Keema Matar

My friend’s mom visited her for a month and bought all the spices to cook Indian food, even though she already had all of them in her pantry. So lucky me – she gave me all the duplicates! I used them to make Keema Matar (ground meat with peas). Guessipe Sauté the onion in olive…

3.14 Pi(e) Day VI

This is actually my 7th annual Pie Day, but last year we did it as a Cookbook Club event. Can you believe it!? Seven times I’ve gotten to stuff myself to the gills with pie… and hopefully many more to come. Savory Pies Nick made a Tomato Cheese Pie. Does that sound familiar? Well that’s…

Peruvian-Inspired Pie

I decided to do a Peruvian theme for a recent dinner party, since I had some aji panca paste I’ve been itching to use. Arroz Tapado (ground beef layered with rice, peas, and carrots) is one of the traditional dishes that uses aji panca, but one of my dinner guests doesn’t eat rice, so I…

Sweet Pea Soup with Coconut and Ginger

Cookbook Club – In Bibi’s Kitchen In October we used Hawa Hassan’s cookbook In Bibi’s Kitchen for Cookbook Club. Hassan gathered the stories and recipes of bibis (grandmothers) from eight African nations: Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar, and Comoros. To get a taste of the foods we tried from these bibis’ kitchens,…

Turkey Tetrazzini

This was one of my mom’s go-to dishes when I was a kid. The creamy cheesy goodness made it such good comfort food. I always imagined it was a lot of work to make, so I was thrilled when my mom told me it’s pretty much just an assemblage of freezer and pantry items plus…

Peas with Lemon and Mint

Cookbook Club – The Kitchen Diaries For our first cookbook of 2019, we chose Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries, which was probably appropriate to kick off the new year as in it he chronicles a year of his own cooking and eating. You can cook a lot of food in a year, so there were…

Turkey Pot Pie

Turkey is one of my least favorite meats, but what’s one way to make it better? Combine it with one of my favorite foods… pie! While I don’t look forward to the Thanksgiving turkey meal, I do look forward to turning that leftover turkey into a creamy savory turkey pot pie. If you want to…

Le Comptoir Restaurant Review

Gold Dig #69 Le Comptoir is one of the most intimate experiences on Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants list. There are only two seatings per night, in which 10 lucky people get to sit at the counter watching Chef Gary Menes prepare and plate the 8-course set menu. He starts with an introduction describing that…

Ramen Salad

I’m not gonna lie… instant ramen is delicious. It was one of my favorite snacks as a kid, and it was only later in life that I discovered it has almost no nutritional value. But it’s still delicious. So use it to make this super easy salad, and you get the flavor you love in…

Split Pea Soup

During this time of year, the holiday ham inevitably makes an appearance. While chowing down on sliced ham has never been my thing, ham is pretty wonderful for making a hearty, warming pot of split pea soup. If you have the ham hock, throw that in too, as it will add great flavor. Otherwise, just…

Creamy Pea Salad

When I was a kid, there was a restaurant my family would go to for occasions like birthday celebrations. The rest of the food was good, but we really went there for the pea salad. Normally a salad would not be the big draw in our restaurant choices, but there was something about this pea…