A celebration of the beautiful spring pea, with a healthful twist on my regular recipe, and full of flavor! When the peas start coming fast and furious, we’re all happy. Few vegetables are more perfect and versatile as the pea, and none more fleeting in its season, all the more reason to cherish. The sugar…
Category: Main Dishes
Grilled Shrimp with Ginger, Lime, and Garlic, and Sesame Baby Pak Choi
Quick, delicious, healthful! Our farm stand had some lovely new baby pak choi (bok choy, Chinese cabbage) this week, and I knew I had to build a meal around it. It is extremely nutritious, delicious, and easy to grow, especially in cold climates. A great source of fiber, antioxidants, Vitamins C and K, zinc, and…
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Maine Crab Fritters with Potato Chip Crust and Horseradish Sauce
Had you at the potato chip crust, right? These could be a lovely little starter, or a fun addition to a party buffet. Not quite as fussy as a crab cake, easier to cook, but still filled with crab flavor. A cup of good crab is better than gallons of preservatives I’ve used the meat…
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Those Funny Little Fiddlehead Ferns Play Nicely with other Spring Treasures
Fiddlehead ferns are a ritual in the northeast, and with a fleeting season, you have to be quick. From my youngest childhood, I remember foraging fiddlehead ferns with my Uncle Leonard. The appear only for a few weeks, and then become the beautiful fronds of the ostrich fern that greens our woodlands. They are delicious,…
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Coaxing Spring one Root at a Time
Spring turnips and radishes are the flavors of right now. It has been chilly this week, but we’ve had some breaks of sunshine in the spring rains. These blessed showers brought the green grass, and the trees are starting to leaf out as well. Perfect weather for the daffodils and tulips. It does the heart…
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Spring-Dug Parsnip Purée with Seared Sea Scallops
Right after maple syrup, the second New England crop of the year is spring-dug parsnips, and now’s the time to find them. Parsnips are a bit finicky to germinate and grow, but they are well-worth the effort because they keep well in the north for use all winter. Many farmers “store” a certain portion of…
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New England Stewed Yellow-Eyed Beans with Greens
This New England classic tastes like no other bean, and can be slow cooked all day on the stove, in the oven, or in a slow cooker. However, you can make them in a fraction of the time in a pressure cooker, or multi-cookers. My mother was known for her baked beans, a long-baked…
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How do you top a Finnan Haddie? With Potato Peelings of course!
This chowder is dairy-free, but you’d never guess! Many New Englanders and Canadians grew up with the classic Scottish Finnan Haddie, a delicately smoked haddock with a funny name. It was used in chowders and fish cakes when I was a kid, and was often served frequently during Lent. I loved the chowder the best….
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Light & Lively Open-Faced Tuna Sandwich
Not quite the tuna sandwich you grew up on! Tuna sandwiches were a mainstay in our house growing up. They were simple, just canned tuna, mayonnaise, diced onion, a little celery. If we had unexpected company at lunch time, my mom could make an amazing number of sandwiches with just one can of tuna! She…
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Cream of Party Platter Soup
First step in recipe: Throw a party There’s one at every party, a crudités platter, beautifully cut-up vegetables, arranged in vibrant color swaths, decorated with herbs and little treats. Sometimes, depending on what else is available, it even gets eaten! Always some left over However, usually there are lots left over, especially if a large…
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Put A Little Sole in a Late Winter Seafood Dish
Winter Flounder (or sole) is a bountiful, seasonal New England delight, full of soul and flavor. I am tired of root vegetables, and they are getting just plain tired of me as well. My frozen local veggies are pretty much depleted, and even the fresh from elsewhere in the country leave much to be desired….
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Celebrating Spring with a Flower Show and Salmon Glazed with Sambuca Maple Syrup
It’s Vermont’s first crop of the year! Once you spy steam escaping from your neighbor’s sugarhouse, you know spring is truly here, even if it is snowing. The temperatures have been above freezing during the day (barely) and below freezing at night, and that means the sap is running in Vermont, the nation’s…
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Shrimp and Artichoke Paella: Sometimes it does matter what pan you use.
The hand-me-down pots from your mother are more than just kitchen utensils! My kitchen is lusciously littered with items from the women in my life. My grandmother’s cast-iron frying pan, my mother’s bread bowl, my sister’s coffee press. Various pastry making items from aunts. A special wooden spoon from a reporter from a rival newspaper….
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Cookbook Confidential: Whole Wheat Pasta with Walnut Sauce and Swiss Chard
My friend Bernadette from New Classic Recipe came up with the idea to have an on-line cook book club with some of her blog buddies. What fun, and a great way to choose a recipe or two from the books, cook them, and review the books. “Milk Street Tuesday Nights Mediterranean,” from Christopher Kimball The…
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A few twists on (American) Chop Suey, or was that Hungarian Goulash? Your choice!
It was one of our standards growing up in New England, a hearty pasta meal that is cooked and served in one pot, great on a weeknight, and pretty much loved by all. But all that fat and carbs! We loved it as kids. A big dish of macaroni with browned ground beef and onions,…
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Because sometimes we all need to be coddled.
Coddled eggs may have gone out of fashion, but they are always a delight. One of the last gifts my mom gave me was a set of egg coddler cups from Williams Sanoma. They were beautiful little treasures in Delft white with blue, which she knew I loved, with shiny stainless-steel tops. She thought my…
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Jazzy Rutabaga and Black Bean Soup
Full of flavor, this soup will warm you, wake you up, and make you want to dance. And it won’t break the bank! I was talking to my friend Chris recently, and he was making black bean soup. The thoughts of the soup stuck in my mind, so that evening I put a pound of…
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Quick Cod Curry with Mushrooms
A colorful weeknight dish that takes little time but packs tons of flavor! We didn’t eat a lot of curry in our house when I was growing up. Typical old time New Englander, my father liked things on the plain side, but my mom loved spices and heat. Dad usually won the battle, telling my…
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Traditional Boston Baked Beans? May I introduce you to their great-granddaughter?
A New England favorite with lots of twists! In years past, every New England cook had their own recipe for Boston Baked Beans. Inexpensive, filling, and nutritious, peasant food at its best. Baked beans were a Saturday night staple dating back to Colonial times when cooking on the Sabbath was forbidden and the beans could…
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Let’s Play! Steamed Mussels with Leeks and Sun-Dried Tomatoes
There’s probably a hundred ways to make mussels in white wine, so why not 101 and use some sun-dried tomatoes! Mussels are pretty popular in my house. Whether serving as a starter, a component on a buffet, or a quick and humble main dish for supper, these lovely little bivalves are always welcome, and always…
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My favorite leftovers!
We try hard to reduce waste in the kitchen, and planning for use of “leftovers” goes a long way to help! It can be a challenge to repurpose those leftovers hiding in the refrigerator. One can toss the remnants of yesterday’s casserole in soups, vegetables and grains in frittatas and omelets, and lots of leftovers…
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Feast of Seven Fishes – Stew!
You can honor the idea of the Feast of Seven Fishes in a one-dish meal that takes a fraction of the time, but delights with great flavor! Time is short, and I’m sending you a rerun of a previous post. Happiest of Holidays to you all! Dorothy I prepared the full Feast of the Seven…
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Nantucket Bay Scallops with Shallots over Mashed Potatoes
A New England treasure, they are in season right now, at this shortest day of the year! There’s a beautiful island 30 miles off the Massachusetts coast, Nantucket, home of the world renowned wild seasonal delicacy, the bay scallop. Have you ever been there? The protected, clean waters off this island nurture the world’s oldest…
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Stir-Fried Tempeh with Peppers and Onions
This nutritious ingredient is all about possibilities! You’ll always find a package of tempeh and one of tofu in my refrigerator. They are stable for quite a while, and make for a really quick weeknight meal when somehow the day has gotten away from the someone who shops and going to the market ended up…
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How to make an egg-white omelet that won’t send them sneaking off to the local diner…
We’ve all seen them, a pale white floppy omelet with little appeal and no flavor. But it is easy to remake a classic omelet that is satisfying and still heart healthy. Since my husband’s heart attack last year, we’ve been cautious about saturated fat and cholesterol in our diet. Cautious is probably not the right…
