Tag: quick & easy

Roasted Jalapeños With Goat Cheese & Smoky Chile Cherries

31 December 2013 by local kitchen

My New Year’s gift to you: an actual “quick & easy” recipe that is spicy, sweet, creamy, smoky & delicious. Suitable for a rollickin’ holiday party or a quiet nibble at home and easily adaptable to cheeses you have in the fridge and preserves in the pantry. Roasting the jalapeños mellows their spicy bite (or you can include a mix of milder small chiles, as I have below), while a short roast and quick broil browns the cheese while maintaining […]

Categories: appetizer, cherries, fall, holiday, hot chile peppers, winter • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, vegetarian

Rosemary Roasted Cashews

23 November 2013 by local kitchen

Have you heard the news? Nuts will save your life. Literally. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has analyzed nut consumption in nearly 175,000 health professionals over a span of 30 years. They found a 20% reduction in death from any cause in people who ate nuts every day. Twenty. percent. Let that sink in for a moment. Twenty percent lower incidence of heart disease. Of diabetes. Of cancer. Respiratory disease. Neurodegenerative disease. Stroke. Even infection. (How […]

Categories: appetizer, gifts, holiday, nuts, quick & easy, rosemary, snack, year round • Tags: cooking, food, local, nibbles, nuts, quick & easy, recipes, vegetarian

Use It or Lose It! Jam & Almond Crumb Bars

5 November 2013 by local kitchen

A few weeks ago, in the midst of birthday and anniversary celebrations, rock climbing, hiking and mountain biking excursions, and all around amazing-Fall-weather craziness, Tai & I went to a house party hosted by one of his colleagues and fellow rock climbing guides up in the Gunks. It was sort of a potluck, with friends requested to bring either a dessert or a side dish; Tai brags about my cooking to these guys all the time, so of course I […]

Categories: baking, breakfast, dessert, jams, nuts, snack, Use it or Lose it!, whole wheat flour, year round • Tags: baking, cooking, food, jam, local, quick & easy, recipes

Sriracha-Pickled Eggplant & Summer Squash

15 September 2013 by local kitchen

It’s been an easy eggplant year: we’ve only gotten a few pounds in the CSA this season, scattered over the last several weeks. After last year’s Eggplantocalypse, I’m grateful, especially with all of the traveling I’ve done this summer (although I have some friends who will lament the loss of quarts & quarts of eggplant bacon). Since Tai won’t eat it, and eggplant is not my favorite either, it’s a struggle to use it up when we get loads, but this […]

Categories: 100% local, canning, eggplant, pickles, preserving, summer, zucchini • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, quick & easy, recipes

100% Local: Summer Tomato & Corn Soup

25 August 2013 by local kitchen

From a wonderful trip to San Francisco & wine country for the happiest of reasons, my friend Melissa’s 50th birthday, to an unexpected and bittersweet trip to Boston for the saddest of reasons, August has sped by in a whirlwind of trains, planes and automobiles, good times with old friends and new, many laughs and not a few tears. I’m well behind on the season’s preserving, but in between trips I did manage to whip up this fabulous light, summery […]

Categories: 100% local, celery, corn, oregano, soup, summer, tomatoes, vegetarian, zucchini • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, summer, vegetarian

Curried Potato Salad with Basil & Mint

27 July 2013 by local kitchen

I have three massive bunches of basil sitting in glasses of water on my counter. Well: two massive bunches now, as I used most of one bunch in these potatoes. Which were also sitting on my counter, picked up at last weekend’s farmer’s market, quickly growing sprouts despite the black tea towel protecting them from light. Ah, summer. The basil overflows, the mint grows like a weed; even the potatoes are stretching towards the sunshine. And the eating is as […]

Categories: basil, mint, potato, roasting, salad, side dish, summer • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, summer, vegan, vegetarian

Ginger-Chile Stir-Fried Lettuce

6 July 2013 by local kitchen

Another answer to that age-old question: What the hell am I going to do with all of this lettuce? Though the last few days have been tropical in New York; sunny, very hot and very humid; early summer has shown us nearly perfect growing conditions for lettuce: sunny, reasonably cool and plenty of rain. Hence, lettuce heads have grown to epic proportions and those of us with gardens or CSAs are eating salad with every meal. However, as there is only so […]

Categories: fall, hot chile peppers, lettuce, side dish, spring, summer • Tags: cooking, local, quick & easy, recipes, side dish

Early Summer Napa Slaw

2 July 2013 by local kitchen

Bright sunny days, cool misty nights and plenty of rain = heaven for cabbage and other leafy greens. So I wasn’t surprised when I saw the GIANT head of Napa cabbage in last week’s CSA bag. I was, however, a bit dismayed that my favorite cabbage slaw includes cherry tomatoes, which won’t make their cheery red selves known around these parts for at least a few more weeks. Enter early summer slaw: crunchy pink radishes, spicy spring onions, sweet orange […]

Categories: cabbage, carrot, quick & easy, radish, salad, scallions, side dish, summer, tarragon, vegetarian • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, salad, vegetarian

Santa Rosa Plum & Almond Tart

28 June 2013 by local kitchen

Have you had Santa Rosa plums? They’re a deep purple-black when ripe, with a blood-red interior and tangy, tart flesh. The aroma when they are perfectly ripe is indescribable: rich, floral, spicy, earthy. Amazing. Plums are not quite on the scene yet in New York; I was lucky enough to receive a small box of them in the mail from the lovely Karen of Lemon Ladies Orchard in California (along with a jar of her Santa Rosa plum jam, which […]

Categories: baking, breakfast, dessert, plums, summer • Tags: baking, cooking, dessert, food, local, plums, quick & easy, recipes, summer

Tepary Bean, Sausage & Chard Soup

19 June 2013 by local kitchen

The verdict is in and the peoples: they like the chard. The professional chefs, recipe developers and cookbook authors? Not so much (except for Martha Rose, who, as ever, is awesome. The other Martha gets a nod too, mostly for the cool, seasonal, by-ingredient recipe index she’s got going on.). I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I just don’t understand why everyone in the culinary world has a love affair with kale, but ignores her milder, softer, […]

Categories: garlic, heirloom beans, kale & leafy greens, sausage, spring, summer • Tags: cooking, food, local, preserving, quick & easy, recipes

Rhubarb Crumble with Ginger & Meyer Lemon

13 May 2013 by local kitchen

There’s a great conversation going on over at the Facebook page today, centered on this vastly irritating op-ed in the New York Times stating that it is “nearly impossible for a single parent or even two parents working full time to cook every meal from scratch.” Let’s set aside the fact that people without kids, married or single, can find themselves too busy to cook just as often as their child-rearing friends, and focus on the real problem with the piece: […]

Categories: baking, breakfast, dessert, oats, rhubarb, spring, whole wheat flour • Tags: cooking, dessert, food, local, quick & easy, recipes

Meyer Lemon: Citrus Salt, Simple Syrup, Powdered Pectin & Scrub

9 May 2013 by local kitchen

So you say the pantry is already stocked with more marmalade than you can eat in a year (or two? or three? Ahem.) You’ve made lemon pasta (twice!), lemon lentil salad, boozy lemon bars, lemon curd shortcake, and lots of lemony margaritas? The craziness of Spring: visiting friends, impending work deadlines, and mandatory weeknight campfires is upon you? But still, you have this big pile of gorgeous California citrus to enjoy? Well, my friends: I’m here to help. Dispatch a dozen lovely Meyer […]

Categories: citrus, winter • Tags: citrus, food, Meyer lemon, preserving, quick & easy, recipes

Put ’em Up! Fruit: Classic Blueberry Jam, Pan-Roasted Chicken with Blueberry Reduction, and A Giveaway

11 April 2013 by local kitchen

By now, you’ve heard about Put ’em Up! Fruit, the new book from Sherri Brooks Vinton, right? I mean, Marisa was dishing about it, as was Sean, and Autumn made the glorious sounding lemon, red onion & oregano jam. And with giveaways all over the blogosphere for the next two weeks, surely it won’t be long before you have a copy in your hot little hands. Right? When Storey Publishing emailed to ask if I’d like to participate in a […]

Categories: berries, chicken, jams, main course, preserving, quick & easy, roasting, Use it or Lose it!, wine, beer & liquor, year round • Tags: canning, chicken, cooking, dinner, food, local, preserving, quick & easy, recipes

Mexican Black Bean Pizza

2 April 2013 by local kitchen

I threw together this pizza for a quick lunch the other day. While homemade black bean pizza might not be your idea of “quick & easy” lunch fare, it mostly consisted of tossing together a bunch of already-prepared things: cooked black beans, par-baked and frozen pizza crust, salsa from last summer; and adding a bit of fresh veg and cheese. As it was, it took longer to preheat the oven than to put this pizza together and 20 minutes later […]

Categories: main course, pizza, quick & easy, vegetarian, year round • Tags: cooking, food, local, main course, pizza, quick & easy, recipes, vegetarian

Use It or Lose It! Drunken Cherry Chicken

20 March 2013 by local kitchen

In addition to my main stores in the garage pantry, I keep a small stash of jarred goods in a corner of one of my way-too-deep and inconveniently-high kitchen cabinets (the extra-convenient one above the fridge). I was pawing through the jars the other day (balanced precariously on the invaluable kitchen step stool), hoping I could avoid a snowy trip downstairs to pick up a jar of salsa, when I unearthed a dusty jar of drunken cherries: from 2009. Oops. […]

Categories: braising, cherries, chicken, main course, Use it or Lose it!, wine, beer & liquor, winter • Tags: cherries, chicken, cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes