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Your Favorite Posts of 2012

29 December 2012 by local kitchen

It’s December 29th and that can mean only one thing, my friends: year-end round-up time! For the third year running, I offer you: your favorite Local Kitchen posts, based on post traffic this year. This year’s list is all about social media: between Reddit, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon, Facebook & Twitter, and aggregator sites like LifeHacker and the Kitchn, a lot of you have surfed on over from various spots on the Web, and a lot of you have shared your […]

Categories: community • Tags: cooking, food, local, recipes, round-up, year end

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

$72 Biscuits

16 November 2012 by local kitchen

Surely by now you’ve seen the brilliant Hater’s Guide To The Williams-Sonoma Catalog, by Drew Magary at Deadspin, right? I’m not sure which is funnier, that or the hilariously scathing review of Guy Fieri’s Times Square restaurant by Pete Wells for the New York Times. Either way, it’s been a good week for food writing: if you haven’t seen these yet, you should check ’em out. I’ll wait. I was chatting about the hilarity of the Williams-Sonoma piece with some […]

Categories: 100% local, baking, breads, breakfast, cheese, side dish, thyme, whole wheat flour, year round • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, vegetarian, whole grain breads

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

Mac and Cheese with Balsamic-Roasted Tomatoes & Country Bacon

24 October 2012 by local kitchen

For the last month or so (not at all coincident with my 45th birthday, I’m sure) I’ve been trying to get into shape. Get back into shape, I should say, as usually I am pretty fit, by American standards: when a “fun weekend” means scaling 200-foot cliffs or hiking 12 miles & 6000 feet, you need the muscles, heart & lungs to make those journeys more pleasure than pain. Sadly, there haven’t been a lot of crags or peaks on […]

Categories: cheese, main course, winter, year round • Tags: cheese, cooking, food, local, main course, pasta, recipes, winter

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

Spicy Indian Tomato Chutney

5 October 2012 by local kitchen

I know: I’m all down with the late-season tomato recipes this year, right? Actually, I made this one a few weeks ago, with the very last of my bushel of tomatoes from Fishkill Farms (and a couple of pounds very kindly gifted to us from Tai’s boss‘ garden), but I wanted to let it sit on the shelf for a while before I cracked a jar and tasted it. And my, does it smell amazing when you pop open that […]

Categories: canning, chutneys, condiments, preserving, summer, tomatoes • Tags: canning, condiments, cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes, tomatoes

Leek & Tomato Tart

29 September 2012 by local kitchen

This tart, my friends: this tart is the shizzle. I’ve made four of these in as many weeks and they have all been fabulous: quick, easy, adaptable and the best way I know to celebrate the swan song of tomato season. And yet, I can’t take any credit for it: the deceptively simple yet gorgeously flaky tart dough comes to us from France, via David Lebovitz (naturellement), with allium and fresh herb inspiration from Todd & Diane at White on Rice […]

Categories: 100% local, appetizer, leek, pizza, quick & easy, snack, summer, tomatoes, vegetarian • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, summer, vegetarian

100% Local: Leek, Potato & Delicata Squash Soup

25 September 2012 by local kitchen

I’ve never met a winter squash I didn’t like: pumpkin, butternut, Hubbard, Long Island cheese, even the fabulous fairy-tale pumpkins are tasty as well as gorgeous to look at. Strangely enough, I hated squash when I was young: my only experience with it was the stringy, watered-down, boiled-and-mashed variety that graced our Thanksgiving table each year. Blech. Then at some point, I’m not sure how, I discovered roasted squash; and squash soup; squash bread and muffins, stew and gnocchi and granola, […]

Categories: 100% local, fall, leek, potato, soup, winter squash • Tags: cooking, fall, food, local, recipes, soup, vegetarian

100% Local: Plums in Wine & Honey

18 September 2012 by local kitchen

As the nippy Fall air makes its way into New York, I heave a sigh of relief as I sense the urgency of the preserving season winding down. While I truly enjoy putting by the best of each season’s produce, even the most dedicated preserver can get a bit burnt out by the onslaught of summer produce, and I am feeling just a wee bit crispy at the edges. My back is sore, my fingernails are permanently stained red, and […]

Categories: 100% local, canning, fall, plums, preserves, preserving, summer, wine, beer & liquor • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, plums, preserving, quick & easy, recipes

Maple Bourbon Peach Butter

14 September 2012 by local kitchen

I’m very late to peaches this year: I picked up my first batch at last weekend’s farmer’s market and let them ripen for a few days on the counter while I thought about what I wanted to do with them. Since they were tiny, organic and late-season fruit, I couldn’t face peeling them: my 3 and 1/2 lbs must have been about 25 peaches. I decided on a peach butter, since I hadn’t made one in a couple of years, […]

Categories: 100% local, canning, peaches, preserving, spreads, summer, wine, beer & liquor • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, peaches, preserving, recipes, summer

Basic Red Salsa

6 September 2012 by local kitchen

I realized the other day, when in possession of a bushel of organically grown tomatoes from Fishkill Farms I started thinking about my must-haves for tomato preserving this year, that I had never published my basic red salsa recipe. There are lots of salsa recipes represented here at Local Kitchen, both fresh & canned: witness the ludicrously spicy 9-chile salsa, the smoky-sweet grilled corn salsa, a roasted tomato & chipotle salsa, and the my-Spanish-gender-agreement-sucks salsa rojo. There is the classic […]

Categories: bell pepper, canning, cilantro, hot chile peppers, preserving, salsa, summer, tomatoes • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes, summer, tomatoes, vegetarian

Chipotle Cornmeal Eggplant Fries

30 August 2012 by local kitchen

Eggplantocalypse 2012 continues: according to my farmer, Betsey, eggplants are “just at their peak” this week. Which might explain the 6 pounds that showed up in my CSA bag yesterday, to join the 1 and 1/2 lb monster already lurking in the fridge. I’ve learned, in the preceding 4- and 5- and 6-lb eggplant weeks, that I need to tackle them head-on, before they even reach the refrigerator, in order to have a hope of getting through them all before […]

Categories: eggplant, side dish, snack, summer • Tags: cooking, eggplant, food, fries, local, recipes, summer, vegetarian