Winter Vegetable Stew with Rosemary Biscuits

Winter Vegetable Stew with Rosemary Biscuits

My kitchen has been a bit quiet lately. I’ve been feeling a little down, and often when that happens, I start to rely on those culinary staples that are simple, and basic, and designed to make sadness feel a little lighter: minestrone, pizza, big pots of lentils. Macaroni and cheese is right around the corner, I can feel it.

This root vegetable stew is just right for sad, grey winter days. It’s warming and hearty, and fluffy biscuits are the very definition of comfort food. Plus, it’s easy, and allows for plenty of time to sit on the couch watching re-runs of your favorite television shows while it burbles away on the stove.
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Cauliflower Puttanesca

Cauliflower Puttanesca

I may have mentioned this before, but I used to be a very picky eater. And I’m not just talking about my childhood. I mean, throughout most of my adolescent and adult life I had very strict rules about what I would not eat. I didn’t eat much. Some of those verboten items were onions, raw tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers (green or red), olives, mustard, mayonnaise, avocados, sour cream, and anything spicy.
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Mushroom and Cipollini Onion Pasta

A dish of pasta made with mushrooms and onions, sprinkled with parsley

For Christmas, my partner’s sister gave me a copy of the Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food: A Grocer’s Guide to Shopping, Cooking & Creating Community Through Food. Bi-Rite Market is a former convenience store turned gourmet grocery in the heart of the Mission, in San Francisco. I’ve been hearing great things about this place since before we moved to the Bay Area, but we hadn’t taken the time to check it out…until I got this book. This is a beautifully produced book about food: not just cooking it, but sourcing it and growing it and buying it and, well, loving it. The book is broken down into chapters roughly by grocery department (butcher, produce, bakery), and while the author highlights lots of excellent local producers (I love living in the Bay!), he also talks about how to find excellent goods if you live outside of this glorious little foodshed.

After one day of flipping through the book, I knew I had to go check it out, so on our final day off before heading back to work, Sean and I jumped on BART and headed into the Mission for lunch and general food perusal. I am a complete sucker for lovely little markets. Grocery shopping is actually one of my favorite things to do. So this place was kind of like heaven to me, even though it was awfully cramped and crowded. The shelves are stuffed full of lovely goodies like locally produced olive oil, fresh baked bread, crisp cellophane packages of delicate cookies and candies, round tubs of housemade salads, tins of Spanish sardines and bottles of unusual sauces and ketchups. The produce is gorgeous (I couldn’t stay away from the blood oranges), the meats are all thick and deep red and beautiful…the whole place had me swooning.
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Rigatoni with Braised Chicken in a Saffron Cream Sauce

Rigatoni with Braised Chicken in a Saffron Cream Sauce

I love magazines. I always have. I love the shiny pages and pictures, I even love the ads (yup, natural-born American consumer, right here). I collect them, and have a really hard time letting them go. Just ask my mom about the three years’ worth of Sassy magazines she accidentally got rid of when I was away at college. Right now, I have about five years worth of back issues of Bon Appetit, about a year of Food & Wine, the three issues of Gourmet I received before it went belly up, and a handful of random cooking magazines I’ve picked up over the years at airports and bookstores. A lot of people ask me if I ever actually go back and look at all those magazines, and the truth is, I do. I actually have a system, because, well, I’m a dork.
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Spring Greens Risotto

Spring Greens Risotto

Some of my long-time readers might see another risotto recipe posted here and sigh, thinking, “Doesn’t this girl ever get sick of talking about risotto?” The answer to that is no, I do not get sick of talking about risotto. Sure, it’s kind of the same recipe written again and again and again. But there are so many awesome variations on a theme, and I just want to share them all. This one, for instance, was just perfect for spring, and if you’re seeing the last of the spring peas at the market, I urge you to grab them up and get into the kitchen.
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Creamy Mushroom and Chicken Pasta

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I think for a minute there I started to go into hibernation. The grey and the cold and the snow, well, let’s just say it makes me feel awfully unmotivated. The lure of True Blood and Cougar Town, and of simple dinners consisting of nothing but rice and roasted vegetables, has sadly left this space bereft of anything new. And with holiday travel, and holiday planning, I guess writing has been pushed to the back of my mind. I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t leave you too hungry.

The thing is, too, that I’m starting to feel I’ve outgrown this space. More than a few people have mentioned to me that I’m not exactly a kitchen illiterate anymore. It’s been hard to find a way to write about what I’m doing in the kitchen these days in a way that fits in here. So I’ve been hard at work (ok, when I manage to get off the couch) creating a new site for my new food blogging project. I’ll definitely share it all when it’s ready, but never fear, I’ll still be sharing recipes one the internets, even if it’s not right here.

In the meantime, I wanted to share this delicious pasta dish I’ve been kind of obsessing over lately. I kept my distance from the rich, creamy pastas for most of the last year, but when it started to get really cold again, I was craving heavy cream something serious. And when I came up with this sauce, it was all over. This is really something special.
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Wine and Dine: Bolognese

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I’ve always loved the idea of spending a Sunday afternoon with a bubbling pot of tomatoey ragu sitting on the stove, and last weekend, I finally did it. You can read about my Sunday Supper Bolognese at the Union Bulletin’s Wine and Dine Blog, where I’m now writing a weekly (roughly) column about my cooking adventures.
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Spicy Barley with Snow Peas and Feta

Spicy Barley with Snow Peas and Feta

When I pulled something non-leafy out of my CSA box last week, I must admit I got very excited. They sent some lovely, delicate, golden snow peas (and a bigger bag this week!) and I immediately started plotting how they might end up on my plate. A few cursory searches revealed a lot of recipes for basic side dishes and beef-based stir fries. And although I am currently blessed with a freezer full of beef, I wanted something vegetarian. And something that could stand up as an actual meal, not an afterthought, which vegetable recipes so often seem to be. I couldn’t find anything that appealed, so when it came time to cook the snow peas, I winged it. And what I came up with wasn’t half bad.
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Bulgur with Roasted Turnips, Carrots, and Kale

Bulgur with roasted veg and kale

In my quest to discover new and interesting grains, I decided to give bulgur a try, and it is a new favorite. It is what I wanted quinoa to be like (so far, I just haven’t been able to get into the quinoa). Bulgur is parboiled wheat berries, ground to various consistencies. It’s similar to couscous, in that you cook it by soaking, rather than simmering, but it’s a whole grain. And it has a lovely subtle, nutty flavor and good chewy texture. And like many grains, it’s a great blank canvas for all kinds of flavors. In what I’m hoping is one of the last of the root vegetable-based dishes of the winter, this bulgur dish is made with roasted turnips and carrots, and some sauteed kale. Delicious and filling and warming and good. I love the bulgur.
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Spicy Spaghetti with Fennel

Spicy Spaghetti with Fennel

From the moment I saw this recipe in January’s issue of Bon Appetit it went on my list. I don’t usually eat a lot of fennel. It doesn’t occur to me to pick it up. But the photo was so alluring, and I’m a sucker for a big ol’ bowl of pasta. It sounded different from my normal cream-heavy pasta dishes, so I had to try it. And wowza, it was amazing. A touch of thick-cut bacon, fennel braised long enough to become silky and rich, and just enough spice to keep things interesting, and I was hooked. You probably will be, too.
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