A Beautiful Thanksgiving Salad

By now I’m sure you’ve all read my tips for creating a Thanksgiving menu. One of the finer points, which I hope you didn’t miss, was the balance factor: make sure to include some lighter dishes in your menu to balance out the rich, heavy sides.
I’m sure most of you can mash a mean potato [...]

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Maple-Glazed Gingered Yams

Now that you’ve put away your witch hats, fluorescent fishnets and Brittney Spears trailer-trash costumes (my personal favorite this Halloween), it’s time to start thinking about Thanksgiving. I swear, the time between October and New Year’s Eve whips by like phone book pages in a tornado—one holiday barely ends when it’s time to start planning [...]

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Spicy Okra With Cherry Tomatoes

I’m here today to give okra some good press—to praise its tender-crisp outer flesh, appreciate its playful white pearls that pop between my teeth, and hail the quirky viscosity of its insides that make some people squish their faces into a disdainful “Eeewwwww.”
I’d like to think that these squeamish individuals have never eaten properly cooked [...]

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Summer Corn and Radish Salad

It’s the end of summer, so eat all the fresh corn you can before it disappears!
I made this recipe last week for a client who requested a summer salad. Corn and radishes were the only required ingredients—she left the rest up to me. I had never before eaten a corn and radish salad, so I [...]

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Spicy Summer Slaw

It’s barbecue season, and everyone’s slapping goodies on the grill for a quick, smoky dinner. Here’s a recipe for slaw that’s a few steps away from your traditional coleslaw. First off, there’s no mayo, so you don’t have to fret about cholesterol. (You’ll get enough LDL from all those burgers and dogs.)
Secondly, I kicked up [...]

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Smoky Baba Ghanouj

You may not think of baba ghannouj as being a dish for grilling season but, believe me, charring eggplant over an open flame lends a rich, smoky flavor to this dip that makes it stand above other versions. The difference is comparable to a burger fried in a skillet versus one slapped on the [...]

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Mémé’s Half-Sour Pickles

Oftentimes when somebody says, “This is my grandmother’s recipe,” the image that comes to mind is a yellowed index card with perfect penmanship smudged by a dribble from the water faucet, and maybe even a stain or two from ingredients in the recipe. This pickle recipe is, indeed, the one my grandmother used, but [...]

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