I have a problem. The most beautiful, prolific tomato plant in my garden – a Russian hybrid called “Japanese Black Trifele” – is finally ripening its branches full of tomatoes. What’s the problem, you ask? The beautifully pear-shaped fruit don’t taste great. They’re a little watery, a little bland. Not terrible, certainly better than supermarket…
Grill-Roasted Eggplant and Potato Curry with Tomatoes
I may have mentioned my love for eggplant once or twice. It’s in season now, so we’re luxuriating in it, eating it two or three times a week. One of my favorite methods is just to throw it on the grill, whole. The eggplant melts inside while the skin blackens and turns papery. I guess…
Savory Fig and Shallot Jam with bonus recipe: Wilted Spinach Salad with Fig Dressing
Take a deep breath. Can you smell that first whiff of fall in the air? In Albuquerque, the scent of early fall is the rich, mouthwatering aroma of green chile tumbling in the spinning mesh barrels of propane-fired roasters. Take a trip up the mountain, as we did on Saturday, and you’ll be rewarded with…
The Farm Cafe’s Eggplant Burgers
Last year, before we went to Portland, I got some great food suggestions from a friend. We followed up on a lot of them – notably Voodoo Doughnut and Beast – but didn’t make it to The Farm Cafe. In my pre-visit research, however, I noticed that the cafe had received much praise for its…
Middle Eastern Mezze from the Grill, featuring Smoky Baba Ganoush
I love meals that consist of a variety of nibbles: bento boxes with their little jewel-box compartments of rice and veggies and pickles; rich and exciting dim sum served in little bamboo steamers from rolling carts; kaleidoscopic tapas spreads full of surprising flavors; and mezze, the rather less well-known Middle Eastern style of shared small-plate…
Salade Nicoise
Holy moley, look at the temperature out there! It’s been hovering near 100 for a week. Not when you want to heat up the house with cooking. It is definitely salad time. So last night I fell back on an old favorite: Salade Nicoise, a French composed salad. As with so many iconic dishes, there…
Quick Cucumber Kimchi
Without a doubt, kimchi is a love-it or hate-it food. I’m pretty fond of it. Arne is crazy for the stuff, but even he admits it’s a strange thing to love. Many foods are based on controlled spoilage – cheese and beer, for example. Like blue cheese with its veins of mold, though, traditional kimchi…
10-Minute Indian Cabbage
The other day I was throwing together a simple Indian dinner – Indian sour chickpeas (channa) with some brown and wild rice I’d cooked weeks before and stored in the freezer – and it needed one more element. One quick, simple element I could throw together in no time from what I had in the…
Planting Time!
Spring is well and truly here – heck, by the temperature it seems like summer already – and I have no more excuses. We’ve upgraded from the sad little raised beds between the house and the shed, shaded by both buildings and the tall elms of our neighborhood, to these 20″ tall beauties in the…
Chile-Lemon Roasted Brussels Sprouts
A year or so ago, Arne and I visited a very hip restaurant in Colorado Springs (or so it seemed to me, though I may not be the ultimate arbiter of coolness): Nosh. I was first attracted to it by the koi in its logo and the idea of small plates, which are my very favorite…