| Local cooking and eating in New York's Hudson Valley.

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

It’s not me, Facebook: it’s you.

14 April 2014 by local kitchen

Facebook is going to the dogs. Admit it: you knew, when you accepted that friend request from Grandma, that the End was Nigh. But really: it’s not the older demographic, nor the fact that the yoots are deserting Facebook in droves that is making the day-to-day Facebook experience much less fun: it’s Facebook itself. Much has been written about Facebook’s policy – the dreaded “algorithm” – of strangling engagement in an effort to move business and fan pages towards a […]

Categories: community • Tags: cooking, facebook, food, links

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

All The Crunchy Things

2 April 2014 by local kitchen

Red cabbage, radish, slivered Brussels sprouts, carrots, celery, flat-leaf parsley and Meyer lemon vinaigrette. Spring can’t come soon enough.

Categories: salad, spring • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy

Homemade Instant Oatmeal

1 April 2014 by local kitchen

Twenty-four years ago or so, my parents moved back home to Boston after a brief stint in sunny Malibu. I had just come back home as well, after finishing up my senior year of college in not-so-sunny Syracuse, NY, and was living in my first official “adult” apartment, on not-nearly-so-trendy-at-the-time St. Botolph Street in Boston’s South End. While it was nice to be back home in New England, and to have the family all in the same state, not to […]

Categories: breakfast, oats, winter, year round • Tags: breakfast, cooking, DIY, food, local, quick & easy, recipes

Cannellini Bean Soup with Winter Veg

18 March 2014 by local kitchen

Just last week I was joking with Winnie that the last thing this blog needs is another bean + vegetable soup recipe. [At last count, I think I’ve got about 18. But I suppose, out of 600+ recipes, that’s a pretty low percentage. Maybe that’ll be my new tagline: only 3% bean + veg soup!] I had no intention of posting this recipe. I was just doing what I do almost every week in the winter: cooking up a pot […]

Categories: 100% local, beans, celeriac, main course, soup, turnip & rutabaga, vegetarian, winter • Tags: beans, cooking, food, local, recipes, soup, vegetarian

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

Meyer Lemon Rosemary Mac & Cheese

18 February 2014 by local kitchen

I wasn’t going to do it, y’all. I mean, there are already three mac n’ cheese recipes on here: do we really need a fourth? But this one: this one was so good that I couldn’t keep it to myself. And since the end of Meyer season is upon us, I rationalized considered it my civic duty to make this one again, so I could photograph it and share it with you, gentle reader. It’s simple enough: a basic bechamel-based macaroni and cheese, […]

Categories: cheese, citrus, main course, rosemary, vegetarian, winter • Tags: cooking, food, local, pasta, recipes, vegetarian

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

#marmapalooza2014 Labels!

8 February 2014 by local kitchen

Because I love you, because I love marmalade season, (and because I’m procrastinating doing the dishes), I made you some labels: simply download, print, and write in the variety of marmalade in the space on the left. Ta-da! Your marm has never looked jazzier. I use the 2 ½-inch round labels from Avery: this download fits the white labels, #5294, but should also fit generic label brands that come 12 to a page. (I like the brown kraft labels as well, […]

Categories: 100% local • Tags: canning, cooking, labels, marmapalooza, preserving, winter