I love a slaw. Not the traditional coleslaw, laden with weepy, white cream-based dressings, but a slaw nouveau is what I’m talking about. A bit of cabbage, some acid– be it astringent vinegar, or tangy citrus juice, you can’t forget the olive oil, and some other stuff: nuts, herbs, thinly sliced onion, other vegetables, fruit even– you name it, I’ve probably thrown it in a salad bowl.

What is so satisfying about a slaw is that they’re sort of seasonless. In the winter, when I tire of roasting my vegetables, when I want a vegetable to make some noise, have a crunch, I can always get a head of cabbage, slice it thinly, make a slaw, and chew ’til my heart’s content. In the summer, when I’m wilting from heat exhaustion, and can’t imagine turning on the stove, I turn once more to the lowly head of cabbage, and slice up [...]

At the market last week, I just about stopped dead in my tracks. There each one was, assembled in such close proximity that I almost couldn’t bear it. Check out the loveliness of the following: Fuyu persimmons, Satsuma mandarins, and Belgian endive.
If I were Martha Stewart, hostess extraordinaire, queen of all good things, CEO of a multi-billion dollar empire, and owner of several palatial estates along the East Coast, I know what I would have done. I would have bought a basket full of these stunning edibles, arranged them beautifully on one of my 12 foot long, maple dining tables, careful to hide all of their bruises and imperfections, and had a stunning centerpiece to enjoy for the few days that the produce remained rosy.
But let’s get real. Martha may be great, but she can also be a tad, well… unrealistic. I live in New [...]

Farewell dear, sweet corn. Goodbye bright melon salads, see you next year. And don’t think I have forgotten about you smooth, seedy summer squash. I’ll pick you all up next June, when the weather’s warm, and tank tops beckon my shoulders out into the sunshine. For now, there are new foods churning their way into my psyche. I mean, it is October for heaven’s sake!
The weakening sun hides behind the ever-burgeoning clouds, and it’s warm one moment, cool the next. I leave the apartment with a light jacket and scarf-mina (one part scarf, the other part pashmina) firmly affixed round my neck one moment, only to remove the jacket, and blot the perspiration from my brow with said scarf-mina, the next. This of course, translates into stomach confusion for my appetite– a salad…no, a stew…no, a salad.Well, what about a hearty salad, how does [...]

If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you probably know by now, that I love summer. No, it’s not the warm weather, in fact that makes me wilt like a cut flower. And when I was younger, and in school from September to June, I looked forward to the summer recess just like every other child. But as welcoming a break as I knew it to be, I really didn’t need it. I was one of those children who actually liked school. No, the thing I most love about these warm summer months is the fruit, and all that can be cooked (or not cooked with it).
A delicious stone fruit pie is divine; a clafoutis chock full of tree-ripe apricots; and a nectarine cobbler, the juices bubbling out from under the nubby crust, each are list-toppers for me. But sometimes turning on [...]

Happy New Year! I must say that come January 2, gifts passed around, ornaments strewn about, and merry friends seen, I am happy to get back to the real world…at least for awhile. My New Year’s Eve was a quiet one, dinner with good friends, a little sake and some good conversation. But come New Year’s Day, I still felt the need to cleanse the system of all of the holiday’s rich food and drink. And what better way to cleanse my system? With a lovely salad of course.
Now you knew that I wouldn’t ring in 2007 with a big bowl of iceberg lettuce, would I? So just what is this rosy salad that I threw together? A grated daikon salad, adorned with baby buckwheat greens, and shavings of purple cipollini onions, that’s what. I was feeling less than inspired when I [...]

I remember my grandma’s waldorf salad– an interesting mix of both fruit and vegetables, all mixed up with a paste-like dressing. I have never been a huge mayonnaise fan, but yet I was enthralled with the waldorf dressing. A little mayonnaise, a touch of whipped cream, could it be? Sweet yet tangy, light and lustrous, this dressing seemed to have it all. I would sit at the table, a dish of the mellifluous concoction before me, both repulsed and intoxicated.
Now it’s been years since I have partaken in this salad of yore. And just the thought of it, I must say, repulses rather more than intoxicates me. But the basics of the waldorf salad are good ones. It has good bones. It’s just the dressing that must be updated, made more palatable for my 21st century tastebuds. And so I resorted [...]

I can’t resist. I have explained my new salad fixation; so yes, Brian and I have been eating quite a lot of them lately. And the latest incarnation, is my favorite type of salad to make: a very green, non-lettuce variety, enriched with imported tuna, packed in olive oil. Fresh, rich, the 3 Bean Salad of my dreams.
How could I not make a 3 Bean Salad when these beautiful, bright pink, shelling, or cranberry beans were lying in piles at the market? They were calling me to take them home, peel off their racy outer coat, and simmer to my heart’s content.
But 3 Bean Salad? How gauche. And salad again? Well, you might say that I am a bit homesick; and you can blame the fixation on heredity. You see the fixations with food are nothing out of the ordinary for my [...]

What do you do when all of sudden it’s September, and you just feel fall coming? It’s dark now by 7:30, there are no more cherries in the market, nor apricots, and there is actually a chill in the air when the sun goes down. Yes, fall is a-comin’. And I think I am ready for it. I actually love autumn, the change from the sweltering days of summer, to the frosty days of winter. Those nubby sweaters packed away in my closet are looking more and more tempting.
But every summer I feel a little sorrow. As much as I love those hearty autumn squash, and root veg in all its many incarnations, it is tough to say so long to my beloved berries and stone fruit. It throws me into a bit of a panic. And when I get thrown into this [...]

Maybe it is just certain octogenarians I have run into, but most of them do two things: talk about their health, and talk about the weather. And now that I have moved to New York, a place that actually has weather and seasons, I find myself doing the same thing (at least the weather part). I mentioned before that it is HOT, but besides the heat there is the humidity, the sort of humidity that makes you want to run back indoors, to your small, air-conditioned apartment, peel off your sticky clothes, and take a cool shower. I’m from California, I mean: What is humidity anyways?
And so I have joined the ranks of those people, the one’s that talk ad nauseum about the weather, and to me, it is endlessly fascinating. We are mostly unpacked, a household’s worth of goods transplanted from California to New York. Newsprint packing has been [...]

I have a secret to tell. I’ve been in a bit of a food rut. Each week I go to the market, wondering if they will still be there, like jewels of crisp vegetal goodness. And I can let out a sigh of relief when I see them stacked helter-skelter, waiting to be brought home. So no, my fixation has not been cherries, tart berries, or cooling watermelon. It may seem blase to some, but I assure you these beauties are anything but.
How could you not scoop up these lovely cauliflower, and bring them home? No bigger than your fist, with the curly greenery still attached, you know they are fresh from the earth. Sometimes there is a purple head of cauliflower, other weeks I have bought the romanesco variety, with its tight ringlets of flowerets; but this week I bought the basic white, a glowing green, and a [...]