Tag: Food & Dining

Easy Entertaining: A Farmers Market-to-Table Meal

On Saturday mornings, as many weeks as I can, I make a trip to my local farmers market. Short of growing your own, there’s nothing as satisfying as being able to get fruits and vegetables grown locally and picked right at their peak—fresh, ripe, and oh so flavorful. When they’re harvested ripe, their flavors have…


Roasted Pepper Salad

Sensational flavors combine with bright summery colors to make this dish perfect for entertaining al fresco. Play with the colors and flavors of the peppers you use, mixing sweet with hot and anything in between, but choose ones more or less the same size, so they roast evenly. I call this a salad because I’m…


The Season of (Getting Rid of) Zucchini

If you’ve been here long enough, you know the routine. Winter gives way to spring, finally, which is followed gently by summer, which glides gently into the season of getting rid of zucchini. During those tense few weeks, neighbors and even strangers are afraid to make eye contact, lest a zucchini gets tossed, like some…


The Best Way to Cook Scallops for a Summer Meal

I am a seafood lover, but this has not always been the case. As children growing up in New England, my younger brothers and I were served swordfish on a regular basis. This may sound luxurious, but in those days, swordfish was a local staple harvested from the nearby Atlantic waters, and my mother was…


Are Closeout Wines Worth Buying? It Depends.

Some people believe that all white and rosé wines are best consumed young, but based on that reasoning, they ignore any wines released a year ago. Today, for example, rosé wines from 2020 are what people want. And they seem to treat 2019 rosés like dishwater—and an anything older like COVID-19. Yet not all whites…


Halen Môn: The Art and Science of Harvesting Sea Salt

“Salt is the most powerful flavor enhancer in any cook’s tool kit,” Jess Lea-Wilson said. “To use it only to make food more salty is to do it a huge disservice. Used correctly—and sparingly—it draws out and complements the other ingredients, awakening their sweetness, savoriness, or spice.” Lea-Wilson is brand manager at Halen Môn, the…


Peach and Almond Cake

Any combination of stone fruits works well for this simple, summery cake. I love it made with plums, nectarines, and apricots, or a combination of all. I love no-fuss desserts, and this one will delight everyone served plain or with a large dollop of whipped cream. It’s best served at room temperature, and frankly, even…


Comfort Food: Nonprofit Gives Americans 100K Free Lasagnas

On a recent summer morning, Lynn Hirsch was determined as she packed the back of her gray SUV with 20 aluminum pans of lasagna. The retiree was on a mission: Drive nearly 70 miles from her suburb of Atlanta to two rural Georgia towns and get the hearty dishes into the hands of people who…


Cold Summer Soups From Spain

Soup and hot summer weather never seemed like a good combo to me—until I met gazpacho, of course. Throw in the sudden onslaught of tomatoes from a typical summer garden and it almost becomes an imperative. Gazpacho actually appears in texts dating back to Greece and Rome. Claims for the origin of the word itself…


Traditional Gazpacho

“I have chosen to give the more traditional version here,” says María Llamas, owner and manager of Alambique cooking school in Madrid, “but recipes can always be adjusted to taste.” “Some regions, such as Extremadura, use pimentón de la Vera [a particular Spanish smoked paprika] in its spicy or sweet version, instead of cumin. Some…