At my elementary school, we were often subjected to “glazed carrots,” which somehow combined the worst elements of candy and vegetables. Simultaneously tasteless and grossly sweet (even to eight year-olds), a lot of glazed carrots wound up in the dumpster behind Duncan Chapel Elementary.
Needless to say, I am wary of sweetened carrots. But, sick of [...]
Archive for the ‘Tips’ Category
Carrots, Braised ‘n’ Glazed
Posted in Cheap, Home Cooking, Recipe, Tips, Vegetarian, tagged carrots, braising on September 4, 2008 | No Comments »
Warm Corn Salad with Sungold Tomatoes and Red Onion
Posted in Cheap, Home Cooking, Quick, Recipe, Tips, Vegetarian, tagged tomatoes, red onion, salad, corn on August 28, 2008 | No Comments »
As Claire pointed out to me yesterday, we’ve been on a pretty salad-focused kick here at Food Junta, a lot of said salads involving tomatoes, corn, warming, or some combination thereof. But this salad was so good, I had to share it. Repetitiveness be damned.
Though I’m pretty sure this is a common-ish dish out there [...]
Another Peach Post: Roasted Peaches with Figs and Honey
Posted in Dessert, Home Cooking, Raves, Recipe, Tips, tagged peaches, figs on August 26, 2008 | 1 Comment »
I’ve been meaning to write about this delicious dessert for a while, and Kevin’s post yesterday about his discovery of the beauty of peaches is a good segue. A good friend of the Junta made this when I was in San Francisco, with glorious peaches, and glorious figs. But they were made all the more [...]
Peaches: Not Just for Throwing Away Anymore…
Posted in Tips, tagged peaches on August 26, 2008 | 6 Comments »
I had given up entirely on peaches. I had eaten hard ones, sour ones, bitter ones, ones with inedible skin, brown and mushy ones, and - every rare once and a while - an OK one.
Peaches do not travel well because they bruise very, very easily. Because of this, supermarket peaches are picked when they [...]
Ratatouille Pasta and the Art of Improvisation
Posted in Home Cooking, Philosophy, Tips, Vegetarian, tagged eggplant, pasta, ratatouille on August 21, 2008 | No Comments »
I am probably much more pleased with myself for this than I deserve to be, but what is a food blog good for if not self-aggrandizement? Nothing as far as I’m concerned.
So here’s the story: I made too much ratatouille. Much too much ratatouille. My dinner guests ate ratatouille. I ate ratatouille. I ate more [...]
Anything you can freeze, I can freeze better
Posted in Raves, Tips, tagged leftovers, freezer, frozen food, dumplings, peas, coffee, bread on August 5, 2008 | 1 Comment »
(Not my freezer.)
—
As keen as I am on fresh produce, you might thing that I eschew the use of a freezer, but au contraire, my friends. Au con-fucking-traire.
While I might frown on anyone whose idea of a good meal is one of those plastic trays of beef stroganoff with the amorphous “brownie,” I love my [...]
Semi-Homemade: Soup
Posted in Cheap, Home Cooking, Quick, Raves, Tips, tagged soup on July 31, 2008 | No Comments »
I don’t even know if this counts as semi-homemade, but I make “semi-homemade” soup all the time, so it seemed worth sharing with the world. What is semi-homemade soup? It is soup that would be plain and boring if just heated up out of the carton, but is instead delicious and wonderful because you’ve added [...]
Favorite Technique: Toasting Nuts
Posted in Philosophy, Raves, Tips, tagged nuts, pine nuts on July 29, 2008 | No Comments »
I really believe that there are a couple very simple things you can do to make your food seem startlingly more sophisticated. Not to make you a better cook, per se, but I also strongly believe that paying attention to what you’re cooking — to how it looks, to texture, to flavor balance — is [...]
Cuban-Style Mango Salad
Posted in Cheap, Home Cooking, Quick, Recipe, Tips, Vegetarian, tagged mango, onion, salad on July 27, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Fruit in salad is usually one of my bigger food no-no’s. Not as big of a no-no as fruit and chocolate mixed together; a bigger no-no than, well, a lot of other things. There are exceptions, of course, to every rule. I love Cadbury fruit and nut bars, for one. And I don’t mind pears [...]
Just Can’t Get Enough: More Garlic Scapes!
Posted in Cheap, Home Cooking, Recipe, Tips, Vegetarian, tagged dip, garlic, white beans on July 23, 2008 | 1 Comment »
I discovered scapes a few years ago when I lived by Union Square and regularly wandered through the green market. I bought my first bunch and put them in a glass of water on a counter in our living room – I wasn’t sure what to do with them beyond contemplate their slow-twisting cues.
I [...]
Chok boy!
Posted in Cheap, Home Cooking, Quick, Recipe, Tips, Vegetarian, tagged bok choy on July 21, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Bok choy is delicious. Don’t try to tell me otherwise. My first encounter with this Chinese vegetable left me thinking that I hated it, but this turns out to be because the bok choy that was served to me had been boiled for about a week and a half and the clearly depressed individual [...]
Fiesta for one? Holy Guacamole!
Posted in Home Cooking, Philosophy, Quick, Raves, Recipe, Tips, Vegetarian, tagged avocados, guacamole on July 17, 2008 | 5 Comments »
This post is about two things I really enjoy: eating alone and guacamole. So…the best of both worlds, logically, would be eating guacamole alone. Yet, guacamole seems like a social dish; you have it at parties, with margaritas, at the beach. It is not time-consuming to make, and yet, I like to chat with someone [...]
Garlic Scapes!
Posted in Home Cooking, Quick, Tips, Vegetarian, tagged chard, tomatoes, goat cheese, garlic scapes, sandwich on July 13, 2008 | 2 Comments »
These are curious creatures, these garlic scapes. As you can see from the photo above, they look a bit extraterrestrial. But they are related to the garlic we all know and love, just ever so much more subtle and tender. After garlic has been growing a little bit underground, a shoot will poke through the [...]
Arugula: Not just for yuppie salads anymore
Posted in Home Cooking, Recipe, Tips, tagged arugula, fennel, goat cheese, risotto, spaghetti on July 8, 2008 | 6 Comments »
At this point, arugula has become so much of a yuppie cliché and emblem of the gourmet-ization of America (see David Kamp’s The United States of Arugula), that it seems a little silly to even write about it. Shouldn’t I be onto bigger and better lettuce greens? Maybe so, but I love arugula. I just [...]
Keeping Things Fresh
Posted in Home Cooking, Tips, tagged lettuce, salad, storage on July 7, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Claire’s endorsement of salad spinners as a good way to keep greens fresh and get yourself eating more salad is spot on. I am a recent convert to the cult of salad spinners, and so far I am thrilled. But I resisted for a long time, and there are many people out there - people [...]
