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Five Delicious Asparagus Recipes – done in no time flat!

Ready to roll - Hummus, roasted tomato and asparagus wraps (Click image for recipe)

Asparagus is in season in these parts and that means a drive out to the North Fork of Long Island for asparagus, as much of it as I can afford and think we can eat in a few days. Leandro and I love it and usually just break off the bottoms, smear in olive oil and put under the broiler for ten minutes. We sprinkle them with salt and eat them with our fingers.

But sometimes, sometimes, we get a bit more fancy. Just a bit. Not complicated, because we don’t do a lot of complicated stuff, but just dressed up enough to make it special. Here are five terrific recipes for this springtime delight!

Savory Asian Asparagus Steak Bites! (Click on image for the recipe)

Frittata with Asparagus (duck or hen eggs) Click image for recipe!

Leek and Asparagus with eggs (Click image for recipe!)

Zippy roasted ped pepper dipping sauce and roasted asparagus (Click image for recipe)

Zippy roasted red pepper dipping sauce and roasted asparagus (Click image for recipe)

Ready to roll: Hummus, Roasted Asparagus and Tomato Wraps! Click image for recipe!

Tags: asparagus recipes, cooking, food, recipes, seasonal spring

Comments 7 Comments
Categories CSA, Food, gardening, Recipes, salad, Side Dishes, Vegetarian

Food and NCC: Oran Hesterman, Fair Food, and a Trip to Restoration Farm

22 Apr

(Update from Natalia: please see comments for a response from Dr. Hesterman!)

Spring has sprung upon me with flurry of all good things. Reunions, gardening, visits from family, coursework, channeling my inner drama queen for my film student cousin’s movies (!), learning opportunities, parties…It has been a terrific few weeks. However, it has left my blog community rather neglected! I have missed you too.

Dr. Hesterman and students (and me, bottom left)

Mind you, I have been cooking, but some of it has been experimentation that hasn’t quite worked out yet (falafel comes to mind). Other stuff has been tried and true recipes that you have read about before. And well, yes, I have been out to eat, ordered in, skipped meals, eaten a lot of salad (in anticipation of the shorts and T-shirt season), fed my son pizza (even for breakfast! oh, the shame…) and scavenged from my parent’s leftovers. So I don’t have as much as usual to report on the actual making-of-food front.

I do, however, want to share a few tidbits with you and happily, they involve a unification of my food world and my teaching world! (But if my students tell you I made them shovel shit, it is simply not true! Well, not entirely. Read on for details) Continue reading →

Tags: CSA, Dr. Oran Hesterman, environment, Fair Food Network, food, food stamps, food system, Nassau Community College, sustainability

Comments 16 Comments
Categories CSA, farming, Food, gardening

Where Do You Get Your Seeds? (Reader Input Request and Poll!)

22 Feb

As we get into the planting season, several people have asked me where I get my seeds. The answer is, from several sources (not all organic, as it happens, with my Puerto Rican herbs and peppers): the local garden supply stores like Hicks or Starkie Brothers, giveaways at foodie events, friends who send, seeds I’ve saved from our own garden or from the C.S.A. box.

Click on the radishes for Botanical Interests.

Radish French Breakfast Organic HEIRLOOM Seeds

Click here for High Mowing Seeds. Click here for Johnny’s Seeds.

So, I’m putting it out there…what are your most reliable and/or beloved seed sources and why? Please click on Comments at the bottom of the post to add your spoonful of wisdom.

And the poll (which refuses to be centered!)

Tags: buying seeds, gardening, kitchen gardens, organic farming, seeds, where to find organic seeds

Comments 15 Comments
Categories CSA, farming, Food, gardening

The Green Goddess Helps Those Who Help Themselves (A Salad Dressing)

17 Jan

Green Goddess Dressing with Garden Salad and Feta

So Marianne and I continue preparing food that encourages healthy eating and healthy weight for the new year. I like to make one meal a day a salad; as crunchy and varied as possible. Unless my mom is home making the powdered Italian stuff in the cruet (which I freely admit I love), I generally make my own, simple vinaigrettes or tahini-based dressings, but clearly it is time to branch out.

Do pack the tablespoon with the herbs; it is very hard to get an accurate measure of this, isn’t it?

Marianne’s brother, Peter, is famous for his Green Goddess dressing (and his pecan pie, but that’s for another day when I get his recipe!) and although I’d never had it before (see dressing history, below) , I happened upon a Green Goddess recipe in Food to Live By: The Earthbound Farm Organic Cookbook (a personal favorite that Marianne’s boys gave me a few years ago, as it happens) and well…game on! Continue reading →

Tags: cooking, dip, food, Green Goddess dressing, healthy salad dressing, recipes, salad ideas, what is Green Goddess dressing

Comments 5 Comments
Categories Food, gardening, Recipes, salad, Side Dishes, Vegetarian

Arroz con Habichuelas Rosadas (Puerto Rican Rice and Beans – authentic/how to fake them)

15 Nov

Oh the sweet taste of victory!

My victory? My victory garden!

My little baby peppers

I managed to coax a couple of ajies (Capsicum chinense or sweet cooking peppers) from seeds that I saved from a pepper from my mom’s cousin’s kitchen garden in Mayaguez, to go with the recao (Eryngium foetidum or sawtooth coriander) that I grew from a seed packet from Puerto Rico. Next year I will be much more aggressive about how early I plant all my peppers, but for this year, the teeny-tiny-ness of my harvest does diminish the absolute joy of it. Continue reading →

Tags: arroz con habichuelas, calabaza substitute, Caribbean cookery, comida criolla, cooking, food, habichuelas rosadas, Latin style, pink beans, Puerto Rican herbs, Puerto Rican recipes, recipes, rice and beans, Spanish-style white rice

Comments 14 Comments
Categories Comida Criolla, Food, gardening, Puerto Rican, Recipes, Side Dishes, Spanish

Kids in the Kitchen (6 ways to get them involved)

11 Nov

I am lucky in that my son is healthy and bright and a regular kid in most ways.

I am not lucky, as in: “You are lucky your son eats so well.”

Planting garlic (photo by Marianne Goralski)

In the food department, my son does eat quite well, but my “luck” is — as much of what we call luck is — the result of a lot of effort.

It’s not just that I cook and that I come from a family that has always cooked and eaten well. There are a number of things I do to get Leandro involved in the kitchen and in the food he eats; it doesn’t always lead to direct consumption of say, raw carrots, but over time it has made him a kid who knows where his food comes from and who is willing to give things a try. So I thought I’d share a few with you! Continue reading →

Tags: cooking with children, gardening with kids, good eaters, kids and food, picky eaters

Comments 12 Comments
Categories baking, CSA, desserts, farming, Food, gardening

Zucchini Fritters, with Manchego, Rosemary, and Thyme

1 Oct

What am I gonna do with this!?! Basta, ya! As enormous bats of zucchini continue to be a big part of our C.S.A. pick-up this summer-into-fall, we start to get desperate for different ways to prepare them. I generally grate them into salads (I dislike raw zucchini, but grated into a salad makes it much more texturally appealing for me!), my dad grills them with just a bit of oil, or we roast them.

Grated zucchini

As much as I adore absolute simplicity in food — from both a preparation and a consumption standpoint — enough is enough. One does need to mix it up a bit, and try new techniques, too. So it was time to be inspired by a recipe for zucchini fritters I saw recently at Emmy Cooks, and another one for zucchini latkes at Deborah Rivera Pittorino’s chef’s blog, Seasoned Fork (full disclosure – you will find book reviews I have written there; The Big Oyster is my favorite). Both recipes seemed simple enough, a lovely change for us over here, and as they are pan-fried, I thought I was in with a chance at getting Leandro to try veggies this way. Continue reading →

Tags: cooking, courgettes, easy recipes, food, latkes, savory pancakes, summer squash, vegetarian, what to do with zucchini, zucchini fritters

Comments 24 Comments
Categories CSA, farming, Food, gardening, lunch, Picnic, Recipes, Side Dishes, Vegetarian

Roasted Green Beans (Salvaging and Sweetening When Less than Farm Fresh)

27 Sep

We’ve had piles of green beans this season, both from Restoration Farm and from our own little beds. This means that sometimes they stay in the fridge longer than we meant them too.

Then, when the season is over, we’ll probably buy from the supermarket (ssshhhhhh – not particularly seasonally virtuous, but I am working on it) and they won’t have that snappy-sweet farm freshness that we have become used to in late summer. But now I have a new way to make them taste much, much better. Continue reading →

Tags: recipes, food, vegetarian, cooking, summer food, roasted green beans, improving supermarket vegetables, caramelizing beans, haricots, green bean recipes, simple food

Comments 3 Comments
Categories Recipes, Vegetarian, Food, salad, Vegan, farming, gardening, CSA, Side Dishes

Basic Home-Made Tomato Puree (freezeable!)

13 Sep

I have just done a listening exercise with my ESL students on The Marshmallow Test … a 1960s experiment that offered four-year-olds one marshmallow off the bat, but an additional marshmallow if they could just wait alone in a room for 15 minutes with that first marshmallow and not eat it.

Plunged into ice water

Astonishingly the findings over time showed that kids who could delay gratification for longer times at four, were likely to be more successful socially, educationally and professionally when they grew up than the kids who couldn’t wait and sucked that first marshmallow down as soon as they were alone with it.

Continue reading →

Tags: cooking, easy preserving, food, freezing produce, home-made puree, no-cook preserving, recipes, summer recipes, The Marshmallow Test, tomato puree, tomato sauce

Comments 8 Comments
Categories Food, gardening, Italian, Preserving, sauce, Uncategorized, Vegan, Vegetarian

Green Tomato and Tomatillo Bisque (Life-Goes-On-Lessons from the Garden)

4 Sep

Word to the wise: use a blonde stock. Mine was dark from onion peels and so the color was a bit less attractive than I would have liked.

I got my first inkling of disaster from the Blogosphere.

The fabulous Karen of Backroad Journal chronicled her battle with late blight in a recent post about her tomatoes. I gasped. In my myopic focus on avoiding the blossom end rot that plagued my tomatoes last year – a result of uneven watering while we were gallivanting about the island keeping the boy on the hop and too busy/tired to cause trouble — I had neglected to consider the possibility of late blight. After all, wasn’t that all done with in the catastrophic 2009 season? (It should have been done with after the Irish Potato Famine of 1845, but apparently not). Continue reading →

Tags: cooking, food, green tomato bisque, green tomatoes, late blight, recipes, soup, tomatillos, vegetarian

Comments 14 Comments
Categories CSA, farming, Food, gardening, Recipes, soup, Uncategorized, Vegan, Vegetarian

← Older Entries

¡Comida Hispana! Recipes to unleash your inner Latino

Top Ten Easy Latin Bean Recipes (Fiesta de Frijoles y Habichuelas)

Some of you have reported hunting down my bean recipes. Well here are some of my faves, all gathered in one place! Just click on the image to get to the recipe.
Easy Curried Butternut Squash Soup! (vegan)

I had a butternut squash from way back in the fall and a desire for real arroz con habichuelas (Puerto Rican pink beans and rice), which may seem not to have anything to do with butternut squash soup, but after I boiled the squash, I realized I had about twice as much as I needed! […]
Frankenbeans! (Hot Dogs and Pink Beans in a Skillet)

It’s a sad irony that I finally have perfected Latin white rice (thanks to my dad’s technique) and the doctor tells me that I have to reduce carbs for my triglycerides or somesuch! Terrible. But Leandro received no such warning, so he gets to enjoy my now fantastic rice with any number of dishes. Here’s […]
Sweet and Savory Churrasco (Skirt Steak, Grilled)

You may ask whether I am cooking at all lately, seeing as I have been posting more of my dad, Pedro’s recipes than my own. Truth is, I have been cooking as much as usual, but sticking to my go-to recipes like Spinach Pasta, Pollo Guisado (Stewed Chicken), and the like. I am prepping for […]
Latin-Style Yellow Rice (Arroz Amarillo)

“I was looking for a yellow rice recipe on your blog and I couldn’t find one,” says my dear friend Deborah the other day. “What kind of a Puerto Rican are you?” Since Deborah’s people also hail from the Island of Enchantment, I cannot share my answer on a family blog. And in fact, […]