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Jun 11

Snap pea, radish, mozzarella salad in Le Parfait (with a wine pairing!)

Snappea-salad-LeParfait3

LeParfait3

On Sunday, I taught my last class before starting my summer hiatus. We have grand travel plans this summer, and who wants to be in a hot kitchen on a beautiful summer evening, anyway? Thinking about summer brings back memories of waddling around a kitchen last summer, hugely pregnant, teaching from a stool and trying to avoid picking up my heavy tubs of equipment and groceries. Ha! So glad that’s not me this time around. Instead, I’ll be cooking over a camp stove, eating dinner from a picnic table, and happily lugging around 22+ pounds of purely adorable baby chub in a hiking pack.

Before we head out on our adventure, I want to share with you a perfect summer recipe from this last class – it doesn’t require any heat, and packs perfectly for picnics or lunches or backyard barbecues. The class was a collaboration with my friends over at Table Wine, with special gifts from the French jar company Le Parfait. We put together a beautiful, summery salad of farmers’ market snap peas and radishes with torn fresh mozzarella, dressed with lemon and sesame and garnished with chive blossoms from Vitruvian Farms, and paired it with a lovely Italian white wine (more on that, below).  Read more

May 25

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Grilled radicchio with fresh mozzarella and garlic vinaigrette

Radicchio-salad2

Two days ago we came back from a weekend trip to Pennsylvania for a wedding, and – just like that – it’s summer. We’ve eaten every meal since on the porch, and one of our first tasks when we returned was to exchange our long-faulty propane tank and fire up the grill for our standby summer dinner menu – a mess of grilled vegetables, some sort of starch (in this case, a quinoa pilaf), cheese (we do live in Wisconsin, after all), and white wine (Trader Joe’s new boxed sauvignon blanc is actually quite fantastic).

But lately I’ve had that itch – the one that drives me to pick out random things at the grocery store and try something entirely new – and this time it was (among other things) a small round head of radicchio that called out to me. I planned a slaw at first, but a quick perusing of cookbooks during Aldo’s pre-dinner nap led me to grill it in wedges. I made a quick vinaigrette (more on that later) and tossed it all with some fresh mozzarella and herbs, and it was an excellent part of what can otherwise be a fairly standard meal.  Read more

Apr 26

Buying, storing, and grinding spices (plus garam masala roasted salmon)

Does your spice collection need a reboot? Here are tips on where to buy your spices, how to store them, and the basics of grinding your own.

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Apr 18

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Sweet potato muffins for littles (or bigs)

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It comes as a surprise to no one, especially me, that Aldo starting to eat solid foods has been one of the most rewarding and fun parts of this whole ordeal. (Can you call having a baby and raising it for nearly eight months an “ordeal”? That seems simultaneously too negative and way too casual. Like I’d need at least 10,000 more words to describe what it’s like, but a decent percentage of them would be way more positive than “ordeal.”)

Also unsurprisingly, a lot of people ask me what he’s eating and what our general philosophy is on how and what he eats. Baby led weaning? Homemade? How quickly to introduce allergens? What to introduce and when? The way we’ve gone about it is a fairly good indicator for how we’ve done most things as parents – do some reading, pick and choose the elements we like to form a generalized plan, then see what works and what doesn’t, reformulating the plan nearly on a dime as needed. If there’s anything I’ve learned it’s that you can’t go into anything with too many expectations or being too rigid, because this fantastic little guy is actually a human, and he has plenty of his own thoughts and preferences.

And through everything (and we’re not just talking about food here, but also sleep, and play, and everything else he does), I get more and more of this sense that he’s going to be just fine. We can provide a general structure, but as long as we go with our intuition and take note of the signals he sends us, it’ll all work out okay. Read more

Feb 29

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Pretzel buns (All Whisked Up swap)

Pretzel-rolls

It’s time for another All Whisked Up! I’m one of the founding members of Wisconsin Whisk, and every few months we randomly assign blogs to feature one another’s recipes and to introduce our readers to other local sites. Perhaps, for some of us, it also helps us commit to writing a little more often … (apologies, apologies).

This round I was pleased to be assigned to All Food Considered, a Madison-area blog from T.J. Thering. T.J.’s background in engineering gives him a particularly methodical approach to his content and, as his title might suggest, the site’s recipe index covers an impressive array of cuisines and techniques. My favorite part of his site is his collection of 31 culinary lessons, including his advice on kitchen equipment, an overview of ingredient substitutions, and a detailed guide to eggs (as many of you know, my absolute favorite food). This is the sort of content I’ve always intended to develop here on my own site, but T.J. has actually made it happen – perfect for the beginning cook, someone looking for answers to basic cooking questions, couples putting together a registry, or a recent college graduate looking for how to stock and use their first real kitchen. Read more

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