Larger tomatoes like beefsteak, plum, and brandywine may not have hit their stride yet, but I can’t wait any longer to share this simple application of cherry tomatoes. Petite cherry and grape tomatoes like these Sungold and Sweet 100s ripen earlier, making them a great pick for those of us who can’t wait for tomato season any longer. A touch of heat amplifies their sweetness and softens their texture, making them an ideal compliment to a Mexican-inspired combination of seasoned black beans and buttery avocado.
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Gluten-Free
One-Pan Salmon and Asparagus With Spring Onions
It may not be as apparent as with produce, but seafood has its seasons. With the rise of aquaculture, frozen fish, and globalization in general, it’s possible to buy salmon all year long, but, like berries, wild salmon is at its peak during the spring and summer months. This recipe pairs beautiful salmon fillets with two other seasonal ingredients: asparagus and spring onions.
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Fried Eggs With Roasted Tomatoes and Mushrooms
Inspiration for what I cook, and ultimately write about here, comes in many forms: cookbooks, blogs, meals out, farmers market visits, and glossy magazines all play an important role. Hotel breakfast buffets, not so much. One exception: this simple but much-loved-as-of-late breakfast. Last year, my boyfriend Andrew and I spent a stretch of our trip to Japan at Tokyo’s Park Hyatt. Best known as the backdrop of Lost in Translation, the Park Hyatt also serves up a truly-superlative breakfast buffet. Each morning, I’d find myself piling my plate high with a variety of pristine tropical fruit and a bite-size pastry or two, but the real draw came from the spread of roasted tomatoes, mushrooms, potatoes, sausages, and eggs. Typical components of a full English breakfast, this combination is nothing new, but the Park Hyatt’s version was spot-on, and made a critical swap: Japanese beech mushrooms for the standard sliced button.
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One-Pan Roast Chicken With Carrots and Potatoes
What do roasting a chicken, poaching eggs, and cooking a perfectly medium-rare steak have in common? All three are culinary techniques that have a reputation for being far trickier than they actually are; in fact, with a bit of guidance, they’re all quite beginner-friendly. Here, I’m breaking down my basic, but really good, take on roast chicken.
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Greek Yogurt With Crispy Quinoa and Roasted Strawberries
Right now the market is flooded with inexpensive strawberries, but that doesn’t mean they’re at the peak of their season. They may be plump, juicy, and bright red, but the flavor just isn’t quite there. Though I knew better, when I saw huge, two-pound containers of berries going for six dollars a pop, I gave in and brought some home with me.
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Roasted Red Onions With Thyme
It feels pretty ridiculous to say, but until relatively recent times (I’m talking the last year or so), I didn’t like onions in most applications. As a background note in soups and stock, sure; diced and lightly cooked, or worse, raw, hell no. Most people have an aversion to a few foods, but most people aren’t food writers, and most people don’t dislike such a fundamental ingredient. (What can I say, I’m an odd one.) So it feels a little funny to now be praising a recipe that has onions at its heart.
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Indian Red Lentil Soup With Spinach
I’d quite happily eat both soup and Indian food every day; combine the two, like with this recipe, and I’m over the moon. Complexly-spiced, this Indian red lentil soup is just the sort of thing I like to fill my fridge (and freezer) with, ready to be reheated for a quick meal when hunger strikes.
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Shrimp and Quinoa With Mango-Avocado Salsa
After years of living in San Francisco, where beautiful farm-fresh produce is practically a given year-round, the adjustment to New York’s seasons has been a bit of a shock. The snow and cold hardly phased me (granted, the past winter was freakishly-mild); grocery shopping was a different matter. I’m not particularly proud of it, but I basically gave up on the farmers market after a couple depressing mid-January trips where I came home with naught but a couple sad, wrinkly onions and a few pounds of storage apples. On the flip-side, this seasonality makes the first peeps of spring produce all the more exciting. Absence makes the heart grow fonder?
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Baked Sweet Potatoes With Miso Butter and Scallions
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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Flourless Chocolate Walnut Cookies
You’d think I admitted to kicking puppies given the typical reaction to the following: I’m just not that into chocolate desserts. I love a high-quality bar as much as the next person — my favorites are TCHO’s Milk Chocolate “Cacao” 53% and Theo Raspberry — and I have a borderline obsession with Peppermint Patties and other chocolate-mint sweets, but classics like chocolate cake, ice cream, and chocolate chip cookies rarely do it for me. That said, my tastebuds make an exception for super-rich brownies, fudge, and other high-intensity chocolate desserts like these brownie-like flourless chocolate cookies.
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