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Carrot cake has a tendency to veer into maximalist territory. If you let it, it can become a multi-layer affair with not just shredded carrots, but pineapple and raisins and even shredded coconut. But this simple carrot loaf cake is not like that. It is carrot cake stripped down to its essentials. This minimalist carrot …

Read More about Carrot Loaf Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

I’ve gone most of my life thinking I don’t particularly care for cooked carrots. Give me the raw crunchy ones any time but why bother with the cooked mush? But then I encounter them roasted or braised, cooked slowly until they are burnished with deep dark spots and a concentrated carrot flavor, and I remember …

Read More about Caramelized Carrots & Fennel with Ricotta

We’re headed into the holiday season. That time of year when those of us who enjoy spending time in the kitchen tend to run ourselves ragged. We brine turkeys, we peel apples, we challenge our upper body strength with rolling pins and potato mashers, we test the fortitude of our mixers as we churn out …

Read More about Carrot Chickpea Quinoa Salad (in poblano yogurt sauce)

Can we talk about fish sauce for a minute? It smells terrible, but it tastes delicious—so salty and funky with all of that wonderful umami flavor. When I was a vegetarian (before I slid into pescatarianism and then back to omnivorism), the only exception I made was for fish sauce. I didn’t eat anything made …

Read More about Cucumber Kimchi

April Bloomfield’s first book, A Girl and Her Pig, was a big deal in the food world when it came out a couple of years ago. I heard plenty about it, but because I was vegetarian at the time, I mentally added it to the stack of meat-centric books that just weren’t for me and …

Read More about Roasted Carrots with Burrata and Carrot-Top Pesto and a Review of A Girl and Her Greens

It is officially spring. But official spring never feels like the spring that exists in my imagination. The mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful spring with green shoots and sun peaking through rain and warm breezes and new beginnings. Official spring in Chicago is something altogether different. It is one day in a series of false starts. It is …

Read More about Vietnamese Flank Steak with Citrus-Mint Cabbage Salad