conditioners are small units that are not really capable of cooling down a 100 degree room and you have a recipe for a very hands-off dinner.

Eating out and a big salad were not options (the former because we have so much produce from our CSA share and the latter because we had already had one for lunch), nor were turning on the oven or anything that needed more than 20 minutes on the stove so as to not overheat the apartment or the person standing over the stove in the kitchen (which would be me).

Fettucine with Leeks, White Beans, and Parsley

Part of our first CSA pickup was a bunch of beautiful leeks. The stalks were thick and creamy white, unlike the streaky, somewhat dried-up specimens in the supermarket. These particular leeks were even better than ones I’ve gotten at the farmers market – they were incredibly tender and amazingly grit free.

My CSA sends out an email on Mondays letting us know what’s in our pickup the next day, so I’ve taken to meal planning for the week based on what I’ll be getting the next day. I saw leeks on the list for that first week and I knew right away what to make with them.