Category Archives: vegetable

Ramp & Sausage Lasagna

1 May 2013 by local kitchen

Spring has officially sprung in New York: buds are out on the trees, forsythia is in bloom, peepers are filling our twilights with their song, and I found rhubarb and ramps at the farmer’s market over the weekend. Even better than peepers & ramps, Spring has brought Miss Kate back to the ‘hood, with canning classes last weekend in Coventry, demos in Manhattan this weekend, and a few days of relaxing Chez Local Kitchen in between. I had the good […]

Categories: cheese, leek, main course, pork, sausage, spring • Tags: cooking, food, local, main course, pasta, pork, recipes

Citrusy Red Lentil Salad

5 April 2013 by local kitchen

The last couple of days have finally felt like Spring in New York: bright sunshine, temps approaching 60 degrees F, tiny, pale green buds popping up on the trees and bright green new growth in our tiny patches of “lawn.” Amazingly enough, this run of warm, sunny weather is supposed to continue right through the weekend and into next week: could it be that Spring is actually here? (I wouldn’t lay bets that we’ve seen the last of this winter’s […]

Categories: citrus, grains & legumes, parsley, radish, salad, side dish, spring, vegetarian • Tags: cooking, food, local, recipes, salad, spring, vegan, vegetarian

Jacket Potato

27 February 2013 by local kitchen

My friend Christina was in the UK last week and she ended up in Windsor, by the castle. She snapped a pic of a pub we had visited last spring, whiling away a stormy afternoon (and a substantial hangover) with lunch and a pint, while the rest of our crew toured the castle. Just seeing a blurry, nighttime snapshot of the front of the pub brought me back to that afternoon: the warm & cozy (and dry!) wooden booths, the […]

Categories: 100% local, main course, potato, quick & easy, year round • Tags: cooking, food, local, potatoes, quick & easy, recipes

Toasted Israeli Couscous with Winter Squash & Preserved Lemon

10 February 2013 by local kitchen

Conversation I had with myself today: Me: “Can you still say “Israeli” couscous? I mean, is that kosher?” Myself: “Heh. Kosher. Get it?” Me: “You’re not helping. Is “Israeli” couscous still what we call it, or is that like saying “Oriental” when you’re not talking about a carpet? I: “Why don’t we call them Asian carpets anyway? How come oriental carpet is still OK, but oriental anything else is verboten?” Myself: “Well, Asian tends to piss off India, since they […]

Categories: citrus, fall, parsley, side dish, vegetarian, winter, winter squash • Tags: cooking, fall, food, local, recipes, sides, winter

Pumpkin Spanakopita

6 February 2013 by local kitchen

Pumpkin spanakopita, bitches! Today the US men’s national soccer team kicks off the real deal of World Cup qualifying: The Hex. Ten games over the next eight months that will determine whether or not we go to The Big Show: Brazil 2014. The stakes are high, our fate is uncertain: of course I am nervous. So I am psyching myself up by watching inspiring US Soccer commercials, tacking “bitches!” (complete with obligatory fist pump) onto everything I say, and… making […]

Categories: appetizer, cheese, eggs, fall, kale & leafy greens, vegetarian, winter, winter squash • Tags: cooking, fall, food, local, pumpkin, recipes, starters, vegetarian, winter

Cocked-up-a-Leekie Soup

24 January 2013 by local kitchen

Cock-a-leekie, cock-a-leekie, cock-a-leekie: it’s too much fun to say! Have you ever had cock-a-leekie soup? It’s a traditional Scottish soup, made of chicken stock, leeks and little else (except prunes. Ew.). Despite many business trips to Edinburgh in my past, and the fact that I am of Scottish descent (my maternal grandfather emigrated from Glasgow), I’ve never had it. If I had ever seen it on a restaurant menu, I probably would have ordered it (despite the prunes; ew), just […]

Categories: chicken, leek, parsley, soup, winter • Tags: chicken, cooking, food, local, main course, quick & easy, recipes, soup

Cook The Books! Dancing Chicken

17 January 2013 by local kitchen

Have you heard about Cook The Books? Meg at Grow and Resist and Briggs at Oh, Briggsy dreamed up a little challenge for 2013: cooking out of those big, heavy, paper-stuffed things you have crammed onto a shelf somewhere near your kitchen. Yep, that’s right: forcing us to crack a spine, rather than tip-tap-tappity through the Interwebs to plan dinner. The nerve! I do love cookbooks, despite the fact that I rarely follow a recipe. It’s just that my recipes are […]

Categories: 100% local, carrot, chicken, fall, potato, roasting, winter, year round • Tags: chicken, cooking, food, local, main course, recipes

Bertucci’s Sausage Soup

14 January 2013 by local kitchen

Back in my laboratory days on Mem Drive, when my co-workers and I felt like traveling further afield than The Sail Loft for lunch, we often ended up at Bertucci’s, home of excellent brick-oven pizza, addictive dinner rolls (hot from the oven!) and the infamous Bertucci’s Sausage Soup. I’ve eaten a lot of this soup in my day: in fact, the real battle in sitting down to lunch at Bertucci’s was in deciding between the delicious brick-oven pizza and the […]

Categories: kale & leafy greens, rice, sausage, soup, tomatoes, winter, year round • Tags: cooking, food, kale, local, recipes, sausage, soup

Quinoa with Roasted Butternut Squash & Sausage

9 January 2013 by local kitchen

I’ve mentioned Liana Krissoff’s new cookbook Whole Grains for a New Generation a couple of times now, on Facebook and Twitter, mostly because it’s been a ridiculous bargain on Amazon ($3, really?!). I ordered a copy for myself before Christmas (when it was a still-ridiculous $5) thanks to a tip from Emily at Nomnivorous, and I’ve been paging through it, planning various meals, since we returned from Maine. It’s a lovely book: nice, heavy paper stock, lots of photographs, with […]

Categories: fall, grains & legumes, main course, quinoa, sausage, winter, winter squash • Tags: cooking, fall, food, local, quick & easy, quinoa, recipes, sausage, winter

Tepary Bean, Pork & Winter Vegetable Soup

5 January 2013 by local kitchen

Have you ever had tepary beans? Apparently, once upon a time, they were an important food source for Native Americans in the American Southwest, and the history of their use dates back over 6,000 years in Mexico. Yet, until recently, I had never heard of the tepary bean (whose name seems to derive from t’pawi, Papago Indian for “it’s a bean”) and without Rancho Gordo, I probably would not have been able to find them. Tepary beans are drought-resistant, native […]

Categories: carrot, celery, heirloom beans, leek, main course, pork, scallions, soup, winter • Tags: cooking, food, heirloom beans, local, pork, recipes, soup, winter

Roasted Curried Cauliflower

17 December 2012 by local kitchen

Nearly two years ago, I made a pumpkin soup, and tried to sort out my grief, anger and frustration following the tragic shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords, and 17 others, on a sunny Saturday morning in Tuscon, AZ. At the time, I had some hope that we would take real steps to prevent the all too common gun violence in our country: because of the prominence of Rep. Giffords, because of the number of people injured and killed, because of […]

Categories: cauliflower, fall, side dish, vegetarian, winter • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, vegetarian, winter

Curried Kale & Potato Latkes

7 December 2012 by local kitchen

I’m back home (Grandma is doing very well, and has a pantry stocked with homemade granola, chicken soup and beef chili that should last until I get up there again) and working through a backlog of interwebs reading, when I stumbled upon this Hanukkah gem by Bubala Please: making latkes. I’ll warn you now: about every third word is a swear, so this is not safe for work (unless you have earphones) and there is liberal use of the term […]

Categories: appetizer, kale & leafy greens, potato, vegetarian, winter, year round • Tags: cooking, food, holiday, local, quick & easy, recipes, vegetarian, winter

Downeast Beef Chili

4 December 2012 by local kitchen

As you might have heard, I’ve been staying with Tai’s grandmother Louisa, in Downeast Maine, since before Thanksgiving. Louisa is awesome: she is bright, warm, and generous, and has always made me feel welcome and an important part of this big, wacky family into which I married. But Louisa is 88 years old, and while she has maintained an amazing amount of independence and vitality throughout her ‘golden years,’ in the last six months or so she has suffered some […]

Categories: 100% local, beans, beef, bell pepper, carrot, heirloom beans, hot chile peppers, main course, stew, winter • Tags: beans, beef, chiles, cooking, food, local, recipes, winter

Superstew Sandy

5 November 2012 by local kitchen

Seven days. Seven days since Sandy visited the East Coast with her high winds and devastating storm surge. Seven days that I, and hundreds of thousands of others in the tri-state area, have been without electricity. Seven days: and we are still without power Chez Local Kitchen, and our estimate for power restoration is the feels-oh-so-far-away Wednesday night at 11 pm. In some ways it feels much longer: while we are very lucky, with no damage to our property, despite […]

Categories: 100% local, bell pepper, chicken, corn, disaster, fall, main course, sausage, stew, thyme, winter • Tags: chicken, cooking, food, hurricane, local, recipes, sandy, sausage, stew

Pumpkin & White Bean Ravioli

20 October 2012 by local kitchen

Hello Fall! Can you believe that the last time I was here I was roaring about tomatoes, and now we are solidly in the heart of autumn: the leaves outside my window are a riot of yellow, red and pale green, and they drift down like snow, to crisp and brown and pile up in the corners of the deck, every time the wind blows; the annual Pumpkin Patch has taken over the church parking lot in Ridgefield; the sky […]

Categories: 100% local, fall, leek, main course, pasta, vegetarian, whole wheat flour, winter squash • Tags: cooking, fall, food, local, main course, pasta, recipes, vegetarian