This may be served with a lamb or poultry dish along with rice or a flatbread. It is light and lemony and is one of my favorite dishes for entertaining. In the summer, you may serve it cold as part of a buffet.
There’s almost always an aloo (potato) chaat vendor at the Old Junction train station near Chandni Chowk. I usually hear the sizzle of frying potatoes and catch their earthy aroma before I spot him. This chaat recipe is found throughout most of northern India and also makes an appearance in some eastern and western regions, where the ingredients vary based upon what vegetables are in season; that said, tomatoes, red onions, radishes, and cucumbers are all frequent dance partners. I recommend peeling the potatoes once they’re cool enough to handle but still warm enough so the skins will slip off easily, and then frying them up just after peeling to avoid gumminess. I like to use Kashmiri red chile powder in this recipe, but any fiery red chile powder will do. This chaat doesn’t keep well and should be eaten before the sev (fried chickpea noodles) get a chance to become soggy.
A word of advice: when visiting family, do not take this cake along and expect to leave with the leftovers, unless you intend to spark a family feud. Another tip: save the pear juice from the can and boil it in a saucepan, over medium-high heat, until reduced by half. Brush it on the cake right out of the oven. A delight!
Striking in appearance but with simple summer ingredients, this vegetable tart is a true centre piece dish. An easy press-in pastry with buttery almond flour, almond butter pesto, and the best hot-weather veg make for a robustly flavoured meal. This makes a great picnic dish and tastes just as good at room temperature as it does fresh out of the oven.
Pesto and pasta are two peas in a pod, so to do a variation with mac n’ cheese isn’t really a stretch. But I bulked up this simple idea with other yummy green things, like peas, so that you feel like the epitome of health eating it. It’s also got mixed greens, ’cause we all need more of those, and chopped pistachios for a crunchy green addition on top. She’s the prettiest of the group and you’re going to be very fond of her.
At my farmers’ market, a couple of vendors give away fennel stalks and fronds. Most fennel buyers want the stalks and fronds lopped off, nipping what- on- earth- do- I- do- with- this- stuff guilt in the bulb. So, I get one of the main parts of this pesto for free— the wispy fronds. However, if this cookbook sells so well that it drives up the price of fennel fronds, I apologize. Although I have no tips on how or where to find flour for free, I can save you a lot of money on expensive tools to make pasta. Homemade pasta does turn out beautifully when you run the dough through a pasta machine, but if you don’t have one, then a work surface, a knife, and a rolling pin will suffice. And if you have a clean wine bottle, the rolling pin becomes optional, Chef MacGyver.
Twice a week I brave the hour-and-a-half commute from the suburbs of New York to Brooklyn to work at Cup of Jo, the lifestyle website run by enthusiast extraordinaire Joanna Goddard. I look forward to these days for the camaraderie and creative collaboration, etc., etc., but also because her office is in Boerum Hill, with access to the kind of coffee and take-out food that just doesn’t exist where I live. Even the chains are better: When plant-based Honeygrow (a Northeast DIY salad chain) opened up a few blocks away, I became obsessed with a magical combination of firm-but-tender wheat berries, sweet grapes, salty feta, and spicy nuts. I ate the salad so often my office mates started ordering it, too, calling it “The Jenny Salad.” I talked about it so much that I ended up creating a—dare I say—even better version for my family back in the burbs. I always make extra so I have leftovers for lunch.
No more lies! Soup on a restaurant menu should be an indication that the kitchen is working to minimize food waste, using up any vegetable trim and scraps that would otherwise end up in the landfill. We always have a rotating soup, one that helps us to make the best use of our ingredients while remaining seasonal. With that, we couldn’t help but include this recipe for one of our favorite winter soups. It’s as comforting as it gets, like your favorite oversized wool sweater. Feel free to get creative and add any clean vegetable trim you have lying around.
A far cry from a classic shakshuka, yes, but we’ve found that sweet potatoes provide just the right amount of moisture and heft to serve as a base for these eggs. Serve this vibrant dish as a weekend brunch; it sure looks the part.
Crumbles are not Italian, but I have learned to love them because they are very Italian in spirit—fresh fruit and a simple topping come together to create a homey dessert everyone will love. The trick to making a crisp, clumpy topping is to squeeze the clumps a little.