Grilled Lemongrass Beef
From chocolate covered pretzels to a salt-rimmed margarita, our palettes all crave the goodness that is sweet and salty. This recipe tackles all the taste points, with a fair share of sweet, salty and tart. I slather this simple marinade on beef and grill until charred on the outside and juicy pink on the inside, but you can certainly use it on pork or chicken as well.
Sweet Peanut Lime Dressing
This dressing is a variation of one of my favorite go-to dressings, a light citrus combo that is sweetened with a bit of sugar and honey. I use it on my Thai Chopped Salad with Crisp Noodles and Herbs, but if you leave out the peanut sauce, you can use it as the basis for a Mandarin Orange Salad or even as a marinade for meat or vegetables.
Thai Chopped Salad with Crisp Noodles and Herbs
This particular recipe reminds me of all of my favorite things about a salad – exceedingly crisp, ultra light, and super refreshing. Matchsticks of carrot, daikon and red bell pepper give an addictive crunch, and the crisp noodles help to soak up the yummy peanut lime dressing. Cilantro and mint add spice and sweetness, and the dressing gets a kick from a bit of chili and garlic. It’s all around goodness.
Irish Lamb Stew with Rosemary and Sage
Tender, marbled chunks of lamb make their home in a savory gravy enriched with onions, celery, rosemary and sage. The untraditional Irish stew ingredients of garlic and tomato give the dish body, and the dry red wine brings it all home.
Basil Lemonade
I think my first memory of perfect lemonade was from when I was a kid (I had to have been 7 or 8) at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and in an effort to stave off the DC summer heat, tried a hand-shaken lemonade for the first time. There’s something about freshly squeezed lemon juice that can’t ever be duplicated with concentrate – after that first taste, I was sold. Lemon, sugar, water – that was it.
Simple Hanger Steak
Face it, kids. Filet mignon is overrated. Yes, it’s tender. Yes, it costs more than most other steaks. But really, if you ask me for the cut that I turn to time and time again for an in-home, steakhouse experience, it’s all about the hanger steak.
Checking the Doneness of Meat
So the president is coming over to your house for dinner, and he’s bringing his good friends Abraham Lincoln and Joan of Arc. Ignoring the fact that Obama would be inviting zombies to your dinner party, you’re actually stressed over the process of properly cooking their filets. Obama wants medium rare, Lincoln likes his still [...]
String Bean and Heirloom Tomato Salad
Ok, maybe it’s not summer yet, but I do like it when I can get produce to do my bidding at any given season and remind me of the joys of a fruitful harvest from the garden. This salad, based on one that I fell in love with at the restaurant The Smith, is a bright assortment of crisp and tart, sweet and salty flavors. It’ll make you want to sit in a hammock and sway on a warm summer night.
Italian Chicken Soup
There’s something about the tender rice and chicken, salty parmasean and delicate bits of egg that make this a go-to for me whenever I need a bit of comfort. Making the stock from scratch is important, but in a pinch, you could make this with broth – just make sure you don’t leave out the egg and cheese.
Wordle Yourself!
While I was working on video tutorials for the STARTALK team on how to add content to our drupal site, I ended up doing a demo tutorial on Wordle. If you haven’t checked out Wordle yet, it’s a slick web program that takes bodies of text and converts them into artistic visual layouts. They give [...]
Making Better Chicken Stock
There’s a time and a place for pre-made stock, but if you’ve got the ingredients on hand and would like to take your soups and risottos to the next level, try your hand at making yours from scratch. It’s very forgiving to do so, and you can easily extend your ingredients into savable (read: freezable) [...]
Chicken and Rice Soup (Canja)
This soup was a part of my collective food memories well before I had even worked behind a stove. Both my Brazilian and Sicilian ancestors believed in the power of chicken and rice soup, so as a kid, if I was feeling punkish, this is what I got. If I was REALLY sick, I had this soup without the veggies and chicken – just broth and either rice or pastina (itty bitty italian pasta as small as grains of rice). To this day, if I need a comforting meal, I make a pot of Canja or Italian Chicken Soup.
Cabbage Borscht
I have so many happy memories of this soup – it’s one that my Dad has been making for years, probably back when the parents had a subscription to Bon Apetit and Gourmet mag. Every edition had sweet 70s fashions and folks curled up on shag rugs dipping wisps of beef tenderloin into the smoking oil fondue pots.
Previously Unreleased: Beat Down MS
A long while back, when I was first tasked with coming up with a logo for our NMSS team, MS is BS, I toyed around with several logos and slogans. In the process, I came up with this sweet jammy that we’ve subsequently done nothing with. What do you guys think? Would you wear it? [...]
Soy un perdedor (But Still a Happy Camper)
So, I didn’t win the dubious honors of having my designs on not one but two NMSS event t-shirts, but I’m comforted by the fact that the race was close (according to the folks of Walk MS). I still like my weary road of orange footprints – what do you guys think?
Looking forward to the [...]