Category

Salads

  • Jicama and Mango Salad with Jalapeño Lime Dressing

    Jicama and Mango Salad with Jalapeño Lime Dressing

    Jicama, when you buy it, looks and feels like a small planet. It’s big, it’s round, it’s hard. I almost put it back and thought about using something else as a first course for my friend Diana’s birthday dinner (during which I served a Smoky Beef Chili; that’s the next post) but the Jicama Mango…

  • Vegas Recovery Salad

    Vegas Recovery Salad

    When you get back from a weekend of binging in Las Vegas, you might find that you really crave salad. Not the wimpy kind with delicate garden lettuces, but a big bowl of raw vegetables that promises to cure all your ills. If you were a cheffy chef your first instinct might be to go…

  • A Really Good Radicchio Salad

    A Really Good Radicchio Salad

    Look, let’s be honest, I make a really good radicchio salad. That may not mean much to most people because radicchio isn’t one of those vegetables that gets anyone excited. It’s bitter. It’s red. It’s red and bitter. What’s the big deal? Well: I like to serve it before a big, heavy dinner to wake…

  • Scrambled Eggs with Gruyère, Fried Pita with Olive Tapenade & Tomato Salad

    Scrambled Eggs with Gruyère, Fried Pita with Olive Tapenade & Tomato Salad

    The three elements that made this breakfast come together the way that it did were leftover pita (from the night I made chicken and hummus), leftover olive tapenade (from the night I made 4-hour lamb; the recipe’s in that post), and leftover Gruyere (from that cauliflower gratin). The breakthrough moment was when I decided to…

  • Fun with Farro

    Fun with Farro

    I’m starting to enjoy blank canvas foods like quinoa and farro and cous cous. (Autocorrect just tried to change that to “cous cows.”) The fun comes from dressing them up, like a Christmas tree or an Oscar nominee on Oscar night. The more ingredients you know to add to the mix, the more fun you…

  • Beets of the Southern Wild with Candied Quvenzhané Walnuts

    Beets of the Southern Wild with Candied Quvenzhané Walnuts

    Last year, I suffered the greatest humiliation of my life–well, except for that time I got pantsed while roller skating on a Jewish teen tour–when my Glenn Cous Cous Salad with Albert Knobs of Feta lost the Best Oscar Dish contest to Tinker Tailor Shepherd’s Pie. This was at a party hosted by my friends…

  • Anything Goes Salad

    Anything Goes Salad

    After my New York Public Library event with Deb Perelman (there were 230 people there!), I’m rethinking my whole blog. Somehow, through my aggressive questioning, I forced Deb to give up her blogging secrets. And the one that’s really staying with me the most is the fact that she cooks during the day to have…

  • Stone Fruit Salads

    Stone Fruit Salads

    This summer, if I were the sort of person who named their summers, might be called “The Summer of Stone Fruit.” That’s because, for a good part of it, I’d bring home lots of stone fruit (mostly peaches, but also nectarines and plums) from the West Hollywood Farmer’s Market. I’d put these stone fruits into…

  • A Year of Lunches at Forage

    A Year of Lunches at Forage

    Yesterday I crowned Forage my #4 favorite place to eat in Los Angeles. Even if you don’t live in L.A. or don’t plan to visit any time soon, this is relevant, I think, because what I’m praising here isn’t just a restaurant that makes good restaurant food. I’m praising a place that does something instructive:…

  • Sensational Summer Salads

    Sensational Summer Salads

    The farmer’s market can be an intimidating place, especially in summer when there’s just so much to choose from. Sometimes I get overwhelmed, buy a few peaches and tomatoes and leave quickly. Other times, I just buy everything in sight, a strategy that seems wasteful at first but which almost always pays off. When I…