When you think of Sicilian food, I’d wager pasta alla Norma, bottles of Mount Etna rosso, gelato-stuffed brioche buns, juicy blood oranges, and deep-fried treasures like arancini and panelle are some of the first things to come to mind. All delightful, no doubt, but it’s the humble bean- and lentil-based soups, stews, and pasta dishes from the region that I anticipate making the most now that I’m home.
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Gluten-Free
Mussels Puttanesca
Between keeping track of sustainability guidelines and preparing it within a fleeting window of freshness, cooking seafood can feel like a bit of a bother. Add in that it tends to be pretty pricey, and it’s easy to see why fish and shellfish often get passed over for other proteins. One completely-underrated exception: mussels. Aside from the somewhat-pesky — meditative, if we’re being generous — task of cleaning them, these bivalves are quite winning. Simple to cook, budget-friendly, and sustainable, they’re a killer choice for a fancy-feeling dinner.
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Greek Roasted Potato “Poutine” With Arugula
Stubborn and steady, I’m a creature of habit. In many ways, this is a positive: having a routine means I sleep well, usually manage to fit in some form of exercise (I’m a recent morning workout convert), rarely misplace my keys, and pretty much always have the fixings for a healthy breakfast on hand. Of course, I have my share of bad habits as well. Lately, Andrew and I have been trying to break ourselves of one such pattern: our dependence on delivery and takeout.
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Brie, Mushroom, and Caramelized Onion Egg Muffins
Here’s an earth-shattering statement for you (not): weekday breakfasts are hard to get right. Finding something that is at once convenient, satiating, reasonably healthy, and tasty is no short order, especially when it comes to savory starts. One winner I keep coming back to is the frittata, and its diminutive, Pinterest-friendly iteration, the egg muffin.
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Skirt Steak With Spicy Broccolini and Lemon Mayo
Blood oranges, bitter greens, olives, zippy Etna wines, and marzipan: these are a few of the things I expected to devour in Sicily (check, check, check, check, and check!). What I (perhaps foolishly) didn’t quite foresee was how different my day to day eating would be. With a landscape dominated by wheat, many meals are anchored around pasta and bread. (Pastries, cakes, and cookies are also omnipresent.) A delicious shock, but still, a shock, to the system for someone who typically eats a very-vegetable-centric, lower-carb, high-fat diet.
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Sicilian Blood Orange, Onion, and Olive Salad
Apologies for going dark here recently, but I promise it has been for a good reason. I’m currently writing from Valledolmo, a small village in central Sicily, about an hour and a half away from Palermo, where I arrived a little over three weeks ago to attend Cook the Farm, a 9-week culinary and horticulture program at the Anna Tasca Lanza cooking school. These past few weeks I’ve been busy settling in, cooking, gardening, eating, and learning all about this wonderfully-crazy island and its culture. Though I took a bit of an (unintentional) break from blogging, I have lots of good things coming your way. In the weeks before I left, I was in my kitchen near-round-the-clock testing, tasting, and photographing recipes to share while I’m gone, and will also be updating my Instagram with my adventures.
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Roasted Acorn Squash With Yogurt-Tahini Sauce
Earlier this fall, Andrew and I ended our Euro adventures with a few days in Germany’s capital. To say that Berlin surprised us would be a great understatement. We had heard about its burgeoning food scene, the tradition of kaffee und kuchen (afternoon coffee and cake), and the abundance of top-notch Turkish food, and yet, it still managed to blow our expectations out of the water. Perhaps we got lucky, or perhaps my restaurant research paid off, but I’d wager there’s more to it than that.
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Cherry-Almond Chocolate Bark
For as long as I’ve been writing about food, I’ve had a dessert idea jotted down; one that combines a trio of my favorite things, and yet, I just got to it this past week. This might say something about my tendencies towards procrastination, or my love of making unrealistically long lists — if only you could see my collection of epic-length Google docs — but the real reason this cherry-almond chocolate bark only now came to fruition is simpler and less personality-trait-related: namely, I hate tempering chocolate.
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Pear-Ginger Oatmeal With Chia Seeds
I’ve written about oatmeal many times, and this likely won’t be the last. Satisfying, and fiber-rich, oats are what I reach for first when seeking a sweet-leaning healthy breakfast. This pear-ginger iteration is my latest fixation. A variation on April Bloomfield’s genius porridge, which mimics the creamy, chewy texture of long-simmered steel-cut oats by splitting the difference between steel-cut and rolled oats as well as milk and water, this bowl also adds some chia seeds to the mix for an extra-rich texture. Seasoned with a pretty mix of ginger and cardamom, it’s then topped with pear matchsticks and some sesame seeds for an almost-floral-leaning combination of flavors. All in all it’s a simple upgrade to the humble bowl of porridge. And, importantly (at least to me) it makes use of one of fall’s oft-overlooked fruits (pears).
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Perfect Poached Eggs, Two Ways
My first attempt at poaching eggs didn’t go very well: The whites were ragged (feathery, if we’re being kind) and only partially-attached to the yolks; worse yet, since the yolks were barely insulated by the whites, they cooked up patchily, nearly-hard-boiled in spots. A decade or so later, I’ve tested out pretty much every method out there, and discovered some indispensable tricks along the way. Here I’m breaking down two separate techniques, how to poach eggs in a saucepan and via sous vide cookery, both of which have their merits.
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