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A Good Dish

making food simpler

A Light, Refreshing Fresh Start Cocktail Might Be Just What You Need

August 18, 2022

Fresh Start cocktail
Porcelain “Hoofer Cup”
by Brooke Cashion

It has been a stubbornly hot summer during which national and global affairs have been completely depressing. And although we thought we were being fastidiously careful, I came down with Covid just after moving to a summer rental and spent 3 weeks in isolation drinking water and soup and trying to get well while feeling pretty depressed. I recovered (so, so grateful for vaccines), realized how lucky I was and longed for an actual cocktail. Although a temporary reprieve, a fizzy iced drink, like a cold swim or an air conditioned movie, can take the edge off the heat and the news. Fortunately, while browsing the new cookbooks at the local library (don’t you always browse the cookbooks?), I came across a drink recipe called a White Noise I thought might do the trick. 

Choose the Elderflower liqueur
of your preference
Choose either Lillet Blanc or
Cocchi Americano Bianco

Found in a fun-to-read book called Northern Hospitality by Andrew and Briana Volk, owners of a Portland, Maine cocktail bar, the White Noise combines two of my favorite summer liquors – elderflower liqueur (I love St Germain in hot weather cocktails)) and Cocchi Americano Bianco (a citrusy fortified wine simultaneously sweet and bitter) – with bubbly water and a twist. I used Lillet Blanc because we had it and we were out of Cocchi (I didn’t want to overstock our temporary bar), added bitters and both fresh lime and grapefruit juice, not just a twist. This combination ticked all the boxes: light, refreshing and easy drinking. The bitters, lime and grapefruit cut the sweetness and added freshness. And, as the Volks suggest, this is a drink which is easily scaled up to a pitcherful to serve at a gathering; You just multiply by 6. I will call my version a Fresh Start. A bonus—the Start is low alcohol so it is easy sipping during the dog days.

Fresh Start cocktail
Porcelain “Hoofer Cup”
by Brooke Cashion

FRESH START COCKTAIL

Stir together:

  • 1 1/2 oz Elderflower liqueur 
  • 1 1/2 oz Lillet blanc (or Cocchi Americano Bianco)
  • Dash Angostura bitters
  • 2 oz fresh grapefruit juice
  • 1/2 oz fresh lime juice
  • 4 oz bubbly water

Add ice and garnish with a grapefruit or lime twist or slice. 

Interior of porcelain “Hoofer Cup”
by Brooke Cashion

 

BROOKE CASHION creates large, undulating vases, candlesticks and other “vessels” as well as lively slipcast and pinched cups perfect for sipping. Her wiggly forms and colorful painted and  textured surfaces make her pieces fun to use or to contemplate. She explains her process:”My shapes spring from molds I take of simple forms which I use as a jumping-off point for relentlessly exploring the many possible expressions of the shapes….I take apart the conventional components of the vessel and re-compose to question what it all boils down to, and how something grows from there.” Find Brooke’s work on her website or at Clay Akar or at Artstream Nomadic Gallery or on Instagram.

Spiral Vessel
Photo courtesy of the artist
Vase #1
Photo courtesy of the artist
Glimmer Dimmer w/ Snuffer(candle holder)
Photo courtesy of the artist

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Filed Under: cookbooks, Drinks, Potters, Recipes

A Healthy Birthday Celebration and a (Kale)Variation of a Greek Salad

August 15, 2019

Kale Greek Salad
Porcelain Bowl by Nick Moen at The Bright Angle

My mother had a big birthday this summer and it needed celebrating. We had done both small and large parties in the past and no one, including my mother, was up for that again. A short but special trip seemed like a good solution. I rented a car, picked her up in Connecticut and we drove north to Kripalu, an educational yoga center and retreat in the Berkshires.

View of the Stockbridge bowl and Berkshires over the Kripalu lawn

Kripalu is located in a former monastery and the rooms are nothing to write home about, but  you don’t go to Kripalu for the rooms. You go for the classes, the treatments, the pervasive zen feeling of the place. While we were there, Mom took an introductory yoga class, a fairly wild yoga dance session, attended several informative and relevant lectures, had three different kinds of massage and walked the beautiful grounds which overlook the rolling green hills and the placid waters of the Berkshire Bowl. But I am certain that her favorite part of our time there was spent at the 3 times daily healthy meal buffets!

So many veggies on the Kripalu Buffet!

My mother was an early adapter of healthy eating. In the 70’s, she started attending Nathan Pritikin’s longevity programs and we all learned about brown rice, legumes and eating less meat and cheese. So while some people would flinch at the healthy, primarily vegetable, grain and bean offerings at Kripalu, Mom was thrilled. She wanted to taste every dish and some days I think she succeeded. I must admit part of what is so relaxing about the Kripalu buffet is that you don’t have to ever think about what you are going to eat but know there will always be something fresh and tasty. It takes a big piece of stress out of vacationing.

Abundant portion of lunch at Kripalu

One of the best tasting cold dishes I remember from this trip was a greek salad. Fortunately, a version of this recipe with kale was published in the new The Kripalu Kitchen: Nourishing Food for Body and Soul by the current chef, Jeremy Rock Smith. It is especially useful now if you are craving a greek salad but feeling a little squeamish about using Romaine lettuce with all the bacterial scares. I tried arugula when we were out of kale and liked it, too, but the kale offers a more satisfying chew . If you do make it with kale (lacinato or dinosaur only, please), be sure to massage it with the dressing to help break down the vegetal fibers and to make it both more digestible and palatable. Other additions that could work in this salad are avocado, nuts or seeds, artichoke hearts, sliced celery, shredded carrots, chopped parsley or even leftover pasta. I didn’t have fresh oregano so I used dried and it was fine. And I don’t like to add raw onions to a salad so I marinated them in a tablespoon of wine vinegar which I think improved the whole dish.  And you could serve all of the additions (other than the kale) in separate dishes for people to add in as they please so that everyone gets the salad they want.

The new Kripalu cookbook is full of tasty vegan, vegetarian and flexitarian recipes such as Kitchari (a soothing Ayurvedic rice and bean dish), roasted harissa cauliflower, polenta with mushroom sauce, pan-roasted pollock with chimichurri, pea, leek and potato cakes and the Kripalu house dressing with tahini and tamari. I look forward to trying many but for now, while we still have no oven, I will be making my adaptation of their greek salad over and over this summer and remember our lovely days in the Berkshires. Happy Birthday, Mom and I hope you are out walking soon!

Kale Greek Salad
Porcelain Bowl by Nick Moen at The Bright Angle

Kripalu Kale Greek Salad, adapted from The Kripalu Kitchen

  • 2 TBs fresh lemon juice
  • 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • Pinch each kosher or sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 TBs chopped fresh oregano or 1 tsp dried
  • 6-8 loosely packed cups thinly cut strips (chiffonade) lacinato kale (1 generous bunch, stripped away from center rib)
  • 1 cup sliced or diced cucumber (about 2 Persian or Kirby)
  • 1 cup halved cherry or grape tomatoes
  • 1/2 cup bite sized slices of red bell pepper
  • 1/4 cup very thinly sliced red onion, marinated in 1TBs red wine vinegar
  • 4-6 ozs feta cheese
  • 8-10 kalamata olives, pitted and sliced
  • 1/4 cup raw pine nuts or walnuts (optional)

Whisk together the lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper and oregano

Add the kale, coat completely and use your hands to massage the dressing into the kale.

Just before serving, add all the other ingredients and toss.

Serves 4-6

Happy Birthday, Mom!

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Filed Under: cookbooks, Places, Salads

Try Substituting Salmon For Tuna When You Make A Curried Salad Or Sandwich

September 13, 2018

Curried Salmon Salad
Porcelain Bowl by Claire Weissberg/Claireware

I like tuna but I don’t eat it. It simply has too much mercury for me. Same goes for swordfish and tilefish but there are plenty of other fish to eat that are healthier. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, mercury is toxic to our nervous systems (which are already under attack from stress) so it is important to avoid ingesting it when we are able. (I have a particularly high mercury level because we used to play with liquid mercury as kids – so much fun and who knew it was dangerous but now we know to keep kids safe from it). Fortunately canned wild salmon is a great substitute for canned tuna.

Canned salmon is easy to buy and store

Some time ago, we had a terrific curried tuna sandwich at the wonderful Flour Bakery (our go-to spot for grabbing something delicious to eat when taking the train at nearby South Station) in the seaport district of Boston (which includes the Institute of Contemporary Art, Society of Arts and Crafts and the fabulous Trillium Brewery). I like curried chicken salad but had never had curried tuna. Recently, browsing through Joanna Chang’s flour cookbook, I came across her curried tuna recipe decided to try re-creating it using salmon. I use canned salmon for salmon burgers and make a salmon salad with it but I had never tried it with curry. It actually tasted great! We don’t use mayo so I moistened it with lime juice (you could use lemon) and kefir (you could use plain yogurt or mayo depending on your preferences) and I added currants where I think the Flour sandwich had raisins. I like a lot of vegetables to lighten the density of most foods I make so I added scallions (you could use red onions), celery and cilantro (or try parsley). Other add-ins could be radish, jicama, green or red pepper, hard boiled eggs, almonds or chilis, all cut in small pieces.

You could serve the curried salmon just like you would tuna – on a bed of greens, stuffed into celery, baked in hollowed out peppers or rolled up in cabbage leaves or in a pita, wrap or bread with grated carrots, sliced tomatoes and arugula, watercress, sunflower sprouts or lettuce for a deliciously different sandwich.

Curried Salmon Sandwich
Painted/Resist Plate from Claireware in Brooklyn

CURRIED SALMON SALAD

Mix together:

  • 1 can salmon (14.75 oz, preferably wild), skin removed if you like, mashed with a fork
  • 2 stalks celery, cut in a tiny dice
  • 2-3 scallions, finely chopped
  • A big handful fresh cilantro or parsley, finely chopped (about 1/2 cup)
  • 1 small apple, halved, cored and cut in a fine dice
  • 2 heaping TBs dried currants
  • 1 generous TBs curry powder
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 2 TBs freshly squeezed lime juice
  • 3 TBs plain kefir or yogurt
  • Pinch salt and pepper

Serves 4. Can be refrigerated for a couple of days in a covered container.

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Filed Under: cookbooks, Fish, Recipes

Books For Cooks & Everyone Else – Because Who Doesn’t Need Cooking Inspiration?

December 14, 2017

New cookbooks and two new mugs by Mark Shapiro from the Old Church sale 

Cookbook buyers are a diverse lot. Some buy for the recipes and the hope that there will be delicious new meals on their tables in the near future. Others buy for the pleasure of reading the cookbooks or just browsing their pages. And still others are like me, a combination of both. When I fall short of ideas for dinner, flipping through a new cookbook often provides inspiration. But I also enjoy reading a well written cookbook just for the joy of stories, ideas and writing alongside the recipes, and this year I tried to find recommendations you might not see elsewhere.

Cookbooks make great gifts and, as I noted last year, are easy to pair with relatively inexpensive and useful kitchen items like a good grater, immersion blender, digital meat thermometer, long oven mitts, cast iron skillet or unbleached waxed and parchment papers. You could include good quality specialty ingredients for a recipe in your gifted book such as saffron, allepo pepper, a braid of local garlic or a jar (or small plant) of fresh bay leaves. Of course, giving handmade pottery in which to serve these recipes goes without saying!

 Of the many volumes I perused this year, a few have already become favorites including two based on the cooking of Georgia O’Keefe. These are two completely different books and were published 20 years apart. The first is $14 and the second is $50, although if you shop around, there are better prices to be found. A Painter’s Kitchen: Recipes from the Kitchen of Georgia O’Keefe by Margaret Wood was originally published in 1997 but came out in its current edition, with a foreword by Deborah Madison, in 2009. I didn’t come across it until last year. Wood worked for O’Keefe for 5 years and prepared much of this food with the artist’s guidance. The recipes are quite simple and, for the most part, quite healthy. O’Keefe focused on local and seasonal food and grew much of it in her own garden. Her vegetable recipes are very basic but it is her descriptions and suggestions for how to prepare them that will charm you. Even if you never make anything, although I would guess you would, this book is fun to read as biography. The other volume, Dinner with Georgia O’Keefe: Recipes, Art & Landscape by Robyn Lea, an Australian artist who went to the O’Keefe Foundation to study the artist’s recipes, is more of a gorgeous coffee table book. There are fewer recipes and they are primarily the more substantial ones (you won’t find O’Keefe’s recipe for kale here), but there are glorious color photos of the food, the studio, the art and the landscape of New Mexico. Lea didn’t know O’Keefe personally but she did a lot of research and interviewed and quoted many people who did know her, including Margaret Wood, so it, too, makes a very engaging read.

Three of my favorite books this year have specialty topics. Perhaps the quirkiest is The Big Book of Kombucha: Brewing, Flavoring and Enjoying the Health Benefits of Fermented Tea by Hannah Crum and Alex LaGory with a foreword by Sandor Katz, the guru of fermentation. It covers every aspect of making kombucha, from a discussion of what it is to debates over caffeine and sugar levels and alternative to ways to use it beyond simply drinking it. If you know someone interested in probiotics, tea or digestive health, this is the book for them. Reading it may encourage them to get a SCOBY and start brewing!

Another special subject book, A Meatloaf in Every Oven by Frank Bruni and Jennifer Steinhauer, two journalists (Bruni a former food critic) from The New York Times, is a small volume but full of appealing recipes. They call it a “love letter to meatloaf” and there are loaves of beef, pork, lamb, chicken, turkey, duck, fish and even a few meatless varieties. It includes recipes from friends, acquaintances, politicians, chefs and their moms, some great sounding side dishes and fun to read commentary on each loaf. This is a compact, easy reading book with sweet illustrations (although I did wish for a photo here and there). I have a favorite meatloaf recipe I’ve been making for years but this book will encourage me to try some new loaves.

Acid Trip: Travels in the World of Vinegar by food photographer and cookbook author Michael Harlan Turkell is a geographically structured exploration of vinegar with recipes from various countries. Turkell explores different vinegars, his favorites and how to make them, with recipes and suggestions to avoid pitfalls. His passion for his subject is evident in his obsessive quest for information and in his enthusiasm in sharing it. The bulk of the book, however, is comprised of recipes using vinegar (and bar snacks) ranging from the traditional Leeks Vinaigrette (France) and Sushi Rice (Japan) to the more offbeat Scarlet Runner Bean Salad (Austria) and Frittata with Balsamic Onions and Parmesan (Italy). It is organized by country, illustrated with his food and travel photos and reads as much like travelogue as it does cookbook, which I found very enjoyable.

For a general cookbook, I recommend David Tanis’ Market Cooking: Recipes and Revelations Ingredient by Ingredient. The recipes are clearly written and explained, organized by ingredient, beautifully photographed and covering a wide range of types of food. Although I enjoy reading all the food writers in our newspaper, it is Tanis’ recipes that I prefer. I find his both simpler and more appealing than most of the others and I actually end up making them. In this volume, he shares tips (like reminding us that peeled celery root has to be put in acidulated water or it will turn black) as well as delicious sounding recipes like Indian style Cauliflower and Chicken Legs with Herbs. Market Cooking would be as appropriate a gift for an unskilled novice or a confident cook looking for new ideas.

There were many baking books published and acclaimed this year, including those well described in Melissa Clark’s recent review in The Times. My favorite is a quirkier volume offered by the very creative Chetna Makan, a 2014 semi-finalist in the engaging “Great British Bake Off” (and my personal favorite in that year’s competition). The Cardamom Trail: Chetna Bakes with Flavours of the East gives us both sweet and savory recipes, as well as snacks and breads, with spices and flavorings, like saffron, chai, cardamom and mango, from her native India. Makan includes some traditional British bakes, like Cream Horns and Victoria Sponge, a tower of layers that she makes seems quite doable. Her directions are clearly written and uncomplicated, quite a feat in a somewhat exotic sounding baking book. I’m looking forward to trying the Curry Onion Tart and Black Sesame and Matcha Tuiles next time an occasion arises. Her new cookbook, Chai, Chaat & Chutney, is out but I haven’t read it yet so I can’t recommend it but I’m hopeful that it will be as good as her baking book.

These are fun books to read as well as to use and as such make terrific gifts. You may very well want to buy two copies of those that appeal to you – one to give and one to keep!

 

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Filed Under: books, cookbooks

Salad for President Gets My Vote!

July 12, 2017

Salad for President
by Julia Sherman

Julia Sherman is more than a good writer and her cookbook, Salad for President, is more than a collection of recipes. She is an artist, interviewer, gardener and cook and her book is an eclectic mix of artist biographies and interviews, charming illustrations, appealing recipes and, by the way, some pretty nice handmade plates and bowls. The recipes are from both Sherman and the artists with whom she talks. Included are the well known like William Wegman and Laurie Anderson but so are many others who I didn’t know but with whom I was happy to become familiar.

An introduction to two of the artists who are interviewed and contribute a recipe to the book
From Salad for President

The biographic essays, interviews and ingredient discussions are good reading. But more than a good read, Salad for President (from the blog of the same name) is a cookbook full of interesting but not too complicated recipes. When there are exotic ingredients involved, like labneh, like thick yogurt, or myoga, a wild ginger flower, she tells you where to find it or how to make it or if you can do without it. Sherman explains ingredients (like pomegranate molasses), discusses technique (like shredding cabbage finely enough so it fluffs) and offers helpful indices   (grouping recipes by season, ingredients, dressings and one on types of greens). Rather than a small index of artisans without any information, just pagination, I wish she had captions with her photographs of bowls and plates, but that is a minor quibble.

One of the charming drawings from Salad for President

There are other wonderful artist-centric cookbooks out there (The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook, Cooking for Artists, Artists’ Recipes, etc.) but Salad for President is both fun to read and to browse and full of recipes I actually want to try. Here salad is art, metaphor, practical technique and a source of inspiration for conversation, creativity and connection as well as, at its core, some delicious looking meals. Whether you buy it or take it out of the library, I am sure you will enjoy many dimensions of this artful book.

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Filed Under: books, cookbooks, Salads, sauces and dressings

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Here you will find recipes and ideas for easy to make and tasty meals, sources for interesting dinnerware on which to serve those meals and resources for ingredients, classes and food related travel. My goal is to make daily cooking simpler and to inspire you to try different recipes beyond the handful you already make repeatedly. I hope that relaying my experiences will enhance yours. Follow along and let me know about your own cooking and food journeys.

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