Category: flash in the pan

With the Caviar of Turnips as Your Kitchen Companion, You’ll Never Go Hungry

The main purpose of a turnip is to feed hungry people, and the hakurei (pronounced like “samurai”) turnip is no exception. We aren’t talking about the kind of hunger when you wonder when dinner will be ready. To eat most turnips, you need more of a “Little House on the Prairie during an extra-long winter”…


The Pleasures of Curly Parsley

Curly parsley is widely scorned by the culinary elite. Aspiring chefs absorb this disdain from a young age, and quickly understand that getting ahead in this game requires committing instead to the flat-leafed version, also called Italian parsley. But in my parsley potato salad recipe, curly parsley does the heavy lifting. Typecast as a garnish,…


Squeeze Your Leaves: The One Step That’ll Change Your Spinach-Cooking Game

I love buying spinach at the farmers market in spring. There is great variety to be found, from dainty babies to long-stemmed beefsteaks. Each vendor has different-looking spinach, and each farmer has a different way to cook it. I got a good one recently from a farmer friend who told me about a Chinese-style spinach…


Hold the Sugar—Tart, Juicy Rhubarb Has Tons of Untapped Savory Potential

If you know any rhubarb recipes that call for less than a cup of sugar, you are a statistical anomaly. It’s understandable, given the culinary perfection made possible by the combination of rhubarb and strawberries—with or without pie crust. The tart, juicy stalk of the rhubarb plant creates such an indisputably glorious flavor in concert…


Cheering for Garlic Chives

I pulled into the Walmart parking lot and drove around the side of the building, far from the doors, where it was relatively quiet. Nancy was waiting beside an older but well-preserved Cadillac when I pulled up. She came to my window. “Just four, right?” she asked. “Yes please!” Nancy handed me a Walmart bag…


Spring Noodles, Farm Cook-Style

Some of my favorite recipes come from vegetable growers. Farm cooks know how to feed a bunch of people efficiently, with simple recipes made from basic ingredients that quickly produce mountains of delicious nourishment to energize the farmhands without weighing them down. I am friends with some farmers who can really cook and are generous…


Chile Peppers and Cheese Make a Thrilling Pair

Hot pepper and cheese bring out the best in each other. Every bite is a mouthful of drama. The impending heat sets the stage with a pungency you can smell before you bite. Then comes the pain. When all seems lost, the cheese swoops in with its creaminess, neutralizing the menace. And just when you…


The Hunter’s Reward: Tales—and a Tasty Salad—From a Wintertime Elk Hunt

Wild game is the tastiest, cleanest, and most ecologically justifiable meat on the planet. But the ultimate reward of hunting is neither the kill nor the thrill of the chase, but how you come out the other side—regardless of whether or not you bring meat. It requires competency on many levels, including navigation, shooting, wildlife…


The Secret to the Best Winter Tomato Sauce

The middle of winter can be a tough time for tomato lovers. We’re about as far away from the end of the previous season as we are from the beginning of the summer harvest, and no member of the produce kingdom suffers such a noticeable lack of flavor when it’s imported, out of season, from…


The Joys and Perils of Raising Chickens

I’ve raised a lot of chickens. Probably hundreds. For eggs, not meat. I give them the best lives I can, including a generous retirement plan when they reach a certain age, with free room and board, yet they rarely arrive at those emerald pastures. Precious few have lived long enough to die in their sleep….