Every September, I look forward to the baskets of fragrant grape varietals that Klug Farm brings to the Green City Market. Canadice, Einset, Interlaken, Jupiter, and Thomcord grapes bear little resemblance to the blandly sweet red and green grapes that you find at most supermarkets. And unlike Concords, they don’t have pesky seeds. They’re complex, …
Olive oil
I have this love-hate relationship with eggplant. Almost anyone who has ever been a vegetarian has been served some sad bitter under- or over-cooked eggplant dish as the vegetarian option at a mediocre catered event. Maybe it’s a greasy, oddly chewy eggplant parmesan or part of the sad filling next to the limp and watery …
I’ve been on something of a pea kick. I’ve been zizzing them with mint and olive oil and slathering them on toast, I’ve been tossing them with spring onions and spring garlic and bits of smoked mozzarella and piling them on thinly stretched dough for a seasonal take on pizza, but I haven’t stopped there …
Last week was the first week for peas at the market. It’s a time I look forward to every year, and it never seems to come soon enough. There’s something special about really fresh peas. When I was growing up in Michigan, even though I wasn’t much of a vegetable eater as a kid, I …
When it comes to springtime foraged vegetables, ramps (also known as wild leeks), have gotten the bulk of the chef and food world attention. I like ramps as much as the next tedious food geek droning on about the pungent wonders of spring’s first local seasonal edible green thing, but there’s some concern that the …
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 …