Black Bean Salsa

I make this salsa quite often. It is extremely versatile and can be paired with a number of dishes. Here I served it with fish and quinoa. I often use it as a filling for quesadillas or with tortilla chips as an appetizer. It travels well and tastes good at room temperature making it a great dish to bring to a potluck. No one ingredient is essential, so feel free to alter the recipe to your liking.

Asian-style Steamed Fish

Pumpkin Pasta Sauce

It is odd that we use pumpkin, not a different squash, to bake pies because of all the winter squashes pumpkin is the least sweet.  Pumpkin’s lack of sweetness and the fact you can find its puree in a can is the reason I chose to use pumpkin to make my lasagna rather than butternut squash or acorn squash.  If you decide to try this recipe make sure you don’t accidentally buy pumpkin pie filling. It is a very easy mistake to make and cannot be substituted. 

Spaghetti alla Puttanesca Cruda

• I'm sure you've heard of Spaghetti alla Puttanesca, but do you know what it means? 
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• Translated into English it's "the Whore's Spaghetti". Yup, that's right. The New York Times recipe for Puttanesca provides a few theories on where the name came from,
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• "Ostensibly a sauce invented and made by prostitutes, it is said that pasta puttanesca was designed to lure customers with its aroma. Other explanations have more appeal to the minimalist cook: that the prostitutes were too busy to cook much, or that they had no storage for fresh ingredients and cooked entirely from the pantry. My favorite legend has it that it was a favorite not of prostitutes, but of women who wanted to serve a quick meal at home in order to move on to other things. Whatever the origin, no better wintertime pasta sauce has come down to us."

I'm calling my version cruda, because the sauce is uncooked (or barely cooked). Tomatoes are too inexpensive and delicious right now to use a can.  Puttanesca is one of those sauces that you can add a million things to- anchovies, capers, basil, onion, tuna, oregano, parsley, cheese.  However, there are only a few ingredients that you must add- tomatoes, garlic, red pepper flakes and olives. I highly suggest you also have some red wine and crusty bread.

Fish with Nectarine and Mint Salsa

I have a huge backlog of posts that I wrote up the recipe and took the pictures, but never edited. So here is a recipe I made back in July - no joke. You don't need to use plums, any stone fruit would work: nectarines, peaches, cherries. You could also add a little minced jalapeno if you are in the mood for something spicier.

Vegetable Tian

Delicious? Yes. Beautiful? Yes. Healthy? Yes. Time consuming? Double Yes.

This recipe comes from my dear friend Elyse.  She loves this stuff. Tian is a french way of preparing vegetables. It consistes of baking layered vegetables in a casserole. The vegetables are arranged in a circle and topped with cheese and bread crumbs and baked until brown and crispy.
It is very important to buy vegetables that are all the about the same size. I did not. This resulted in much frustration because I could not get it to look as pretty as I would have liked. Normally I do not care so much about appearances, but the whole point of the tian style is to create an impressive looking dish. Oh the French and their sophistication.

Sausage and Peppers

Sausage and peppers is one of my step-dad's favorite meals. It is also an extremely popular sandwich at street fairs in New York City- there is always sausage and pepper cart.  I used veggie chorizo, but you can use any type of sausage you would like. Traditionally hot Italian sausage is used, so I add jalapeno to compensate.

... Capellini with Checca

This is one of my all time favorite pasta sauces.  I first discovered checca when I worked at Figo Pasta. The fewer the ingredients the more important the quality. Ripe tomatoes and fresh basil are essential. Flor di latte or buffola mozzarella greatly improves the sauce, but are not absolutely necessary.  When picking mozzarella the best stuff is packaged in water.

... Tomato & Goat Cheese Tart

It's tomato season! I have been waiting since last october for it to arrive and finally it is here.  Tomatoes are hands down my favorite vegetable (or fruit). This weekend I went to a farmer's market in Pennsylvania and got some beautiful tomatoes. Tomatoes that are red all the way through- just like they should be.  In celebration of tomato season every meal I am cooking this week features my favorite little piece of produce.  We'll see if they make the cut to get on the blog.

If I could follow directions, I probably would have made the crust from scratch. But I can't, so I bought some pastry puff to line my pyrex (I have no pie pans- see above).  Served along aside a salad and a glass of dry white wine it makes for a delicious light dinner.

... Pickles!

Half-Sour - Bread & Butter -Spicy Garlicky

Why would you make your own pickles if you can buy them in a jar at the store? Because they taste a whole lot better. I'm not saying that every time you want a pickle you run out to the store and buy some cucumbers, but every once in a while for a treat mix up some of these. Just like store-bought pickles, if properly sealed, they last for months.

... Heathy Banana Bread

I take zero credit for this recipe. I found it on Epicurious, but it is so awesome that I have to share it. It requires no butter and only a tablespoon of oil! Instead it uses buttermilk to keep it moist. The only down side is I'm pretty sure you have to have an electric mixer to make it.

... Lemon Arugula Pesto

Basil is not the only type of pesto that exists.  Pesto is actually a method of preparation.  The word pesto comes from the Genoese word pestâ which means to pound, to crush.  In fact what we know simply as pesto is actually Pesto Genovese, named after the type of basil that is customarily used in the sauce. I’ve made spinach pesto, kale pesto and even pistachio pesto. 

I’m a big fan of homemade pesto. I find the store-bought stuff entirely too oily. Instead of adding a ton of oil I use some of the pasta water to liquefy the sauce. Pesto literally takes 5 minutes to make and you probably have most of the ingredients in your kitchen. 

... Pasta Primavera

It is Spring isn't it? What could be more appropriate than pasta primavera. For all you non-Spanish/Italian speaking folks, primavera means Spring. Clearly any cream sauce is not the healthiest thing in the world, but as someone who has worked in restaurants I promise you that anything you make at home will be healthier than what you would order at a restaurant.

... Honey-Glazed Carrots

This was an impulse buy.  I'm a sucker for heirloom vegetables.  Just look at how beautiful the colors are!  The only problem is I don't like cooked carrots.  I've seen a few recipes for honey-glazed carrots and I figured I'd give them a shot.  Most call for butter not olive oil, but melting butter takes more effort than drizzling evoo.

... Passover Lasagna

I was absolutely shocked. You can replace noodles with matzoh without noticing a difference.  I swear.  I challenge you to make lasagna using matzoh, serve it to people without telling them and see if they say anything.  I added some roasted eggplant and fresh spinach to the lasagna.  It was delicious.