Sassy Radish

Pesto and I had a bit of a rough start. I first tried it on a pizza and I didn’t like it. We were sitting in a North End pizzeria in Boston, on a middle-school trip, and a girl I thought was amazingly cool and knew all things worth knowing, ordered a pizza with pesto. I had no idea what it was, and was too shy to ask, not wanting to seem even less cool than I already was.

A few minutes later it arrived, golden and bubbling, studded with green, oily blobs of pesto. It was potent and garlicky-smelling, but it wasn’t calling out to me. My suspicions proved right – aside from not looking good, it also wasn’t very good. It tasted stale, rancid, and too oily. Looking back, I realize it wasn’t very good pesto, but back then I just thought pesto wasn’t for me. I didn’t know the difference between good and bad.

Continue reading pesto.

There comes a time, in every pantry’s life, when you have to manage your resources. It’s almost shameful to be a cook and let your food spoil. KS, at heart, is a functional, practical, resource-allocating cook. I, on the other hand, have my head in the clouds, dreaming of dinners in the afternoon and compiling a mental check list of food stuffs to pick up en route home. It mostly works out well, as we balance each other out, me with my flights of fancy, and him with a practical approach to our crisper. The Swiss chard, among other vegetables thanks him for it.

But sometimes, I too exhibit practical, creative thoughts when it comes to resource management with our perishables. I look at our ingredients in need of attention et voilà, a dish is born. This time, I think I did quite well – not to pat myself on the back!

From my farmers market trip on Saturday, our fridge still held among other things, half a bunch of dill, some green onions and the spring garlic that I simply cannot get enough of. The spring garlic came with long, exotic looking greens that looked beautiful enough to use as flowers in a large vase, if only I didn’t have plans for them of the kitchen variety. I stared at these ingredients long enough to realize I had half a cup of pine nuts sitting around. And suddenly it all came together – a dill pesto with green onions and spring garlic greens!

Growing up, I used to joke that if my mother could make cupcakes out of dill, she would. Of course, that which we mock when we’re young comes to afflict us when we grow up. Surely enough, I am as much of a dill fanatic, if not more so, than my mother, and I bet she’s having the last laugh now. The pesto, a summery twist on a classic, came out beautifully, with a delicate summer flavor and a pungent garlic bite that gave the perfect dressing for our bow-tie pasta, which, I am ashamed to admit; we bought, and did not make. And I am certain that as I ate my bow-ties by the spoonfuls, I heard the pasta machine whimper in the pantry.

Continue reading spring garlic and dill pesto.

On hot and muggy summer nights, such as ones we’re getting in New York right now, it’s hard to develop much of an appetite. It’s also hard to muster any desire to cook. Diets become salads and fruit. Water consumption grows. White wine replaces red, at least for the time being.

I have been in study mode and so cooking until I am done with studying is out of the questions. Hence I cheat. Here, that is. I think of recipes and articles to post for you all to read that doesn’t require me actually cooking anything at the moment. Forgive me my sins so far, I promise that I’ll make this site worth your while.

And so. Back to the sticky weather. Last night I returned home in a foul mood. My day went from magically lucky to horribly wrong. I won’t go into the sordid details, but I almost broke down in tears on the phone when a rather sensitive issue was brought up. Something had to change in my day and that something had to be food.

Now, I am not suggesting that every time you have a bad day, you seek out food as therapy. That could run dangerous. But I do think that a glass of lemonade, some tea, a bit of port – life’s little luxuries – will brighten up your day and calm you a bit.

I raided my fridge only to find some chocolates, chilled white wine, hummus, bread, raspberries & cream. Instantly, I remembered a dessert a friend of mine and I used to make in school. She grew up with an English nanny and remembered her nanny giving her raspberries & cream for dessert in the summer. It was light, delicious and most of all, a little luxurious pampering I needed.

In less than a minute, I had myself a heaping bowl of fresh raspberries coated with cream. It was joyous! It was better than anything I had all day. And I instantly had a smile on my face. My otherwise horrid day disappeared into memory land.

The process is quite simple:

A pint of raspberries
1/4 – 1/2 cup of cream (depending on how you like it)