I grew up on canned beets. Yuck. I never tasted a fresh beet until I was in my 30s. What a difference! When small, fresh beets can be as sweet as candy. Here’s an easy way to cook them, especially if you’re already cooking something in the oven: Trim the beets and wash them. If [...]
Posts under ‘Recipes’
Summer Recipe: Strawberry-Rhubarb-Apricot Pie
(Apricot-Cherry-Rhubarb Pie, before baking.) An innovation born of availability, this pie combines the traditional strawberry-rhubarb with the delicate taste of apricots. Ingredients: 2 cups fresh strawberries 1/2 cup fresh rhubarb stalks 1-1/2 cups fresh apricots ——————- 1/4 cup dry tapioca 1/4 cup (or more) fructose (or your preferred sweetener) 3/4 cup apple juice ——————– two [...]
Easy Brazilian Cheese Bread
After posting the moqueca recipe, several of you asked if I had a recipe for Pão de Queijo, or Brazilian cheese bread, sort of like a chewy cheese puff made with tapioca flour. As a matter of fact, I do. My friend Bill gave me this recipe years ago, a favorite from his Brazilian wife [...]
Smaller than a breadbox…Handmade Biscuits
Biscuit. I can’t really think of a more confusing food word. I mean really. Think of it. A biscuit. What comes to mind? Depends on where you’re from it seems. [...edited for brevity...] Biscuits are the perfect thing for when you want something homemade, fresh out of the oven, with very little effort involved at all. [...]
And more cooking resources
For those not inclined to vegetarianism, Google Books has a multitude of cookbooks available, including Mrs. Hale’s New Cookbook (Philadelphia: Peterson & Brothers, 1857). Check out her recipe for dressing a lamb’s head. (Ick!) The book is heavy on meat, but also includes churning and curing butter, making two types of cheeses, and cleaning tips [...]
Vegetarian Times available free online
Google Book Search, a database of over 10 million printed works, offers magazines for reading online. Included is Vegetarian Times, the classic journal for vegetarians. (When I was vegetarian, I subscribed.) Issues available range from 1980 to 2004. They are not downloadable, but they do offer online browsing– and you can save links to pages [...]
How to make Paneer
In India, they use a fresh cheese called “paneer.” It’s very similar to ricotta, however it’s pressed into a semisoft block instead of a loose cheese. Making it is also similar– and easy! You’ll need: 1 gallon milk 4 Tbs lemon juice In a heavy pot (I recommend non-stick), bring the milk to a full [...]
Make Ricotta at home
(CBertel photo.) Ricotta is a fresh cheese, and is often made from the whey left over from the cheesemaking process. It captures a protein called albumin from the milk, which is left behind when making Ricotta can also be made with milk. In fact, you can make it easily with just the ingredients you’re likely to [...]
Preserving Plums: Prunes
Some friends gave us a whole box of plums, the variety used for cooking and drying. We ate quite a few of them, but there’s no way we could eat the whole box. So we did the obvious: we made prunes with a lot of them. Like many other fruits, plums are easy to dry: [...]
Chard: Last Vegetable Standing
Several weeks after our first frost, with many nights dipping into the low teens, only the hardiest of vegetables are still standing. In our garden, that means chard, our last surviving crop. We planted five-color chard for the second year this year and found it not only tasty, but sturdy as well. We like it [...]
