Category Archives: techniques

Bacon Cheddar Biscuits

23 September 2014 by local kitchen

A certain wonderful husband is celebrating a birthday today. Since there is only one morning person in this house, last night I made him a batch of bacon cheddar biscuits so he would have something delicious and celebratory for breakfast. Once I tasted one, I knew I had to share the recipe here: delicious and celebratory they are. Also smoky, salty, rich, flaky: fabulous. Happiest of birthdays to my sweet love. And happiest of biscuits to yours! Adapted from $72 […]

Categories: 100% local, baking, breads, breakfast, cheese, pork, whole wheat flour, year round • Tags: baking, cooking, food, local, quick & easy, whole grain breads

Nectarine Plum Butter

16 September 2014 by local kitchen

I have a confession to make: this fruit butter sat on my stove, in the Staub, for three days before I managed to cook it fully down and get it into jars. My friend Tanya had pointed me to a recent article on the Kitchn about when a health inspector visited Faith’s kitchen, and I had to laugh: I had a sponge near the sink, half an apple that had been sitting on my cutting board for hours, and a […]

Categories: canning, fall, peaches, plums, preserving, spreads, summer • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving

Roasted Heirloom Tomato Sauce

10 September 2014 by local kitchen

And the tomato recipes go rolling, rolling, rolling on. Last week I picked up a bushel of organic paste tomatoes from Fishkill Farms; at the same time, I got 20 lbs of heirloom paste tomatoes, a gorgeous red-and-yellow-stripey varietal with a deep magenta flesh, few seeds, and fantastic flavor. (I also grabbed some orchard nectarines, heirloom baby orange sweet peppers, NY maple syrup, and Flying Pigs‘ hot Italian sausage. Fishkill has a great year-round farm market, full of all sorts […]

Categories: canning, preserving, sauces, summer, tomatoes • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, summer, tomatoes

Garden-Busting Roasted Tomato Sauce

24 August 2014 by local kitchen

Is the garden erupting with end-of-summer bounty? Are the piles of CSA vegetables taking over your fridge and kitchen counters? Are you feeling as lazy about canning as I am this summer? Well then, you’re in luck! This easy-peasy roasted vegetable tomato sauce solves all those problems and more, in addition to the perennial question, “What’s for dinner?” While I am slowly (oh-so-slowly) surfacing from my post-World Cup funk (two loonnnnggg years before qualifying for 2018 starts), I can’t quite […]

Categories: 100% local, preserving, sauces, summer, tomatoes • Tags: cooking, local, preserving, recipes, summer, tomatoes

Whole Wheat Lavash

13 August 2014 by local kitchen

Well: it’s been a sad, sad week in the world so far. First, yet another unarmed young black man, Michael Brown, is shot to death by police: anger, frustration and protests erupt in Ferguson, Missouri. Then, Robin Williams, who brought joy to so many, lost the ultimate battle against his demons. Tributes and stories, hundreds of fabulous stories, poured in from every corner of the internet. Then Lauren Bacall died. And there’s the unrelentingly rainy weather. And Israel-Palestine. And the […]

Categories: baking, breads, whole wheat flour, year round • Tags: baking, cooking, food, local, recipes, whole grain breads

Rhubarb Char Siu

22 April 2014 by local kitchen

I picked up another pig CSA from Millstone Farm a couple of weeks ago, and with it came a teeny-tiny pork butt roast – less than 2 pounds! Typically when you get a pork shoulder from one of these heritage breed pigs, they are massive: 5 – 8 lbs, bone-in and with a layer of fat that could choke, well, a pig. I’m often too lazy to break these suckers down (or to wait the couple of days it takes […]

Categories: 100% local, grill, main course, pork, rhubarb, roasting, year round • Tags: cooking, food, local, pork, recipes

Citrus Saltines

18 April 2014 by local kitchen

I get a lot of questions from people asking how I use my citrus salt. I’ve got to admit, they sort of baffle me because, well, how do you use regular salt? That’s how you can use citrus salt. Use it in soups or stews, season meat, add it to bread, muffins or scones, garnish a salad or a baked potato or chocolate chip cookies. The uses for citrus salt are nearly as endless as for salt itself. There are […]

Categories: baking, snack, whole wheat flour, year round • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes

Kami’s Birthday Cake 2014

10 April 2014 by local kitchen

I loved this cake. I loved its perfectly imperfect messy abandon. I loved its sweet-tart Meyer cloud cream, made with the very last of my Meyer lemon stash, and generously dolloped between layers of cake. I loved those layers of cake: orange-zest-spiked, tender and moist, perfectly flat. I loved the droopy, thick & luscious cream cheese icing, made a glorious pinky-purple with a reduced beet purée, and I loved the finishing touch, a light sprinkle of homemade orange sugar, for […]

Categories: baking, cake, citrus, dessert, holiday, spring, whole wheat flour, winter, year round • Tags: baking, cooking, food, recipes

Orange Chiffon Cake

4 April 2014 by local kitchen

April: it is the cruelest month. My feed is full of asparagus and cherry blossoms and daffodils and tulips and strawberries and and and…. we’ve got nothing. Nothing. Nary a bud on the forsythia nor a peeping green shoot in the soil. Spring is coming: the snow is gone, temps have been in the 50’s and 60’s, we’ve even taken the extra quilt off of the bed(!), but – it doesn’t seem to be coming as quickly here as it […]

Categories: baking, cake, citrus, dessert, whole wheat flour, year round • Tags: baking, cake, cooking, food, local, recipes

Use It or Lose It! Barbecue Chicken Tacos

13 March 2014 by local kitchen

Do you ever overcook chicken breasts? It can happen in a flash, right? Do you like the dark meat, but are not such a fan of the white, or vice versa? I’m not touching that one. Do you have a dozen jars of random preserves in the fridge, each with two or three tablespoons languishing in the bottom? If not, can I come over and borrow some fridge space? Do you like tacos? Who doesn’t? If you answered “yes” to any […]

Categories: braising, chicken, main course, Use it or Lose it!, year round • Tags: chicken, cooking, food, local, recipes

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Preserved Lemon & Aleppo Pepper

2 March 2014 by local kitchen

Until a couple of years ago, I placed myself firmly and emphatically in the Brussels Haters Club. The sprout, not the city (although really, those Brussels Belgians give Parisians a run for their money in the pissy department). But then, on a whim, I tried the maple-glazed Brussels sprout salad from Kiss My Spatula, and my Brussels-hating days were promptly kaput. (Let’s all pause here for a brief moment of silence in honor of one of my favorite food blogs, […]

Categories: cabbage, citrus, fall, roasting, side dish, vegetarian, winter • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, sides, vegetarian

Lazy Citrus Salt

20 February 2014 by local kitchen

For the past few weeks, I’ve had a series of small bowls living at the end of my counter. They each contain a different citrus salt: grapefruit, blood orange, Meyer lemon, Kaffir lime. The levels of each go up and down as I juice a lemon, or eat a grapefruit, and add zest and salt to the pile, or pull out a pinch of the fragrant zest to add to a soup, curry or batch of scones. It may seem […]

Categories: citrus, preserving, winter • Tags: citrus, cooking, food, preserving, quick & easy

Grapefruit & Walnut Tart

16 February 2014 by local kitchen

I’m having a tiny love affair with Johnny Weir & Tara Lipinski right now; their figure skating commentary has been one of the bright spots of these Olympics in Sochi and their Instagram feeds (including the combined @taraandjohnny feed) are not to be missed. I love the Olympics, but I loathe the 5:1 ratio of commercials and talking-head noise to actual sporting moments that dominates prime-time. The daytime coverage has, in general, been much more about sport and much less […]

Categories: baking, breakfast, citrus, dessert, winter • Tags: baking, cooking, dessert, food, local, quick & easy, recipes

Kumquat Habanero Marmalade

11 February 2014 by local kitchen

It appears that it is Kumquat Preserve Week on ye olde interwebs: not only my own modest contribution, but a straight-up kumquat marmalade from David Lebovitz, slow-cooked and with less sugar, and this rhubarb(!) and kumquat jam from Yossy via Blue Chair Fruit (who are teaching marmalade classes this month as well, if you live in the Bay Area and want to learn). Well, I have one more to add to the pile of kumquat love: kumquat habanero marmalade, originally made & […]

Categories: canning, citrus, preserves, preserving, winter • Tags: canning, cooking, food, marmalade, preserving

Kumquat & Meyer Lemon Marmalade with Chile & Kaffir Lime

7 February 2014 by local kitchen

It’s been all marm, all the time around here for the last week or two, what with Meyer lemons, Rio Red grapefruit, and blood oranges, kumquats and Kaffir limes all rolling around my counter tops. And trust me, there are worse things than having 40 lbs of California and Texas citrus perfuming the kitchen in the midst of a snowy, snowy Polar Vortex New York winter. I’ve been enjoying a lot of citrus fresh: grapefruit for breakfast, blood orange as an afternoon […]

Categories: canning, citrus, preserves, preserving • Tags: canning, cooking, food, preserving, winter