morsels & sauces

Can I confess: I don't particularly care for salad. I find lettuces, for the most part, boring. I get tired of carrots and radishes and cucumbers. I just don't think I would do well on a raw diet. So I was delighted when I received this latest cookbook from Food 52 because I am always looking for ways to up my salad game. And so I begin my foray into Mighty Salads with a fantastic grilled bread salad chock-full of grilled veggies and spectacular dressing made from the mayonnaise marinade. Yes, you heard me right. Mayonnaise m arinade. Okay, maybe this salad is not the healthy-eating alternative I was longing for, as we kick off summer. But I still consumed about 729% more vegetables in this salad alone than I did the entire month of May.  It's summer, and lordy, people, I have got to get this diet back to salads and soups and smoothies and healthy eating. Because lately it's been cheetos and chocolate. And this is just the cookbook to do it. Befor...

A colleague of mine recently gave me a dozen eggs from backyard, Berkeley-raised chickens.  I haven't the slightest idea of how to raise backyard chickens (thankfully there's google for those of you who want to know); all I know is that when my friends have a plethora of eggs and the good sense to share them, I can whip up a souffle.  About this time a couple of years ago, I detailed my foray into souffle making, and a scientist friend of mine says that the science checks out.   Since we have already discussed the souffle, let's spend a little more time with the egg itself, shall we? Eggs are graded (AA, A, or B in descending order) according to interior and exterior quality.  The shells are examined for "soundness, cleanliness, shape and texture," according to my handy Food Lover's Companion , and the interior is graded through a process of "candling" (so called from the days when you would hold an egg up to a candle to examine the interior-...

 Adapted from Cookbook #32: Cooking Light Vegetarian Cookbook Recipes:  Corn & Barley Salad  and  Bulgur & Broccoli Salad Two for the price of one! This cookbook was one of those I once used to teach myself how to cook many a moon ago.  Remember, I was once a vegetarian.  See here .  And here .  The cookbook relies on dairy, eggs, and the occasional Worcestershire sauce (which causes one Amazon reviewer to take this cookbook to task), so vegetarians beware, even though the title says that all of you will be included.  Perhaps as this dairy-laden book helped me learn to become a vegetarian cook, I never really did lose any weight in those heady days of vegetarianism back in Utah and Colorado.  However, the options available to vegetarians twenty years ago (dear lord, did I just write that???  How is it that I was once so young and am now so old) were quite limited in comparison to where they are now.  Most 19...

Adapted from Cookbook #21:  Jacques Pepin's Simple and Healthy Cooking Recipe:  Pasta Primavera Spring. That's about all I have to say about this recipe.  It just screams spring. And we're nearing the end of spring, so it's high time I made this recipe.  This is the kind of recipe that makes me want to renew my CSA box. Pasta primavera, so the story goes, was "invented" in New York City in the 70s at Le Cirque .  Word spread, and by the 80s everyone was making it, including the husband in his World Foods class in high school.  No joke.  Nowadays, gone are the cream and butter sauce base of the 70s and in their stead come a lightened version of broth and olive oil. This recipe comes from Jacques Pepin, after those halcyon days of heavy French cooking.  A bit of healthy living certainly led to this fine little cookbook.    I would argue that most of the recipes in this book are more weeknight cooking than weekend ent...