So Much to Do, So Little Time
Scungilli Marinara. So little effort, so much pleasure. They used to serve it at Patsys’s in Paterson. We were ordering it with our eyes closed. Every. Single. Time. Then there was “sorry, not today,” then — “no, this month we didn’t get any,” then it was off the menu altogether. Now it is “scungilli who?…
With leftover Dominican sazon and sofrito, here’s a little experiment — eggplant lasagna. Light but filling and quite tasty. SAZÓN: — 13 garlic cloves — 1 medium yellow onion — 2 cubanelle peppers — 12 Caribbean sweet peppers, ajíes dulces — 6 leaves culantro — 1 tsp dried Mexican oregano — 2 tsp salt —…
Each time a Latin American country comes on the radar, Gran Cocina Latina by Maricel Pricilla comes off the shelf. This 900-page tome written by a scholar and explorer who can cook, write, and has experienced ways people live and do things first hand. It is a detailed guide to this huge part of the…
It finally dawned on me that this year November 1 falls on a Thursday which means Thanksgiving is as early as it can be. A person of lists and schedules, for a moment I panicked — it was already the second week of November. — What are you worried about? Just get a turkey and…
My usual assignment for a family Easter gathering is vegetables. There’s one dish I make every year — an element of comfort — and one new — a surprise. The idea for the traditional one comes from 2001 Food & Wine magazine. For a couple of years, I followed the recipe to a T, then,…
It was supposed to be a classic chicken soup — I am still nursing a cold. But recent frost that prompted a hasty garden clean up provided a good deal of tomatillos, a few poblanos and serranos. In the pantry, there were two cans of hominy from some previously failed project, pepitas, cilantro, and lime….
Cape Malay — savory, rich, and spicy curry from South Africa with rice, roti, and pickled tomato-onion relish. The list of ingredients is long but, an Ottolenghi-prepared mise-en-place-enthusiast, I breezed through it with pleasure. This is my favorite way to cook acquired years ago reading books by Fu Pei Mei, a distinguished Chinese culinary artist:…
Playing Sicily on a Jersey porch. I grew up on what is called eggplant caviar, a rare delicacy available to a lucky few only a couple of months in a year after a lengthy wait in a grocery store line and a laborious process. The value and significance of the said caviar — way above…
Although Fuchsia Dunlop called hotpotization of Chinese cuisine a step down from the wok mastery, for gatherings at home, hot pot is a huge step up. Here are some advantages of hot pot meals:— no skill is required, just planning and chopping; — most of the meal can be prepared way in advance allowing hosts…
An absolute fish collar convert here. The amount of flesh in a collar is comparable to that of a filet but the texture of it is that of a cheek. Yes, there are bones to work around. Sometime ago, I read about Asian proclivity to and mastery with bones. A FaceTime chat with my daughter…