morsels & sauces

Do you really need a recipe for this salad? Not really. Do you sometimes need a nudge to eat better for yourself than you have been? Probably. Or at least I know I sometimes do. Consider this your nudge. This Cobb Salad from the fine folks at Food52  claims to be a rebellious kiss off to the more traditional Cobb Salad. And sure, perhaps it is. Normally a classic Cobb Salad would have tomatoes, chicken (or turkey), bacon, and iceberg lettuce. So, I suppose this is a nice riff on the Cobb Salad, wherein the beets stand in for all things meat based, olives make a briny appearance, and the dressing has eggs blended right into it, rather than just having your hard-boiled eggs scattered across the top of your shredded lettuce and cubed chicken.  Bonus:  The beets get their own vinegar infusion during the steaming process. So while they are not truly pickled beets (a favorite around these here parts), they have a little zing to them. Which I always appreciate. ...

I am a smoothie drinker. Almost every morning for breakfast. While one might imagine I do it for all the health benefits that smoothies provide (It's salad! In a jar!), my predilection for blended fruits and vegetables is deeply rooted in laziness.  You see, I like to sleep. I like to sleep a lot. I particularly like to sleep in the mornings. Which means I do everything I can to eek out another 10 minutes in bed.  Enter the blender. The night before, I gather up all of my ingredients and put them in a leftover plastic bag from the grocery store or into a bowl (sometimes I need to do two of these--one for frozen goodies and the other for refregerated ones). And then the next morning, at the last possible moment, I blend up those veggies, and pour them in a recycled jar, cap it, and take my breakfast on the go to be consumed sometime mid-morning while sitting at my desk.  It is not glamorous. It does not smack of health consciousness (or the ...

It’s baseball season. The time for hotdogs and beer. Nachos. Maybe even hot chocolate (hey, it’s San Francisco: more often than not, a night game when the fog rolls in requires hot chocolate, a hat and gloves, maybe even a blanket). I do not eschew such pleasures, especially in the summer. But to balance such indulgences, the regular days of my life need food that’s a little lighter, a bit more aware of its composition and construction, a fraction healthier. This is where Sarah Britton’s new cookbook, My New Roots steps in. I’ll admit, this cookbook is not for everyone, what, with its “cheese” made from cashews, “bacon” made from coconut, “scallops” made from leeks, and “tuna” made from sunflower seeds. I avoid substitutions on principle (if I want tuna, I eat tuna; I don’t substitute it with sunflower seeds.   That said, I’ll admit, I plan to just put actual tuna atop her recipe for pan bagnat with dill, spring onions, capers, cucumber and sprouts because, lordy, th...

How did I spend my January, you may wonder (or maybe not, but let's assume you have, given that I have been away from this here blog)?  I spent, at least the first part of it, cooking for friends.  It's one of the ways I know to do something substantial for those I care about.  From salted ice cream for a friend who is facing some pretty big challenges to beet salad for two friends whom I adore but see not often enough, I cook. I met these two women ten years ago, and we started doing these brunches with one another.  It almost sounds like a "thing," but in reality we do them about once a year.  But when we do, there is something kind of special; it's as if no time has passed.  Sure, I see each of them individually, and they see each other, but there is something different about the three of us in a room.  There is much laughing, often some crying, but mostly a good deal of talking and listening to one another.  We have shared career foun...

 Adapted from Cookbook #54: How to Cook Everything (2008, 10th Anniversary Edition) Recipe: Raw Beet Salad with Carrots and Ginger Well, look at this--a page 210 recipe.  And I get to cook with the contents of the CSA box.  If you're joining me late, page 210 was my commitment all of 2010.  I cooked every page 210 from every cookbook I own in honor of 2010 (I was hard pressed to find cookbooks with over 2000 pages in them, so I settled on 210, and even then, I had to resort to page 120 for many cookbooks).  And I vowed this year that if I acquired any new cookbooks--which I (predictably) did--I would continue the tradition of cooking page 210. So here we are with page 210 from Mark Bittman's wonderful and comprehensive cookbook, How to Cook Everything .  Mark Bittman is an amazing man.  He is not a chef, but he is a cook.  He is a journalist and a food lover, and as such, he writes a weekly column (" The Minimalist ") for the New York T...