Couscous Cakes
Instant dinner: why couscous cooks so fast You know my slight obsession with cake? Well, now I’m eating it for dinner. But it’s okay because it’s couscous cake–leftover couscous mixed with eggs, cheese, and spices and fried up until golden…
Smoky Chipotle Salsa
Taming the beast: why roasting garlic makes it delicious I’ve always loved going to the library. There’s something wonderful about wandering around bookshelves full of stories that you haven’t opened yet, a sense of infinite possibility and knowledge. When I…
Seiturkey (Seitan Turkey)
Meatless meat, or how to make flour into turkey Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. My general philosophy and the motto of this spectacular holiday is proudly displayed on a magnet on my fridge: “Love people. Cook them tasty…
Broccoli-Tomato Omelet
Eggs: the basics Harold McGee’s chapter on eggs (to which I’ve been glued the past few days because holy cow, eggs are amazing) begins with this tribute to the humble food: “An egg is the sun’s light refracted into life”…
Overnight Bread
Glorious Gluten Flour is kind of glorious: the basis of everything from delicate pastries to hearty breads, it has as many applications as the imagination can conceive. When mixed with water, it changes from an unremarkable white powder into a…
Mashed-potato-stuffed peppers
Beans, beans, the magical fruit We all know the song, but our dear friend Harold McGee puts it slightly more tactfully: “Several chemical constituents of beans are responsible for an uncomfortable, sometimes embarrassing consequence of eating legumes: the generation of…
Butternut squash, cauliflower, and chickpea delight
Worth the wait Roasting is my go-to cooking method. If I don’t really know what to do with whatever ingredients I have on hand, I chop them up and throw them in the oven with a little oil and salt….
Cornbread casserole
Feeling curdley? My sister’s in town, and we both love cornbread an absurd amount. Unfortunately, even we can’t convince ourselves that cornbread on its own is a balanced, full meal–but if you put a bunch of vegetables and beans underneath,…
Caramelized onion, cherry tomato, and Swiss cheese tart
Caramelization: making sugar even more delicious The farmers markets are full to bursting with tomatoes of all kinds, the squashy-looking heirlooms and juicy red beefsteak and tempting yellow something-or-other. But since the big guys require a cutting process that never…
