I am pleased to announce that Edible Long Island has launched its first salvo into the Riverhead to Queens border Long Island food follies and that I am a part of it! The blog went live today, including my story on The Greek…a lovely little restaurant near me started by a local restaurant tycoon! So visit and enjoy, and I will keep you “posted” as more of my work comes up and when the print edition comes out (summer or later!) Now let’s hope that The Greek didn’t suddenly close…we just ordered from them about a week ago but their site says they are closed for the summer? Eek!
Top Ten Easy Latin Bean Recipes (Fiesta de Frijoles y Habichuelas)
3 Apr
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.
Fish on Friday: Five More Fab Seafood Solutions
28 Mar
The last Friday in Lent is coming up. Why just pan-fry filets (again), when you could try some of these much more entertaining and tasty takes on seafood? This is Part Two of my Lenten seafood series. I know you’ll end up making them all year long. I certainly do!

Pasta al Tonno: One of the fastest pasta sauces known to man. (Feel free to switch out the green olives for black and skip the capers) Deeply flavored!
For more seafood recipes, click here!
Baked Cauliflower Macaroni and Cheese: Is there any pay-off in pandering to a kid?
27 Mar
This was not at all a sneak attack. This was a straightforward “Hey little dude, do you think you would like cauliflower if I made this recipe?”
Oh, yes, yes, I would eat it up, it looks delicious, definitely make it Mommy, make it right away, blah, blah, blah.
So there is no reason why, after troubling myself to get all the ingredients and getting my unwilling, intermittently vegan dad into the process, and committing myself to joining my son in eating a stodgy, creamy, cheesy, bacon-y mess of a fantastic casserole that in no way advances my desire to look good in a bathing suit by summer…there is absolutely no reason why said five-year-old little dude should be allowed to not eat the damn cauliflower, whether he likes it or not.
But of course, you know what happened. Continue reading
Celeriac Remoulade (The Speed Dial Version)
18 Mar
Give celeriac an inch and it will take over your kitchen. Well, not quite, but I grated a bit into a salad for the first time in ages a couple of days ago, was reminded of my first celeriac remoulade in an even more distant past, and next thing you know, I was making a remoulade.
Mind you, no one else in my house eats mayonnaise – my mom is watching her cholesterol, my dad is still nominally on his crazy-ass diet which is vegan (except when he is “tasting” everyone else’s food), and my five-year-old is valiantly resisting the charms of potato salad, tuna salad, and anything else that tastes so nice with some mayo and would be so much easier to send him to school with.
So rather than make a batch of real mayonnaise that I couldn’t possibly finish eating before it went off, I resorted to scraping the last two tablespoons of Hellman’s whose Never-Say-Die longevity in the fridge is a wonder of the modern age (this jar dates back to the summer).
Shrimp Scampi (Shrimp in Garlic Wine Sauce)
4 Mar
“This is the best lunch ever, Mom, the King of All Lunches,” says Leandro, The King of All Understatements.
The source of his enthusiasm was Shrimp Scampi (kind of an Americanized misnomer for an Italian recipe: read here). And if it wasn’t the best lunch ever (he has fewer lunches to compare with than I do) it was pretty damn good.
Easy Curried Butternut Squash Soup! (vegan)
26 Feb
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!
- This recipe uses just about a half a typical butternut squash
Waste not want not is my motto (as much by necessity as by design), so I thought it would be nice to simmer up a warm soup.
Thus, this ever so simple butternut squash soup, vegan (unless you swirl in some yogurt or sour cream at the end), and rich without being fatty. I used some sofrito I made the other day, but give instructions for store-bought or home-made substitutes.
Easy Butternut Squash Soup
2 Cups butternut squash, peeled and boiled until soft in vegetable broth. RESERVE broth
1 tsp olive oil
2 Tbs sofrito (homemade or Goya. May be substituted with a tablespoon of finely minced onion and a tablespoon of finely minced green cooking pepper like cubanelle, in which case you need to saute a bit longer until tender)
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ tsp mild curry powder
½ tsp cumin
½ tsp salt
Fresh cracked black pepper
(dab of pesto, hot sauce or –if you aren’t vegan – yogurt or sour cream to finish, optional)
In a medium soup pot, heat oil at high until fragrant. Lower to medium, add sofrito and garlic and sauté until fragrant and getting dry. Add curry powder and cumin and toast until slightly fragrant. Add broth and squash, bring to a boil, then simmer for 15-20 minutes until very, very soft. Use an immersion blender or food processor or blender to liquefy. Season to taste and serve with optional toppings.
Or click for another MORE basic recipe!
Broiled Lemon Flounder (Kid Friendly Fish!)
24 Feb
Let’s face it, if you are eating a salad (again) and your son is across the table chowing down on spinach and cheese ravioli coated in real parmigiano and a schmutz of butter…you are secretly hoping he doesn’t finish so you can have just a little, just a taste…
So I am very much looking for more dishes we can eat together and that don’t tempt me into carbohydrate sin while I am trying to work on those troglodytes, I mean, triglycerides that my doctor says I need to reduce. And really, I want to reduce the number of dishes I prepare and have to wash up after! Continue reading
Frankenbeans! (Hot Dogs and Pink Beans in a Skillet)
18 Feb
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 franks and beans with an ever-so-slightly Latin flavor. Goya’s Latin-style tomato sauce and cilantro and culantro put a little spring in the step of this easy, kid-friendly dish. My parents used to make us something similar when we were kids, so it was fun to try and recreate them. They have very little in common with the sweet gooey canned Franks and Beans you find. This are actually grown-up worthy too!
I use Applegate Farms Organic Beef Hotdogs. I prefer organic meats as a rule. These also don’t use synthetic nitrites, but it isn’t clear from what I have read that natural nitrites are any better than synthetic. They are more expensive than your standard supermarket dogs, but I feel that they are worth it.
Leandro loves these, and they reheat very well for his lunch thermos the next day. (In the morning, when I am boiling water for tea, I boil extra to pour in the Thermos to warm it up. Then I dump the water, put in the hot food, and it is still warm a few hours later for his lunch ).
Frankenbeans
1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
½ Cup onion, minced
1 tsp garlic, chopped
3 hot dogs, sliced into ½ inch rounds
1 Tbs fresh cilantro chopped
1 tsp fresh culantro (recao; sawtooth coriander) or other green herb of your choice, chopped, optional
8 oz can Goya Latin Style Tomato Sauce
2 pinches salt
2 pinches hot red pepper flakes
½ tsp ketchup
1 Cup pink beans (soaked or from a can)
In a large skillet, heat oil on medium high and add onions, Stir to coat, lower heat, and cook for 2-3 minutes, then add garlic and cook an additional minute or two, until the house smells good and the vegetables are wilted. Add hot dogs and stir, then add cilantro and culantro or other herbs. Cook for another 2-3 minutes, then add tomato sauce, salt, red pepper, and ketchup to taste. Add beans. You will probably want to add about ¼ Cup water to thin. Simmer for 10 minutes r more and serve with Latin-style white rice.
Grilled Cornish Game Hens: Three Marinades for a Crowd or for One
26 Dec
Ah the illusions of youth!
Rock Cornish Game Hens were such a fancy thing to eat when I was little. They were so cute and golden when they came out of the oven; a half a bird each for me and my brother, and one each for our parents, basted in a peach sauce that was lovely and sweet.
These little birds, almost invariably sold frozen into hand-held cannonballs, seemed to me to be an exotic species (don’t laugh, those of you from Cornwall) and having been an eager reader of all things Annie Oakley and Laura Ingalls Wilder, and other tough girl survivor books in the days before Katniss Everdeen and I imagined that these little birds were hunted by young folks with charming accents, roaming the plains of Cornwall (do you even have plains in Cornwall?) in home-made clothes, with rifles or intriguing traps or somesuch.

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