Tag: quick & easy

Seared Tomato Sauce

15 August 2010 by local kitchen

The third in my series of recipe reviews from The Lost Art of Real Cooking, by Ken Albala and Rosanna Nafziger (A Perigee Book, published by the Penguin Group), this recipe, another sauce from Ken Albala, was intriguing from the get-go. The recipe, Fresh Tomato Sauce, in Chapter 2, Fresh Vegetables and Legumes, starts off with: “This sauce probably defies everything you have ever read about a good tomato sauce.” With the gauntlet thus thrown, I could hardly avoid taking up the challenge, […]

Categories: main course, quick & easy, rosemary, sauces, summer, tomatoes, wine, beer & liquor, year round • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, tomatoes

Locavirgin: Spicy Garlic Sandwich Spears

13 August 2010 by local kitchen

We interrupt the onslaught of peach preserving recipes to bring you something completely different: pickles! OK, so not completely different. Beef tartare au gratin would be completely different (not to mention hilarious). But I don’t eat beef (Sorry, Julia) and what I have is a kitchen overflowing with summer produce. So: pickles it is. The first time I made pickles was two summers ago, which was also the first time I grew a garden. I had a very prolific cucumber vine, […]

Categories: 100% local, canning, cucumber, garlic, Locavirgin, pickles, preserving, quick & easy, summer • Tags: canning, condiments, cooking, food, local, preserving, quick & easy, recipes

Jamaican Jerk Sauce

3 August 2010 by local kitchen

Last week, when I whined about discussed my scallion overload with y’all (you know I’ve been reading The Bloggess too much when I bust out the y’alls), my friend Weber King suggested that I make jerk sauce, as it uses up a lot of scallions. (Y’all should go visit his blog; maybe that would convince him to update it more than once every 3 months). Hands up if you knew that jerk sauce was made primarily of scallions: I had no […]

Categories: condiments, grill, hot chile peppers, preserving, sauces, scallions, summer, thyme, year round • Tags: condiments, cooking, food, grilling, local, preserving, quick & easy, recipes

Salt Potatoes

30 July 2010 by local kitchen

I went to college in Syracuse, NY (yes, I am an Orangewoman) and spent a couple of lazy hard-working, class-attending summers there, making up classes that I blew off during the semester earning extra credit towards my degree. In addition to that wacky glowing yellow ball in the sky, lazy afternoons at Green Lakes and no lines at Chuck’s, summer brings a fabulous bounty to Central New York: the salt potato. Salt potatoes have a mystique all their own, especially […]

Categories: 100% local, appetizer, potato, side dish, summer • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, summer, vegetarian

Baba Ganoush

27 July 2010 by local kitchen

Can it possibly be Tuesday again already?? Why yes, yes it can. So, in an effort to use up the three teeny, tiny, baby Japanese eggplants languishing in the fridge, in anticipation of getting three more teeny, tiny, baby Japanese eggplants in the CSA tomorrow, I give you: baba ganoush. There are lots of recipes for baba ganoush out there in Ye Olde Internets: most of them are pretty much the same, consisting mainly of roasted eggplant, tahini, and lemon juice. […]

Categories: appetizer, cilantro, eggplant, spreads, summer, vegetarian • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, vegetarian

Scallion Hummus

26 July 2010 by local kitchen

I don’t know about you, but ’round these parts we are literally drowning in scallions; we are getting 7 or 8 huge scallions each week in our CSA, and when I say huge, I mean huge. These puppies are close to 3 feet long and the bulbs are the diameter of a quarter. It must be The Summer of the Scallion and nobody told me. In addition to all the scallion love from my own CSA, our neighbors (and landlords) were […]

Categories: appetizer, beans, chickpeas, fall, parsley, quick & easy, scallions, side dish, spring, summer, vegetarian • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, vegetarian

Can Jam: Pattypan Pickles

23 July 2010 by local kitchen

CanJam July #2: a quick mini-batch of pickles, or an attempt to deal with the metric tons of summer squash currently taking over my refirgerator. Do you know Patty? She’s round & bumpy, bright yellow (or sometimes green), looks like a flying saucer? Yes, that one. She and her entire extended family have moved into my fridge, lock, stock and two smoking 8-balls. When a house guest over stays her welcome, I say, pickle ’em! Brine propotions taken from Marisa’s […]

Categories: Can Jam, canning, pickles, preserving, summer, zucchini • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, quick & easy, recipes

Ginger Soy Pickled Radishes

12 July 2010 by local kitchen

I put these little beauties up right before I left for South Africa, since I knew that two big bunches of radishes would do nothing but wither and die in the crisper if they had to rely on my Darling Hubs to eat them. They have been pickling away, down in the relative coolness of the garage, for over a month now, so I figured it was about time for a taste test. First and foremost: I won’t pickle the long, […]

Categories: appetizer, canning, condiments, pickles, preserving, radish, spring • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, quick & easy, recipes

Memorial Day Grillfest

28 May 2010 by local kitchen

I have a fabulous braised chicken recipe to tell you about, but really? Who’s going to be braising this weekend? Memorial Day weekend is all about the grill, baby: easy-peasy, flip-flop wearing, cold beer in hand, 2-minutes-a-side-and-dinner-is-done kind of cooking. So, in honor of the holiday weekend, the 88(!) degree weather predicted on Sunday, and the annual kick-off to Summer (and all the fabulous grilling that comes with the season), I present to you Local Kitchen Grillfest 2010. A couple […]

Categories: 100% local, chicken, corn, grill, pork, potato, summer • Tags: chicken, cooking, food, local, pork, quick & easy, recipes

Pickled Chard Stems

9 May 2010 by local kitchen

Yesterday I scored a ridiculous amount of Spring bounty at the farmer’s market: asparagus and rhubarb, yes, but also ramps & fiddleheads, rainbow chard & curly kale, scallions, parsley & cilantro, two kinds of radishes (and of course the usual potatoes, onions and carrots). In addition to all that, thanks to Madura Farms’ greenhouses, I picked up the first Kirby cucumbers of the year, not to mention eggs, bread, butter, pork shoulder and sausage. Phew! I could barely stuff it all into the […]

Categories: canning, condiments, fall, kale & leafy greens, pickles, preserving, quick & easy, spring • Tags: canning, chard, condiments, cooking, food, local, pickles, preserving, quick & easy, recipes

Cheddar Parsley Scones

27 April 2010 by local kitchen

Another riff on the always popular Cheddar Scallion Scones, this one with fresh, flat-leaf parsely and red onion. In this version, I replaced the scallions with 1/4 cup each of finely chopped red onion and chopped fresh parsley; swapped 1 cup of spelt flour for 1 cup of whole wheat, and added another 1/4 tsp of freshly ground black pepper. I also made these into mini-scones: separate the dough into two halves; shape each half into a rectangle about 4″ […]

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

Ramp & Cilantro Pesto

20 April 2010 by local kitchen

I’m down in a cold, misty, rainy Asheville this week, spending some time with Mom. On my list of things to do before I left for the week was to preserve anything in the fridge that Tai wouldn’t cook while I was gone (so, essentially, everything). After enjoying ramps in a lovely chickpea salad and a leeky-cheesey fritatta this week I still had a pile to use. Just a few days ago, I saw a recipe for Ramp and Parsley Pesto […]

Categories: cilantro, condiments, freezing, preserving, quick & easy, spring, wild foods • Tags: condiments, cooking, food, local, preserving, quick & easy, recipes, wild foods

Chickpea & Spring Green Salad with Lemony Vinaigrette

15 April 2010 by local kitchen

Just the thing for Tax Day: a low-stress, quick & easy, protein, fiber and vitamin-packed, cheap one dish meal. Oh, yes, and it’s delicious too! I threw this quick & easy salad together the other night, thinking I was making enough for lunch leftovers, but it was so delicious that Tai & I polished off seconds and the whole bowl disappeared in no time. Even though I’ve been doing quite well on my resolution to use dried beans, I used canned […]

Categories: beans, chickpeas, citrus, quick & easy, radish, salad, spinach, spring, vegetarian, wild foods • Tags: cooking, food, local, main course, quick & easy, recipes, salad, spinach, vegetarian, wild foods

Sunday Spring Cleaning: Sweet & Soy Asian Grilled Chicken

11 April 2010 by local kitchen

Suppose you made some jam. And suppose that jam was way, way too sweet for you. But, it took three days to make, and used the Last Fall Pumpkin, and you’re a Yankee, so, you can’t just get rid of it. You can give some away; but since the jam is way (way) too sweet for you, and the people who like your jams mostly like the ones that you usually make (which are way, way less sweet), well… the […]

Categories: chicken, grill, sauces, summer • Tags: chicken, cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes

Chicken & Orzo Stew

29 March 2010 by local kitchen

As noted below, the original version of this recipe is what I call “restaurant fussy:” wherein almost every ingredient is cooked separately (using several pots & pans), then combined at the end. My tweaks made it not only easier to prepare, but tastier to boot: the orzo cooks in the chicken-wine broth, the chicken soaks up flavor from herbs & greens, the apple is added at the end for maximum crispness, and the whole thing comes together in a single […]

Categories: apples, chicken, herbs, kale & leafy greens, main course, pasta, spring, wine, beer & liquor • Tags: chicken, cooking, food, greens, kale, local, quick & easy, recipes