THE LADY OF SHALLOTS

  Peace, Love and Fibre: Over 100 Fibre-Rich Recipes for the Whole Family by Mairlyn Smith My rating: 4 of 5 stars Mairlyn Smith, who has recently gained traction for her #FartWalk initiative (yes, you read that right) making the rounds on social media, is a professional Home Economist and former member of the Second City Comedy Troupe. Her winsome personality, that shines through in her videos, is no less present in the text of this cookbook. More than just recipes, Smith offers a practical (and humorous) way to incorporate more fiber in your diet. She warns that an increase in fiber needs to be gradual, coupled with an increase (usually) in water intake. She weighs in on sugar and salt too, reminding us that table salt is not such a bad thing when you look at iodine needs. Ultimately, she offers a gameplan for the "Big Picture" by offering 10 healthy habits (that range from diet, exercise, to emotional well-being), and suggests picking one a month. After 10 months, you c...

It is Sunday. I spent the day working at my actual workplace, getting some good work done because...Sunday. My very sweet spouse offered to pick me up, and as we drove home, I realized I hadn't really thought about what to make for dinner. A quick mental inventory of the fridge: bell peppers, chicken, mushrooms. Next, Google. The last thing I wanted to do was cook, so honestly I picked the first recipe I could find for which I had ingredients. I could have done a stir fry without a recipe, of course, but I needed some sort of inspiration. Enter " Easy Pepper Chicken Stir Fry " from Holly at Spend with Pennies .   On Pinterest it says "This Pepper Chicken Stir Fry recipe is ridiculously easy to make with ingredients that you already have in your pantry..." MOSTLY true.  But I will tell you---I do not have oyster sauce in my pantry.  Do you? (Not a rhetorical question---I'm actually curious if that is a standard ingredient that people keep on hand). ...

Yeah, I know, that doesn't sound very exciting does it? Well, when you combine two great recipes, it turns out even the mundane can be awesome! First, let me say that any recipe that asks me to sauté chopped  shallots  and fresh herbs in pan drippings is a good recipe. Oh, and there's of course butter in them there pan juices. The pork chops were "Pan-Roasted Berkshire Pork Chops with Vermont Ice Cider" (173) from The Vermont Farm Table Cookbook by Tracy Medeiros. For copyright reasons, I can't produce the recipe here, but suffice it to say, the secrets here are the bone-in  chops (with fat), shallots  (of course), fresh herbs , and then ice cider for the sauce. The first time I made these I used Neige  ice cider that I picked up in Québec, but this time I stayed closer to home with the very lovely "dessert cider" ("Pommeau") from Carr's Ciderhouse in Massachusetts. They are apparently sold out of it for the year, so now I'm r...

I received Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen Everyday cookbook for Christmas, and finally had the time to crack it open. I started with the Smashed Cucumber Salad with Salted Peanuts and Wasabi Peas (page 50)... As always with a copyrighted recipe, I'll post the ingredients, but not the amounts. The basics: seedless cucumbers, kosher salt, sake , rice vinegar, sesame oil, hot pepper flakes, salted peanuts, wasabi peas So, this recipe had me at "wasabi peas"--so much so that I completely overlooked the SAKE (hence why I have it italicized and emphasized up above). I didn't read the recipe beforehand, because I thought that wouldn't be necessary for a "salad" and because I am sometimes not-so-smart like that. That would have saved me from my omission of sake, but alas. And I usually always read the prose from Deb Perelman because she's hilarious. So, what to do when you don't have sake? Internet to the rescue! There were two suggestions fo...

I will start this post with a pseudo-apology to the O hio C ollege of C linical P harmacy. Yes... in the unlikely event that my O ther C ultures C ooking P roject becomes more a more popular choice in Google algorithms, I apologize pre-emptively to anyone more interested in Zocor (TM) than za'atar. With that out of the way...welcome to the first official Other Cultures Cooking Project Post! I did spend ample time agonizing over the name--I hesitate to use "other" as I am "other" to other others, but setting aside academic navel-gazing, I think we understand that it is contextual: "other cultures foreign to me." And we can understand that I'm not even sure what constitutes my "culture" so there's that too. What started this is that I believe food is one of the most important (and enjoyable) ways to learn about people--culturally, socially, economically.  I like to learn. I like to cook. I like to eat. So, a no-brainer, in other wo...

Happy New Year! I'm not a big one for resolutions, but I've realized that I've been slacking on cooking, and that has to change (for both budget and health considerations). I do love Blue Apron, but while I'm on break from teaching I'm trying to plan meals and cook more often. Santa was kind enough to bring us Mark Bittman's The Mini Minimalist set, as well as Ottolenghi and Tamimi's Jerusalem cookbook. Thus far in the new year, I've made Bittman's "Broiled Bluefish or Mackerel with Green Tea Salt" (The Mini Minimalist: Meat, Fish & Poultry, 20-21). We had to substitute sea bass as that was the fish that was available and least likely to compete with the green tea (something told me salmon would be funky). The neat part of this recipe is the green tea powder with coarse salt. Bittman recommends grinding one's own green tea, but I went for Matcha powder since I had it on hand. The recipe worked out fairly well, except tha...

5-Spice Pork Buns with Red Cabbage, Carrot & Thai Basil Salad (4/4 stars) A friend was kind enough to send me a free trial of Blue Apron , a subscription cook-it-yourself service. I was skeptical at first, based on some of the  criticisms I have below, but after three weeks,  I'm quite hooked. It has been perfect for this busy end of the semester as it removes the parts I hate most: planning and shopping.  I don't plan on using it much this summer when I have access to farmer's markets, and time to think about something other than my career, but since many have asked, I thought I'd do a little review here. Orange-glazed Chicken Drumsticks with Mashed Yucca and Arugula Salad (4/4 stars) PROS: not having to plan the meals (which I like to do occasionally, but not for the entire week) no food waste, as they send you only the amount that you need for the recipe no food shopping other than to pick up staples (breakfast stuff, etc) for the week ...

Ina Garten's Couscous with Peas and Mint: 3.5 stars Sometimes you make couscous for 15 people (Ina Garten's "Couscous with Peas and Mint" from her Foolpoof: Recipes You Can Trust ) and convince yourself that you need to double the recipe. Then you find that it probably wasn't necessary to buy TWO bags of frozen peas. Now you find yourself staring at a whole lot of leftover defrosted peas. What to do? Here's one idea! How about lamb sausage (more specifically, lamb-apricot sausage from Savenor's ) with a mint-pea purée? (It is winter, so I used this recipe for the purée and left off the pea shoots, etc). Do remember that a little bit of fresh mint goes a long way, so you may want to adjust the amounts depending on your preferred pea-taste to mint-taste ratio.  Serious Eats' "Lamb Sausage with Pea Purée" : 4 stars But one can only make/eat so much mint-pea purée. I was excited to try Food52's Peas Porridge Hot recipe until I...

A friend of mine posted a link to Eat Your Books , and so I thought I'd try it out.  The website indexes cookbooks, blogs, and magazines to create a database of recipes. When you sign up, you add the cookbooks you own to your "shelf" (as well as any blogs and magazines), and this creates a searchable database of ingredients . So, for example, last night I typed in "chicken thighs" and my results returned recipes from Food 52, The Kitchn, Barbara Lynch's Stir , etc...blogs I follow and a book I own.  What follows is a little evaluation of the website thus far: CONS: The free trial allows for only 5 shelf items (including books, blogs and magazines) Not everything is indexed (although this is to be expected) They do warn you that basic ingredients (salt, pepper, olive oil, etc) are not indexed, but I found that this can also include fresh herbs (tarragon, thyme) etc...so, not so useful as a grocery store tool, depending on the recipe. PROS: you can ...

flounder, sesame seeds (black & white), dark sesame oil, butter, soy sauce, sugar One of the reasons Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything is such an invaluable resource in my house is because I can use it for something I hate: cooking without planning. At this point in the semester, my mind is full of grading, student crises, and just getting through the next few weeks. So getting out to the Farmer's Market and picking up fresh flounder seemed like a huge accomplishment.  And then dinner time rolled around, and I realized I had absolutely no plans for that flounder, beyond consuming it. Enter Mark Bittman. How to Cook Everything has never failed me.  I went to the section on "Thin White Fish Fillets," which includes his mini-rant regarding why he's not a big fan of tilapia (who knew?). Almost all the recipes in this section had ingredients that I had on hand, but I finally settled on the "Crisp Sesame Fish with Soy Glaze," which was a vari...

I've taken on the challenge--yes, challenge--of making a "month of new easy dinners" featured in Real Simple's October 2013 issue . Why a "challenge" you ask? Well, the likelihood that I will cook five times a week is slim to none, for starters. In fact, I know very well I won't. So, this means I'll be cooking "most" of the dinners, but I am going to try to plan according to the weekly menus they propose. Already I've messed with Week One. I'm skipping the "Barbecue chicken sandwich with sautéed corn, edamame, and pickles" largely because a) I can't eat whole kernel corn and b) I'm trying to stay away from too many carbs (read: bread). So, that leaves for week one: Seared Fish with Tomatoes and Garlicky Escarole Lamb Chops and Parsnip Puree with Coriander Brown Butter Crunchy Dinner Salad with Prosciutto, Apple and Hazelnuts Cheese Ravioli with Kale Pesto and Roasted Carrots So I began "Week One...

First, the sole and the slaw: I had some frozen sole filets in the freezer, and was desperate for a quick and easy recipe, but something a little better than just butter and onions.  Enter Baked Sole with Lemon .  Now, I'm a little wary of About.com--perhaps unfairly--as I find one particular About.com site on a topic about which I think I'm rather authoritative, to be full of inaccuracies and astonishingly sophomoric given the supposed "credentials" of the "guide."But that is not of great import at the moment as we are talking about food--not this other subject that shall remain nameless. I really loved this recipe for the good balance of butter and lemon. I made two adjustments (for pragmatic what-I-had-on-hand reasons): shallots instead of onion (a common substitution here at The Lady of Shallots), and cilantro mixed in with parsley. The real annoyance with baking sole (or any other thin, flat fish) is that you basically have to watch it carefully ...

Well, I've been gone for a bit, and in the meantime I've been grieving the loss of my mother -- who passed in the beginning of June -- and trying to figure out the best way to get life back on track.  Cooking and eating seems to be a good place as any to start (to say nothing of the fact that I spent a month in LA subsisting off of martinis and snack foods--indulgences of grief). I've enjoyed using Pinterest for recipes because I am seduced by the photos.  Truly.  But I've started a board of the recipes that I've actually cooked, and I add little mini-reviews.  You can check it out (and follow, if so inclined) here . Now while martinis and snack foods are simply delicious, my personal trainer is going to make that weird face she makes when she's trying not to call me out on being lame. So, at least I can counter it with the fact that I a) am cooking again and b) eating healthy food! Below you will see Grilled Salmon Kebabs .  These get 4/5 stars from me....

In my quest to  lighten our diet a bit, I came across a recipe for " Clean & Healthy Avocado Pesto Alfredo " on Pinterest via The Gracious Pantry. I don't know what possessed me to pin it a few months back, being that the word "avocado" alone should have been enough to make me turn away.  Yes, that's right friends: I'm a native Californian pseudo-foodie who does not like avocados. It happens. I should say, however, that I adore guacamole, so really it comes down to disliking large slices of avocado. I can handle small chunks. Moving on. In short, this recipe is fantastic and I would absolutely recommend it for summer! I used a bit more lemon juice, and added some parmesan to the sauce during the blending phase, but no other adjustments. 2 avocados, lemon juice, basil + one immersion blender and it is the easiest sauce ever. I think I'd add a bit more basil next time, but that is really dependent on how much one likes traditional pesto. I ser...

So, as part of the Lady of Shallots Get Healthy in 2013 Plan, we are eating vegetarian at least three nights a week.  Tonight's dinner threatened to be too light, but I cut the liquid down a bit to make this soup a very hearty and wonderful meal in itself. I also like that it is seasonal, and if I had been very noble, I would have walked to the Winter Farmers Market this morning in 13 degrees to get local parsnips and carrots. Unfortunately, I sold out and let my husband go grocery shopping instead. I also apologize for the poor quality photos--I'm in need of a new card reader for my camera.  I did chop/blend in small batches, and added water in small portions until I had my desired consistency.  If I was serving this as a side, I'd add more water. I also added parsley and more pepper after I pureed it. Very well-balanced as the roasting makes the parsnips more interesting. Also, I was too lazy to make olive oil toasts, so fresh baguette sufficed. And...I used my...

Normally I'd make this in the summer, but holiday over-indulgence means healthy eating in January. The cannellini beans here provide just enough texture to make this a reasonable main course. The flavors are really well-balanced and the dressing is the easiest thing in the world: lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.  The fennel keeps everything very fresh-tasting, and the lemon extracts some of the "fishiness" from the tuna. Be sure to rinse the beans (if using canned) and drain the tuna. Recipe HERE

Last Sunday's dinner was one of my better successes in creating an entire meal, by myself.  That may seem like a strange thing to say, but what usually ends up happening is that I choose a challenging entrée to which I must devote all my time and attention. When my husband gets home from work, then, the first thing out of my mouth is usually, "Can you make the salad?"  Just what everyone wants to hear when they get home from work, I know. (I'm hoping he remembers that time I did have a martini waiting for him when he walked in the door...that's got to be worth something, right? It happened once.) Now, the Lord of Shallots does not go to work on Sunday, but I really wanted to cook something new, but something easy that would allow me to concentrate on the entire meal. Enter sole.  Sole, like tilapia and other thinner fishes, is a great fish to cook when you don't have a lot of time. I had picked up some grey sole at the Farmers Market, and found this recipe ...

My husband arrived home from work one day with some smoked trout from a generous colleague. I had never cooked with smoked trout, but I figured it was a good bet that it could be used in similar ways to smoked salmon. We had it that night in a salad, and then for the next morning, Rebecca's Smoked Trout Scramble was born...and it was VERY good. Smoked Trout Scramble  Serves 2 INGREDIENTS: 4 eggs1 tablespoon of milk smoked trout (equivalent of 1-2 filets, deboned) fresh dill, chopped (1-2 tablespoons, depending on your taste) 2 tablespoons butter (unsalted), split into 1 tablespoon sections salt* (use sparingly, especially if using salted butter) freshly ground pepper  3 spring leeks, thinly sliced (white/light green parts only) fresh basil, 3-4 leaves thinly sliced into strips DIRECTIONS: In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, trout, dill, and salt & pepper (to taste) Sauté the leeks in 1 tablespoon of the butter until tender, with some of the outer l...

More Quinoa!  This was healthy, easy, and, "a way I actually *like* quinoa" as reported by my husband.  The recipe is here , and I made the following notes: stir the quinoa in the oil and leeks for 2-3 minutes before adding the broth definitely use low-sodium chicken broth---quinoa absorbs salt very well and I found that the regular chicken broth was too salty.  If you are using homemade stock or veggie broth, you are probably fine. I will add the snap peas last next time (with the artichoke hearts). I like my peas to retain their "snap." This is really a terrific meal for summer or to bring to a potluck.

Usually I prefer to consult recipes, then go shopping, then cook...in that order.  There's something about the logic of it all that I find comforting, let's say. This past Saturday, my trip to the Farmers' Market came prior to figuring out what I was going to make for dinner, so at 4:30 or so in the afternoon, I felt the familiar dread creep upon me. I hate cooking when I'm limited to whatever ingredients I have on hand, even when they are freshly purchased scapes, asparagus, snow peas, etc. After a brief perusal of past posts regarding scapes and asparagus, I decided I would roast both, even though I have never roasted scapes. I was also looking for an excuse to use some wonderful linguine al nero di seppia that a friend brought back from Venice, so the scallops seemed a no-brainer after that. Roasted Scapes and Asparagus 1 bunch of asparagus, cut into 2 inch pieces (I used the tips only) 4-5 scapes, cut into 2 inch pieces (leave off the thinnest part of the...