My husband is always asking for a healthy, broth-forward soup. My reply is this squash, chicken, and cannellini bean soup. Since many of my recipes begin with a game of “what can I make with my CSA box this week,” it should come as no surprise that this soup evolved from a Two Dog Farms CSA box.
Lucky for me, our summer vacation to visit my Aunt and Uncle in North Truro coincided with blueberry season. I was delighted to go wild blueberry picking near the dunes with their friend, Ira. We let some air out of the tires, and Ira drove us to his secret location. We were quickly enveloped in curtains of blueberry bushes the size of redwood trees. I entered “the zone” and began to pluck the large, vibrant berries from the bushes with methodical precision. Too much pressure and you could rupture the berry in your fingers. It was an artful dance to procure the ripest blueberries for pancakes and muffins. At the end of the morning, my stomach was almost as full of berries as my bucket.
The food Chicago offers, from a hot dog at Portillo’s to a re-imagined edible abstract painting dessert at Alinea, is magical and provides much needed inspiration for my culinary adventures when I return home. Sometimes, inspiration strikes when dining in a Restoration Hardware. This green goddess dressing was inspired by the Gem Lettuce Salad at the Three Arts Club within the Chicago Restoration Hardware. Yes, my favorite salad is served inside a furniture retailer. I beg you to trust me. This salad features baby gem lettuce, crumbles of feta cheese, thinly sliced radishes, and chunks of avocado all bathed in the herbiest buttermilk dressing.
As the rainy spring days fade away and the summer heat envelops the South, my herbs struggle to find enough shade and water to prevent wilting. A small snip here and there for a sauce, biscuit, or soup leaves my herbs looking like a four-year-old accidentally found a pair of kitchen shears. This chicken soup is packed with herbs from my garden and showcases some of my favorite herbs in the garden. While not as delicious as my mother’s chicken pot pie, this one will do.
For me, the Italian American classic weeknight dinner staple is inevitably intertwined with an orange cartoon cat. Perhaps the manufacturers behind Stouffers frozen lasagna had invested in the constant lasagna feeding frenzy present within nearly every Garfield episode in the late 1980s. If they weren’t behind all the direct consumer marketing, then they should have been because I requested lasagna more than my brother requested canned spinach (thanks Popeye). The lasagna of my childhood was mostly noodles with marina and a small amount of cheese and meat sprinkled inadvertently throughout the layers upon layers of noodle.
My husband loves anything truffle. Truffle butter, truffle salt, truffle eggs, and my truffle potato salad. He also doesn’t discriminate with his truffles. He loves all truffles equally, even gleefully claiming that he would bath in anything truffle. Two of our favorite people, Marina and Dave, used to live on the same block as Urbani Truffles in New York City. When we visited one December, during white truffle season, we made the oh-so-easy pilgrimage to Urbani. We opened the doors and were immersed in truffle. Everything smelled of truffle. I think my husband’s glasses fogged over with truffle shavings. It was his food heaven.
I accidentally made this pasta one night when I came home from work, a little late, and didn’t have enough time to make my usual marinara sauce. I also didn’t have any red wine around…but luckily did have an already open bottle of sauvignon blanc. I wouldn’t normally think to combine white wine and Italian sausage, but the Romans often combine guanciale with white wine to make an amatriciana sauce…so why not?
There is nothing like the perfectly brined and roasted chicken leg with the combination of crunchy browned skin on a cold winter night. This is a one-pot dinner that when cooked perfectly is just as masterful as leather fruit served in the shape of a beetle (RIP Noma). Just because a combination of flavors might seem mundane, doesn’t mean that a symphony of flavors can’t be created that only increase in complexity, and deliciousness, with time.
