Do Try This At Home (in the kitchen)
Waste Not, Want Not: There’s a Quick Vegetable Soup in Your Fridge
Written by Margaret McArthurPerhaps your fridge is tidy. Perhaps you’re a wise produce shopper and an organized cook. Perhaps when you open your vegetable drawer you don’t find a mere two carrots, a nub of lettuce too small to satisfy a baby rabbit, and a big zucchini your gardening neighbor unloaded on you.
Heat makes me languid, which sounds more elegant than lazy. I refused to let summer slip away without baking a blueberry pie—it was all I could have wished for, and it represents the sum of my time in the pastry kitchen since Memorial Day.
Do you remember when flank steak was a budget cut? When a beefy tender chuck-eye was $1.99 a pound, before it got renamed “The Poor Man’s Delmonico,” and the price per pound rose overnight to $4.99?
Ratatouille from the Warrenville Farmers’ Market
Written by Margaret McArthurI don’t know if we’ll ever eke out the euros for a year in
Shopping there on that torrid afternoon even felt like
I was chatting with my daughter a while back, and she mentioned that she and her husband had hosted a little dinner party.
Her guests had all but raised their plates to their faces and licked them, but the Hostess Bonus was that the recipe was flat dab simple.
Southeast Asian Pasta Salad: They Really Do It Better
Written by Margaret McArthurI am on record as disliking pasta salad. The pasta is either too slippery and undercooked or starchy and overcooked.
At a cookout, the dressing usually comes from a bottle, the vegetables always seem as though they have been gathered from a Target veggie tray, and the salami always feels too chunky in my mouth.
Cheap,
Couscous Salad: Out of Africa and Onto the Picnic Table
Written by Margaret McArthurIt’s only the beginning of June, and I’ve already been asked to tote a “side” to two cookouts. Sides—sigh . Someday I’m going to write a book about sides. Potato salad, coleslaw, baked beans, the “crudité” plate (please peel your own carrots, OK?); they’re the stalwart summer sides.
Ricotta Cheesecake: Tasty Fun in the Summertime
Written by Margaret McArthurI’ve never met a cheesecake I didn’t like, from the timid Sara Lee tinfoil version to a leaden deli wedge covered with day glo gloppy strawberries. These two represent the polar opposites of mediocre cheesecake, but there are so many hedonistic byways between these extremes that it’s a miracle that I can fit into (almost) the same jeans size I wore in high school.
Yeah, those crazy Tuscans! When I first spotted this recipe in the New York Times a few years ago, I rolled my eyes. C’mon—sausages cooked with grapes? But it makes sense:
Making a classic soufflé is not brain surgery. Follow the recipe, separate those eggs, beat the whites, and use a light hand with the spatula when you fold it all together.
Refrain from practicing dance moves in the kitchen lest it slump in the oven, and don’t open the oven door until the timer goes off.
