Sweet-leaning vegetables like beets, butternut squash, and sweet potatoes have always been a tough sell for me. (Truly, it’s the earthy-sweet, vaguely-dirty flavor that I have trouble with, not the brix level of these vegetables.) That is, I had trouble with them before I learned how to treat them right. The secret is a classic flavor pairing principle: pair like with like; in this case, bold with bold. This can mean something acidic (think beets and yogurt), something spicy (think butternut squash and ginger), or, in this case, something deeply-savory, even funky (helloooooo, miso).
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Fast and Easy
Brown Butter Gnocchi With Spinach
As some readers may know, this isn’t my first food blog. Years back, before my time at POPSUGAR Food, I created my first blog, BowlLicking. While BowlLicking no longer exists, a handful of the recipes I shared there are still in my rotation and deserve a second go-around. This ridiculously-speedy gnocchi dish is one of them.
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Cherry Vanilla Smoothie
Typically, I prefer a hot breakfast — scrambled eggs or steel cut oatmeal with lots of fruit and nuts — but on extra-busy mornings, smoothies are just the thing. My only gripe: many don’t pack in enough fat and protein to satisfy my appetite until lunch. This cherry-vanilla shake is bulked up with tangy, probiotic-packed kefir, and, while a bit lighter than my other favorite smoothie (banana almond), it’s quite satiating. Plus, it’s quite the looker.
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One-Pan Sesame Salmon With Shiitake Mushrooms
Over five years, my boyfriend Andrew and I have shared too many meals to count, but this simple, elegant salmon dish is one I’ll always remember. One of the first things I cooked for him, it felt like an unequivocal success, a meal enjoyed by all parties. Years later, when I made it again, Andrew gently revealed that he wasn’t too keen on it that first time; to his tastes the salmon was a bit too rare, something he was far too polite to point out at the time.
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Enoki Mushroom and Kimchi Bowl With Poached Eggs
Like a good Californian, I have a major soft spot for bowl food, especially in the form of vegetables topped with a runny-yolked poached egg. This particular combination of enoki mushrooms, kimchi, scallions, and sesame seeds is my latest fixation, as it’s super-flavorful, fast to fix, packs in the probiotics, and it feels at home any time of day (provided you’re down with eggs for dinner).
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Thai Cucumber and Sausage Salad
If you’ve yet to try Chinese sausage (also known as lap cheong, lap chong, or lap xuong), you’re in for a real treat. Sort of similar in flavor to the king of bao fillings — char sui — but saltier, these dried pork sausages add a punch of flavor to fried rice, taro cake, lo mai gai (lotus leaf rice), and other delightful Chinese dishes.
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Perfectly-Crisp Roast Chicken Thighs
Typically, I’m very skeptical of things dubbed “best” or “perfect”. My perfect is not necessarily your perfect, and worse, these terms are so often overused by lazy writers looking to grab attention that it’s hard to trust that it’s not overblown. So when I saw that Bon Appetít was claiming a recipe with such a simple ingredient list (chicken thighs, salt, and oil) was superlative, I was both intrigued and doubtful that it could live up to these lofty claims. Well, as you may have surmised, I was wrong. Since I first tried out this technique for cooking chicken thighs, I have rarely strayed from it, as it is a pretty much foolproof.
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Broccoli White Bean Soup
As someone who spends a lot of time reading, I find it endlessly interesting to see what titles are on the bookshelves of others. Right now, we’re living in my boyfriend Andrew’s dad’s apartment in Manhattan — thanks, Mark! — so I’ve had some time to peruse his collection. Tucked in-between two photography books was a memoir that had long been on my to-read list: Heat by Bill Buford. A former New Yorker editor, Buford tells a fascinating story about leaving behind his position at the magazine to learn the ins and outs of Italian cooking, starting with months spent staging at Mario Batali’s Babbo.
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Kale Salad With Walnuts, Golden Raisins, and Toasted Breadcrumbs
One of the biggest hurdles I ran into while launching this blog was choosing a name that represents myself and the type of content I’ll be sharing here. Ideas ranged from the completely-ridiculous (e.g. Yuppies Live Here, after a somewhat-accurate spray-painted tag left on our apartment) to the at-least-semi-viable (I Am a Cupcake, because, as my friend Ally says, I look like one). Finally, after weeks of anguish, I narrowed it down to two contenders, and polled my friends for advice. Now, it’s pretty obvious A Modest Feast won out, but as a tribute to the runner-up — Not Only Kale — it seemed fitting to have the first recipe I share here feature that leafy green.
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