morsels & sauces

Winter is officially over, but there are gray days still happening. We all know I love gray days, and gray days call for soup. Enter harira. Harira is a Northwest African soup generally served during Ramadan as way to break the daily fast. Typically made with small chunks or strands of lamb, this stew erupts with fragrant herbs and spices--including ginger, saffron, cinnamon, paprika, cumin, and red pepper--and thickens late in its cooking with a swirl flour and water. It bursts with complex flavor, satisfying chickpeas and lentils, and unexpected pasta. And, Heidi Swanson, in her latest cookbook,  Near and Far , makes this hearty dish into a flavorful vegetarian option that doesn't make you miss the lamb at all. There is no doubt Swanson has a huge following of devoted home cooks (or take-out orderers who happen to read blogs for fun). Her blog  certainly paved the way for those, like me, who have too many cookbooks, perhaps too little time, and a penchant...

Let's talk pasta.  Let's talk pasta eaten in a tiny Roman  restaurant down an alley that you can never seem to find on return visits. Let's talk pasta that boasts simplicity and requires a quick hand. Let's talk pasta made from a cheese that has its own Roman dialect-ed name.  Sounds like we're talking Spaghetti with Cacio e Pepe, my favorite pasta ever, especially if eaten while snuggled up with family at  Osteria del Gallo in Rome, and more easily found in Katie Parla and Kristina Gill's delightful new cookbook Tasting Rome . With lovely little essays that span the history of Roman cuisine (not surprising since Parla's graduate degree is in Italian gastronomic culture), the book has stunning photography (not surprising given that Gill is a Rome-based freelance photographer) and definitive travelogues through different areas of Rome, including Testaccio, the historic Jewish quarter, and the some 120 mercati rionali.  A small requ...

Oh, what a lovely meal for a late, rainy Sunday afternoon. Coconut milk, curry leaves, sweet potatoes, red lentils, all mixed up with the warm cinnamon and ginger, red chiles and turmeric. Anna Jones, you are welcome to recommend a recipe to me any day of the week. Back in July , I got Anna Jones' cookbook,  A Modern Way to Eat , and immediately fell in love with her sensible cooking that embraces a simple mantra that we are merely stewards of the land. Our maximalist lifestyles often forget the simple pleasures and become the catalyst for some pretty destructive tendencies. The cookbook calms us down, gives us sustainable food, and guarantees we won't want for anything, even as we let go of unhealthy eating. This beautiful dal (dhal) recipe seems to have a long list of ingredients, but most of them are spices; everything else you just might have on hand, including the lentils.  Back in 2015, I wrote  about the different types of lentils, and this r...

Sometimes you just need a snack. A canape. A tapa. A morsel.  And sometimes the husband makes a request that said snack include blood sausage.  He's like that.  And when someone makes a special request that I make a blood sausage tapa, I pretend that I selflessly do this for said someone. But we all know, I have just been waiting for an excuse. You see, blood sausage is not something frequently in our dinner rotation, and for good reason. While protein and iron are high, so is fat ; thus, blood sausage appears only on special occasions. We were invited to an Oscars Night dinner at the in-laws and instructed to bring appetizers. Enter blood sausage request. I couldn't, however, serve only the blood sausage canapes, as they are not to everyone's liking--plus I have an ill-placed anxiety about showing up without enough food. So in a gesture of good will, I coupled this hearty bread-forward tapa with a lighter, solely vegetable one. (For the recor...

When the tomato sauce stands on its own, it's time to make your own simple sauce. And since, as of late, I have been on some kind of inexplicable pasta kick , I present to you one of the simplest tomato sauces. Sure, if it were summer, one would pluck tomatoes from the vine, snag a few pounds from the farmers market, or procure some at the local grocery store. However, we're fully ensconced in February, and I am aching for the acidic sweetness of tomatoes. Canned it is. Do obtain the best canned tomatoes you can find. Cook's Illustrated , in its wonderfully geeky way, has taken all the guess-work out of selecting your canned tomatoes. In this breathlessly empirical article , they conclude that San Marzano tomatoes are not actually worth all the hype. Instead, they recommend good old Muir Glenn whole tomatoes.  Composed of ingredients probably found in your pantry (maybe you'll need to substitute some dried oregano and basil), this sauce is a snap...

About six years ago, I bemoaned the fact that one of my fathers-in-law owned a cookbook I wanted. Through the modern miracle of amazon and the generosity of my husband, he snapped up a used copy for me as my Christmas present. And oh, how I love it.  And the question must be asked: why did he wait so long? I decided to begin with one of the simplest recipes in the book: a lamb stew. And oh, how I love lamb stew, and it has shown up on this blog twice before.  About two years ago, I made a  lamb and fruit stew  out of the Middle East that was quite tasty, for I am a huge fan of quince and of saffron--that stew married lamb with those two delicacies, and I was hooked.  And then, as you know, in December,  I made what I declared to be the best lamb stew I have ever had. I'll still stand by that declaration--that Tunisian lamb stew was better than this one, but only because I preferred that spice palate. Seriously--coriander, cinnamon...

I have some issues with all the hype around smoothies. Some people out there suggest that the smoothie is what will cure the nutritional ails of the 21st century. Such is the case with my latest in smoothie cookbooks,  Green Smoothies , by improbably named Fern Green , a food stylist who apparently writes cookbooks while managing a boutique hotel in central Italy. According to this cookbook, the smoothie will cleanse and detox the body, provide alkaline and acidic balance, and help prevent disease. It will replace your caffeine fix ( what!? ), benefit kids who don't like veggies, give you energy, and purify the blood. That's a lot of promise in a jar. My love of the smoothie almost guarantees that I have one almost every weekday for breakfast. Portable and easily made the night before, most of my smoothies taste remarkably the same, given that I hardly vary my recipe: yogurt, fruit, spinach, flax seed, and maybe celery. They're fast. They're easy. They...