Hot, Cheap & Easy

We are digging the flavors of the SouthWest – rice, beans, cumin, peppers, avocados, corn, red onion….They holler summer to me and are right now hollering my name.

Pile ’em high with whatever you like!

Mind you, I have very little idea how people actually eat in the SouthWest, but I have these ideas shaped by the mysterious forces of The Media Age. These ideas make flavor sense to me and make me happy AND are easily achieved in my little kitchen, AND my son likes them AND they lend themselves to individual assembly and in my family of diverse eaters, that is really, really important, so there you have it.

You can pop them into tacos or eat them on the side

The Northeastern factor is fresh fish from our salty sea. I have figured out how to quickly season and pan-fry chunks of fish to add to our…

“Mommy, I love these! I just love them!”

Here is yet another cameo appearance by Adriana, whose baby lamb chops sent Leandro over the moon (not least because he could grab them by the bone in his hammy little fist and tear meat off with his teeth like a caveman) and very nearly knocked me and Padushi off our pedestals in his culinary pantheon.

Adriana is a serious carnivore who likes the flavor of good meat to shine through. The mild flavor and tender texture of today’s baby lamb chops from Australia and New Zealand lend themselves to that kind of light hand in seasoning. Roasted potatoes and asparagus rounded off the meal – simple, straightforward, and balanced.

The meal was also festive — our celebration of the beginning of the holiday season —  so we grown-ups opened with a pear and goat cheese appetizer (which will be familiar to…

Now that the holidays are coming in with the speed of a freight train, the panic begins. How do I entertain (or get a dish together for a potluck) in between work, activities, housework, paying bills, kids, parents, pets and all the other stuff, stuff, stuff that consumes our rapidly diminishing daylight hours?

Here’s one easy solution that takes just 5-10 minutes to prepare (factor in an hour of chill time), looks creamy and luscious, and can travel tidily with you everywhere! It makes about a pound of spread, so you can divide it up for different events. Mine has capers; I am riffing off an Ina Garten recipe that uses dill instead.

On a cracker, dressed up with some capers…

I made it this weekend for my Single Mothers by Choice meet-up and it went over very big with chips and crackers. And then I parked a bowl next…

One of the pleasures of visiting San Juan, Puerto Rico is heading straight from Luis Munoz Marin International Airport to a beach area about five minutes to the east. Piñones, a long stretch of relatively undeveloped coastline is where beach shacks under the shade of coconut palms serve up ice cold beer, whiskey con coco, and all manner of snacks or frituras, flour or banana dough shaped in seagrape leaves and dropped into hot fat in blackened cauldrons over coal fires by ladies in hair rollers. Oh my God, I am so glad to be back, you say, toes in the crystal water and tearing into a delicious and greasy and tropical hunk of something.

Break up the de-salted cod as much as you can

One of the iconic frituras is bacalaitos: fried cod fritters. Salt cod is well-known to Atlantic coastal areas and the Caribbean…the…

Spanish tapas: Mussels vinaigrette (make ’em the night before)

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!

Shrimp and Avocado Salad, Spiked with Chipotle (charming served in an avocado shell)

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!

Creamy, sweet, tangy, chunky, light Swedish Skagen Salad (the best shrimp salad EVER)

Cioppino Latino…A San Fran Seafood Stew Classic with a special Latina twist

For more seafood recipes, click here!

So you forgot it was Friday and for a Catholic in Lent (lapsed or not, and you are talking to a serious case of the relapsed kind) that can present a last minute scramble. Relax. Here are five quickie solutions that you can do today!

Delicious shrimp scampi – perfect Lenten meal that everyone will love.

BRoiled Lemon Flounder (kid-friendly!)

Gotta love big flake fish – Cod with Capers and Onions

This is a Puerto Rican salt cod classic (you must factor in time for soaking/boiling off salt

Fish filets in Creole Tomato sauce (filete de pescado en salsa entomatada)

Marinating in oil and lemon

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!

Yeah, yeah, your grandmother’s chicken soup. I know. It was the best. Could raise the dead, in fact.

Just five minutes of chopping, and throw it all in the pot! No browning, no saute, no mirepoix, no sofrito, no roux.

Well this chicken soup may not be your grandmother’s, or even your mother-in-law’s. It may not be complex, may not feature a rich and dense stock, may not have anything at all fancy about it. But if you want to just throw a bunch of things in a pot and end up with a soothing, yummy, cure-all of a soup in less than a half hour, I think you will like my soup a whole lot. It’s a typical Puerto Rican and, apparently Aruban, style of soup prep.

The first tender tropical culantro leaves from a container on my Long Island stoop!

Important note: in this soup, my herbs were…