Chewing Through Memory Lane

Chopped  Vegetable and Barley Salad

For most of my adult life, I have maintained a notebook of recipes I like.  Every once in a while, when temporary amnesia sets in, I flip through it for ideas.

Something Easy Everyone Likes

My most stressful times in the kitchen are when I’m trying to make a dinner that everyone at the table will eat.  Toasted bagels might make them all happy, but they're more brunch-y to me.

Pasta is the closest I’ve come to pleasing everybody, although I often need to provide several sauce choices.  I’m perfectly happy with Pesto Sauce, Garlic Sauce or Marinara Sauce.  I’m not too crazy about Alfredo Sauce—too rich for my taste.  But basically I’ll eat anything else.

Finding a Vegetarian Main Dish Everyone Likes

Some mealtimes I welcome the opportunity to make a vegetarian dish the whole family will eat and not cry out, “Where’s the meat?”  Other times I seem to develop brain freeze and can’t think beyond Greek Salad.

That was my state of mind yesterday, and then I remembered lentils.  “We all like lentils,” I said to myself while hunting for the lentil and potato dish recipe my friend Gloria once served us.  Eventually it turned up as a marker in one of my cookbooks—in the two-page lentil section.  Luckily I had all the ingredients.

Mom Cooking Tip 146

Here’s a convenient way to use up a few cups of leftover cooked pasta: put it in a greased baking dish, add some cut-up cooked vegetables, 1 cup homemade or jarred sauce and 2 well-beaten eggs and mix well.  Sprinkle with 1/2 cup grated Cheddar or Mozzarella cheese.  Cover and bake for about 25 minutes at 350 degrees.

                                                   See all my Cooking Tips!

Portobello Mushrooms: What Are They and How Do I Cook Them?

Portobello mushrooms, or portobellos, as some cooks call them, look like mushrooms on steroids.  Some of them measure at least six inches in diameter and can weigh more than one-quarter of a pound. 

Portobellos are more expensive than standard mushrooms, but they offer dining opportunities that smaller mushrooms don’t.  They can be stuffed and baked, broiled or grilled and offered as a main dish.  I often serve them in a bun, like I would a hamburger.  If you cut portobellos into 1/2-inch slices and then sauté them in butter or olive oil, they make an excellent side dish.  

Baby Portobello mushrooms, which are about 2 inches across,

A Cheap Emergency Meal

Thank goodness for eggs.  Most people who have refrigerators also have a box of eggs in them.  Eggs are cheap, versatile and full of protein.  They’re one of the basics of my life, whether I’m making a dessert, an omelet or a heavy-duty soup that can serve as a main course.

When I’ve assessed the contents of my freezer and can find nothing I want to eat for dinner, I turn to Oniony Egg Soup.  I don’t know where the recipe came from, but I’ve been making it for years. 

It doesn’t require many ingredients:

Goat Cheese – How to Use It

 Occasionally my bargain-hunting outruns my common sense, and I buy way too much of an ingredient because it’s on sale.  About a week ago an irresistible double package of goat cheese landed in my shopping cart.

Once I got it home I began to wonder what I was going to do with 20 ounces of this soft white cheese.  I took one package to a dinner party.  The other sat forlornly in the cheese drawer for a week until I remembered a quiche recipe an English friend sent me.  Conveniently it called for goat cheese.

The directions said

When the Picture Makes You Want to Cook the Recipe

When I first saw a picture of individual lasagna noodles stuffed with filling, rolled into tight bundles and standing on end in a deep casserole dish, I was enchanted.  Lasagna was one of my early favorite foods, and I still make it at least once a month.  But it had never occurred to me to use the noodles in this way.

For years, laziness prevailed.  Then I rediscovered the recipe I clipped out for “Lasagna Swirls,” as the writer called them, and decided now was the time.  I followed the directions carefully, or so I thought, stuffing each noodle with cottage cheese, Parmesan cheese and spinach, and the resulting dish was mediocre.  One of the young family members, a budding food critic, announced, “These noodles could be armor on a tank.”

Reinventing a Classic Vegetable

Gugarati Green Beans

Sometimes cooking a traditional vegetable a different way makes me think I’m Christopher Columbus discovering a new world.  It happened a while ago with green beans.

My first memory of green beans involved a tuna casserole.  I’m pretty sure those beans came out of a can.  They must have been overcooked because they were soft and squishy.  But at the time I didn’t know they could taste any different.  I just ate what was put in front of me.

Years later I picked some green beans growing in a friend’s garden and discovered:

How Far Can You Stray From a Classic Recipe?

I’ve been aware of Gado Gado, an Indonesian salad, for years.  I’ve admired pictures of it and even considered making it at one point.  But I never did because 1) it looked like too much work, and 2) it didn’t appear filling enough to be a main course.

Sunset Magazine’s July issue carried a recipe for this salad, and I finally decided to try it.  ‘Too much work’ and ‘not filling enough’ still seemed valid concerns, so I decided to add a few of my own touches and subtract one of theirs--the bean sprouts, because there were enough cold vegetables already on the platter.

Mom’s Basic Bootcamp: Pizza Dough

I have been making pizza for so many years that I could probably create the dough in my sleep.  In fact, I’ve written about pizza before because I love it so much.

Making pizza dough is a simple procedure, although there are many ways for something to go wrong.  I’ve stumbled through all of them.

The worst was forgetting to add salt.  You wouldn’t think a little bit of salt would make a difference, but you could really taste its absence.  My second worst mistake was adding too much salt, which made the crust nearly inedible.

Is Cauliflower the Hot New Kid on the Block?

Roasted Cauliflower

Every so often an old-time vegetable shoots to the top of the fashionable pile.  Recently it was kale.  Now it seems to be cauliflower’s turn.  If you’re tired of boring old white, this vegetable is even available in different colors—green, purple and orange.

I first became aware of cauliflower’s transformation to hotness when my friend Lynne, who has worked in the food industry for many years, told me that she finally found a non-meat item her husband would eat for dinner—Roasted Cauliflower.  She sent me her recipe, and sure enough, it not only looked good but it also tasted good.

Ramen Noodles Not Just for College Students

If you toss out the flavor packet (too much salt), packaged ramen noodles can be the basis of a reasonable emergency meal.  I proved it last night when I was scrambling to get dinner on the table and discovered two lonely packages of ramen noodles at the back of a pantry shelf.  They were just what I needed for the leftover pork stir-fry I wanted to make.

Bok Choy: What Is It and How Do I Cook It?

Baby Bok Choy

The first time I saw bok choy in the produce department, I thought it was a new kind of celery.  One end had thick white stems attached to a base and the other end had big leaves.  Since I was tired of my usual beans, broccoli, spinach and asparagus, I bought a large bok choy so I could try it out.  Here’s what I learned:

Ingredients Hiding in Plain Sight

Right now my refrigerator is stuffed with food that doesn’t quite add up to dinner: a slice of mushroom pizza, at least one cup of cottage cheese, a huge pan of rice left over from a business meeting, some mushrooms, 2 bell peppers + the usual block of cheddar cheese and several dozen eggs.

I really should pop out to the store or find something in my freezer, but I want to clear out the fridge shelves first.  What can I make from these ingredients?  Click on the links below for the three recipes.

India Meets Italy at My Table

Pasta with Indian Cauliflower Sauce

I like food from other countries.  Maybe it’s because I grew up in a Western Pennsylvania coal and steel town populated by many nationalities.  Every summer weekend my family attended a community picnic featuring dishes from a specific nationality.  The Italian Picnic introduced me to Spaghetti and Meatballs and Veal Parmesan.  The Polish Picnic offered Grilled Kielbasas (sausages) and Sauerkraut.  I loved the Flatbread on offer at the Syrian Picnic and the Stuffed Grape Leaves, Baklava and Tiropita (cheese turnovers) at the Greek Picnic.

Chickpeas: What Are They and How Do I Use Them?

Dried Chickpeas

I first heard the word “chickpeas” when I asked somebody what hummus was?  Growing up in a small town in Western Pennsylvania, I didn’t encounter a wide variety of Middle Eastern food until I moved to Manhattan and had dinner at Cedars of Lebanon.  That restaurant is now closed, but I’ve never forgotten the sampler plate I ordered.

Mom Money-Saving Tip 65

Spinach Quiche

Use up leftover cooked vegetables or small bits of cheese or cream cheese in Quiche.  Here’s an easy Quiche recipe that effectively uses up half an 8-ounce package of cream cheese.  It can also absorb a cup of leftover cooked vegetables.

Comfort Food

Blintzes with Pumpkin Butter, Blueberry Jam and Sour Cream

Most children give up their blankies, teddy bears and other childhood comforts as they reach adolescence.  But they often continue to be partial to certain foods that remind them of happy times.  For some, Mashed Potatoes are their comfort food.  Others want Chicken Soup, Fried Chicken, Spaghetti Bolognese, Chocolate, Chips and Salsa, Ice Cream or, as my friend Ilene says, “A cup of hot tea with a really good cookie.”

Okra: What Is It and How Do I Cook It?

There are two schools of thought about this vegetable: love and hate.  Both exist within my immediate family.  I’m one of the lovers, while my cookbook collaborator, Kevin, is a hater.  Thus we have no okra recipes in our four cookbooks.