Recently I welcomed Tara Punzone to my home kitchen to show me how to prepare her scrumptious Pesto Cavatelli. Punzone is the celebrated vegan chef behind Pura Vita, the 100 percent plant-based Italian restaurant and wine bar in West Hollywood. Her new cookbook, “Vegana Italiana” (Rodale), is a lively celebration of old-world Italian flavors transformed to be entirely plant-based. No…
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For just a couple more weeks, it will be fresh Hatch chilies season. Their flavorful flesh takes on an alluring scent when roasted. Once roasted, peeled and seeded, they are irresistible in a wide variety of dishes. One of my favorite ways to use them is to show them off in a Hatch Chili New Mexican Style Sauce. As the…
This colorful salad is a luscious addition to brunches, or showcased on a buffet table. Guests who have lukewarm attitudes towards fruit salad my find themselves coming back for seconds! Switch up the ingredients to align with the season. In the summer when stone fruit is at its best, include some plums, or apricots, or nectarines. Plums are divine. In…
Skillet-toasted cheese bread is super delicious with this perky salad. I found this salad recipe from PBS television star Lidia Bastianich’s newsletter. Bastianich, restauranteur, and cookbook author, pairs a salad of radicchio, endive, apple, and pecorino cheese with skillet-toasted cheese toasts. I’ve modified her recipe to add Bibb lettuce to the mix and reduce the amount of radicchio and endive….
Shishito peppers make such an irresistible snack – grassy pleasure with a spicy edge. You don’t need to deep fry them. Simply sauté. In a hot skillet, within just a couple of minutes, those fresh beauties brown up and take on some caramelization sass. A little coarse salt, and voila! Bliss. In a large, deep skillet swirl a couple of…
My late mother was the queen of salads. Whenever there was a potluck gathering, the requests came early for her to be the one to bring the green salad. I thought about her as I developed the recipe for this concoction that teams crisp greens tossed with a creamy vinaigrette, and then is garnished with smashed Baby Dutch Yellow potatoes,…
Candied Pecans are scrumptious tossed into green salad or eaten out of hand as an oh-so-tasty snack. They are be utilized in everything from green beans to adorning a big slab of chocolate cake. SOME prefer using the oven, but I like the stovetop method to candy them, either in a wok or large deep skillet. The method takes just…
There’s no way to calculate the impact Julia Child had on generations of American cooks. For me, she provided a turning point in my culinary education. I cooked my way through her first book in my early 20’s, splattering the pages willy-nilly with sauce drips, softened butter or melted chocolate. “Mastering the Art of French Cooking ( Volume One)” was…