About Roasted Asparagus

Why roast asparagus? Crunch and caramelization, both of which are BEST. So luckily this is pretty easy. Just make sure you use thick-stalked asparagus. And if the stalks feel particularly woody you can peel off the tough outer layer with a vegetable peeler. Then just lay them out on a foil-lined sheet pan:



Add a glug of olive oil and a couple pinches of salt and pepper, then mix all that up with your hands:



Then put the sheet pan on the bottom rack of an oven pre-heated to 450 F. After 10 minutes flip your spears over and cook for another 10 minutes. Serve and enjoy!

About Vegetable Soup

So the weather outside is weather, specifically unreasonably unseasonably warm weather--I think it's been in the 80s all week? RIDICULOUS. Even more ridiculous is that in the middle of all this I made SOUP for dinner. HOT SOUP. HOT VEGETABLE SOUP. Please don't bring this up in a couple months when it's 129 degrees outside and I'm in the midst of one of my annual summer WHIIIIIIIIIIIIINE sessions.

But really, I have a very good reason for making this. See, the last few weeks? I've been eating nothing but pizza and wings and poutine and all other manner of, just, crap? And my dresses maybe feel more like sausage casings? So perhaps I need to rethink my eating habits a bit? Would you like another unnecessary question mark? There you go.

This recipe is insanely healthy for you; it's basically nothing but vegetables after all. And luckily, it is delicious. It's seriously one of my favorite soup recipes, so much so that a couple of years ago I pretty much had a bowl every day and accidentally lost 15 pounds. Bonus! It's also really easy since the measurements aren't exactly precise. Like, you see how I say you need 2 cups of some sort of leafy green vegetable down there? Well, for some reason I always end up adding, like, 3 pounds of kale. (I really like kale.)

This makes a lot, but don't worry; it freezes beautifully. Here's what you need:

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion
• 2 medium carrots
• 1-2 stalks of celery
• 1 medium red bell pepper
• 3+ cloves of garlic
• 6 cups broth or water
• 3-4 sprigs of thyme
• 1-2 bay leaves
• 2 small zucchini
• 1 medium head of broccoli
• ½ medium head of cauliflower
• ½ small head of cabbage
• About 61 cents' worth of dark, leafy greens (or 2 cups, shredded)
• 1 lemon
• A couple tablespoons of fresh herbs (parsley, dill, and chives are especially nice)

First thing is that you're going to want to give all of that vegetable matter up there a rough chop. Don't worry about getting a perfect dice, because it's all gonna end up blended together anyway. (That is, unless you don't want a blended soup, in which case you should make sure each cube is perfectly symmetrical and exactly the same size. It's what the French would have wanted.)



In a dutch oven or stock pot (something big, basically), heat the oil over medium-high heat until it starts to shimmer. Saute the aromatics (your onion, carrots, celery, bell pepper, and garlic) with a pinch of salt until they soften.



At this point you can deglaze the pan with a glug or two of white wine if you happen to have any around. When the wine has almost entirely evaporated, add the both. (If you don't have any wine then just add the broth.) Crank the heat up to high and add the thyme, bay leaves, and the rest of your vegetables.

Now, if you've got my crazy kale addiction, chances are everything won't fit in the pot so good. But NEVER FEAR. Just slap a lid on that sucker and in a scant couple minutes your leafy greens will be wilted enough for you to give everything a good stir.



Once the pot comes to a boil, turn the heat way down and let everything simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, or however long it takes for everything to become nice and tender without overcooking it into mush.



Fish out the thyme stalks and bay leaves and blend that shit up.



Add the juice of that lemon I told you to get, and then salt and pepper it to taste. (My guess is that you'll need a fair bit of salt.) And you're pretty much ready to go. Just ladle some soup into a bowl and garnish it with some of those fresh herbs I told you to get. (If you're feeling particularly fancy, you can also add a dollop of sour cream or Greek yogurt.)



Let the healthy eating begin!

About Prepping Greens

Not just any greens, mind you. I'm talking about the dark green leafy vegetables that are pretty much the healthiest foods on the planet.

Wait a sec, that's not actually entirely accurate. What I'm REALLY talking about is a subset of the dark green leafy vegetables that are pretty much the healthiest foods on the planet, namely the kinds with big leaves and big stalks. And what kinds are those? Oh, you know, collard greens and mustard greens and turnip greens and Swiss chard and kale. In other words, the Southern kind.

The thing about the Southern kind is that because the leaves are so big, the stalks are big. And big stalks take a lot longer to cook than leaves, no matter how big those leaves are. So in order to cook greens just right, you need to first separate the leaves from the stalks. How does one do this, you ask? Just watch this handy instructional video:



And while we're on the topic of greens, please enjoy this picture of adorable Capitals defenseman Mike Green:

About Cleaning a Bell Pepper

Does it insult your intelligence to post this? I'm not sure I really care.

About Chilled Zucchini Soup

Blah, blah, blah, HOT AS BALLS, blahblahblaaaaaaaah. I don't know, it's HOT AS BALLS. But Vahid asked for more summer recipes, and this is a really good one, especially as it's almost the exact opposite of HOT AS BALLS. Which would be cold as cubes? I don't know, my brain is fried on account of it's HOT AS BALLS.

ANYWAY, this joins the pantheon of cold soups I've shared on this here website, and like those others it's delish. (What did I just do there? I DON'T KNOW. Random letters are just coming off my fingertips right now. Let's move on.) Soooo... for about 4-6 servings (or one really, really big serving you bloody pig), you'll need:

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 large shallots, thinly sliced crosswise like this:
• 
• 4 large zucchini, peeled and halved lengthwise, then cut into thin slices like this:
• 
• 2 strips of fresh lemon zest, about the width of your vegetable peeler and the length of your lemon, sort of this this:
• 
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 3/4 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
• 1 3/4 cups water
• 1 cup loosely packed fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh dill, or about this much:
• 
• 6 ounces plain Greek yogurt

Heat up your olive oil in a 4-quart heavy saucepan or dutch oven over moderate heat. Add the shallots, and cook those down for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally until they're softened. They'll go from this:

to this:


Add your zucchini, lemon zest, salt, and pepper, and cook those down for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally until the zucchini is softened.

They'll go from this:

to this:


Next up, add your broth and water (this is what makes it soup!), and simmer everything for about 3 minutes until the zucchini is tender.



Throw your herbs in the pot.



Then, working in batches, puree the soup in a blender until it's smooth. IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE (although it's not to the side, which I guess makes it more of an IMPORTANT WITHIN-PARAGRAPH NOTE): When pureeing hot liquids in a blender, make sure you take the little nubbin thing off of the blender lid. I don't really know what that's called, if it's called anything at all, but it's the thing that leaves a giant hole in the lid. And now you're probably asking yourself why you'd want a giant hole in the blender lid, because isn't a lid supposed to, you know, seal shit up? And this is true, but if you don't have a giant hole in the lid when you're blending hot liquids there would be no place for steam to escape and with no place for steam to escape you get HOT STEAMING EXPLOSIONS. Hence, the Industrial Revolution.

But, you still have a giant hole in the lid which can (and does, believe me) lead to splash back, so just hold a kitchen towel over the hole to catch any soup that might be organizing a massive jailbreak.

Or, you know, you could just buy a stick blender and use that to puree your soup right in the pot. Like this!



Set that aside to cool. Once it's at room temperature, whisk in the yogurt.



Give it a taste, and add more salt if you need it. Then stick that bad boy (or girl, whatever) in the fridge and let it chiiiiiiiillax for a few hours. When it's cold, it's ready to serve!



Stay cool, friends!

About Roasted Acorn Squash with Marmalade

Brrr. Sure is getting cold out there, huh? Looks like that long, hot, disgusting summer is finally gone for good, and can I just say? THANK YOU SANTA. And lest you need a kindergarten lesson in the calendar, when summer ends the fall begins. (Speaking of The Fall, has anyone seen that movie? Because it was INCREDIBLE, and I’m not just saying that because The Piemaker is, like, super hot or anything. Which he is. I DIGRESS.)

Where was I? OH YEAH. Autumn. Which brings cooler temperatures and winter squash. Both of which I love. Now, I‘d love to give you about a billion recipes for winter squash, but my boyfriend the picky eater doesn’t like winter squash, so I think I can probably only manage a few, but we’ll start with this one and see what happens. Okay? Okay.

Acorn squash! Acorn squash is a bit of an odd duck, sort of like the illicit love child of a yellow squash and a sweet potato, which means it plays really well with butter and orange marmalade. Yes, you heard me, orange marmalade. Orange marmalade is one of my favorite things on Earth. I like it in my gin, I like it on my rye toast, and I like it on my acorn squash. Just mix two tablespoons of marmalade with one tablespoon of softened butter and proceed as follows.

Preheat your oven to 400 F. The prepare the acorn squash but cutting it in half and removing the seeds and strings in the center of each half with a spoon.



Place the halves cut-side down in a shallow pan or baking dish filled with 1/4 inch of water.



Put that in your preheated oven and bake it for 35 minutes. Then turn the squash halves over, and prick each half several times with a fork. Sprinkle the acorn squash with salt and pepper, and spoon your marmalade mixture over each half.



Broil that up for about 5 minutes or until it’s lightly browned around the edges. And viola! Acorn squash!

About Basil and Lime Creamed Corn

Is it weird for me to do a variation of creamed corn when I have yet to give you a recipe for just plain creamed corn? Yes? No? Do I care? Not really.

I’m back from a week in the Pacific Northwest, a week that was very decidedly NOT hot as balls. And now that I’m back I feel like I was away for 47 years, and oh yeah, it’s also HOT AS BALLS. Because it’s summertime. And summertime means CORMS!





Dear Santa I sure do love corn. It’s something I inherited from my mother, I think, who used to bring home 20 ears from the roadside veg stand, steam them all up in a big ol’ pot, and proceed to eat all 20 ears all by herself.



My boyfriend, however, is lazy. He does not like to eat corn on the cob.



But he will eat corn if I do most of the work for him, which does NOT mean, by the way, that I chew it up and regurgitate it back into his mouth like he’s some kind of baby bird EW GROSS YOU PEOPLE ARE DISGUSTING.



(Winston, unlike many lolcats, appears to have no interest in corms.)

ANYWHO, this is my super-healthy version of creamed corn that I came up with all by myself, and it’s light and fresh and requires very little cooking at all, plus unlike real creamed corn there’s no actual cream involved, just a little creaming of the cob.

And this is how you cream a cob.

FIRST! Remove the corn kernels as originally demonstrated in this instructional video.

THEN! Use a spoon to cream the cob as demonstrated in the following instructional video:



You’re gonna want to do that over a shallow bowl or deep plate to capture all the juices that you scrape out of there. It’s slightly messy work, but it’s delicious work, and delicious is half the battle. What’s a battle? I DON’T KNOW.

Moving on. To the recipe. Which is why you’re here (presumably).

For 2 servings you’ll need:

• 2 ears of corn, kernels removed and cobs creamed
• 1/4 c diced onion or shallot
• 1 tsp butter or olive oil
• Salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste
• Splash of chicken broth or water
• 1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped
• Freshly squeezed lime juice (if you use those bottles of lime juice you’re not allowed to make my recipes anymore), to taste

Heat the oil and butter in a medium-sized skillet or saucepan over medium heat. When the oil starts to get shimmery or the butter has stopped foaming, add the onions (for sweeter creamed corn) or shallots (for slightly garlicky creamed corn), a pinch of salt and pepper, and, if you like, a bit of red pepper flakes. I don’t always add the red pepper flakes, but I was serving this with a bit of tilapia and thought the heat would be a nice contrast with the mildness of the fish. ANYWHO, saute all that until the onions/shallots become translucent and start to brown.



Add the creamed corn and a splash of broth/water. The starch from the corn creaming will thicken up the sauce and the broth/water will help the kernels cook evenly. Simmer that until the kernels are tender and the liquid has mostly evaporated.



Remove the pan from the stove and add the basil and enough lime juice for bright, tangy freshness. And add a little more salt and pepper if you think you need it.



If all went according to plan, you should now have a light, summery side dish in under ten minutes. If not, well, MY BAD.

About Cold Noodle Salad

Somethong (okay, I could fix that typo but COME ON) about the words cold, noodle, and salad together in a row like that strikes me as... funny? Odd? Somethong? Anyway, let’s get on with it, eh?

How about that thunderstorm, hey? That was some insane shit, I’ll tell you what. Winston was mesmerized by everything blowing around all over the place, and spent the majority of yesterday afternoon with his nose pressed to the window. But I guess that’s what happens when a (relatively) cold front smashes into HOT AS BALLS. (Incidentally, I tried to sit out by the pool on Saturday but my skin melted off after 37 seconds. True story.) Thankfully it’s no longer HOT AS BALLS, but it’s still pretty damn hot out there, so we’ll continue with our tour of dishes that do not require much if any use of heat-creating kitchen equipment. Hence the aforementioned cold noodle salad.

This is a recipe in two parts. We’ll tackle the noodles first. For four, healthy-sized servings you’ll need:

• A little more than half of a box of whole-wheat spaghetti
• 1/4 cup water
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoons dark sesame oil
• 2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon peanut butter

Cook the pasta according to the directions on the box. While that’s boiling, mix up the rest of the ingredients in a big bowl to make your dressing.



When the pasta is cooked, drain it, then rinse it in cold water to stop the cooking process. Drain again and toss the noodles with the dressing in your big bowl.



Then pop that big bowl in the fridge while we tackle the “salad” portion of our cold noodle salad, which consists of approximately 3 cups of whatever veg you like.



This is what I brought home from the farmers market: carrots, cucumbers, radishes, cilantro, and scallions. Other veg that would be good: baby bok choy, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, etc., etc., etc. BASICALLY, you just want to make sure your approximately 3 cups of veg is cut pretty thinly so that twirling everything onto a fork is no big whoop.

Now toss all that together with your big bowl of dressed spaghetti.



Now you have a choice: you can either serve it right away at room temperature, or you can park that baby in the fridge for an hour or so for it to chiiiiiiiill. Either way, you probably can’t go wrong.

Probably.

About Moroccan Tomato Soup

It’s too hot to cook. (If you’re reading this out loud, this is how you should say that sentence: “It’s toooooooooooo HOT to cooooooooook.” And throw in some pathetic wimpers and sobs in there while you’re at it.) Seriously, I don’t know if you’ve stepped outside any time in the last, oh, TWO MONTHS, because if you haven’t (LUCKY!), let me tell you, it is HOT AS BALLS out there. So the very last thing I want to do when I come home at the end of a long commute, deliriously meandering back to Chinatown in the 100-degree heat, is turn on the stove. (The first thing I want to do is jump in a swimming pool full of ice and unicorn tears, but that is neither here nor there.)

So, if I get around to it (shit’s busy all up in here, yo), I think I’ll try and feature some coooooool summertime recipes over the next couple of weeks. Because it is HOT AS BALLS out there.

First up: a cold tomato soup that is NOT gazpacho. I like the idea of gazpacho, and Santa knows I order gazpacho a whole heck of a lot for someone who hates gazpacho, but that’s just it; I HATE gazpacho. But this I like. It’s an old New York Times recipe that I’ve tweaked over the years, and now that tomatoes are showing up in the farmers market in full force, I (literally) crank out a batch once a week. So, let’s get started, hmm?

For four servings you’ll need:

• 5 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 1/2 teaspoons sweet paprika
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
• Large pinch of cayenne pepper
• 4 teaspoons olive oil
• 2 1/4 pounds tomatoes, cut into chunks (unless you don’t have a food mill, in which case, see below)
• 1/4 cup packed chopped cilantro
• 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
• 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1/2 large English cucumber, diced
• 2 tablespoons water

One more thing before we get started. This soup is super fresh, so if your produce doesn’t look like this:



don’t bother. Your soup will taste like crap. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Also you’ll probably need a food mill to smash up your tomatoes and remove the skins. If you don’t have a food mill, you can always use this technique, to peel your tomatoes before blending them up in a food processor, but that just sounds like a giant pain in the ass to me.

Okay so I guess that was two more things. SUE ME.

Now, in a small skillet, stir the garlic, paprika, cumin, cayenne, and olive oil together. Place the pan over medium-low heat and cook the spice mixture, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes. This will remove the bite from the garlic and bloom the flavors of the other dry spices. It’ll also make your kitchen smell like Marrakesh, without all the incense and b.o. Anyway, this is what it will look like:



Remove the pan from the heat and set aside.

Next, pass the tomato chunks through a food mill fitted with a large disk.



This is the hard part.

When your tomatoes are all milled up, stir in the cooked spice mixture, cilantro, vinegar, lemon juice, salt, cucumber, and water. (What I'm saying is, stir in the rest of your ingredients.) Give it a taste, and add more salt if you need it. Refrigerate until cold, then serve, garnished with more cilantro.



And enjoy the antioxidant rush.

Chipotle-Whipped Sweet Potatoes

Let's face it: sweet potatoes rule. AND they're super healthy for you, which combined with the fact that they rule means we end up eating them about once a week. And lately this is the way I've been making them, because though this recipe takes a while it's generally low-maintenance and gives me plenty of time to drink an entire bottle of pinot noir all by myself. Because I'm a real classy broad like that.

You'll need:

• 2 sweet potatoes, scrubbed clean (try and pick out a matching pair to that they'll cook for the same amount of time)
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• 1-2 (depending on how spicy you like your food) chipotle peppers in adobo (cans of which you can find in the Hispanic foods section of your local grocery store)
• salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Put an oven rack in the middle position and preheat that baby to 450°F. (Usually I just use the toaster oven. Seems to work just fine.) While that's going, line a baking sheet with foil and prick each potato several times with a fork. (The foil will catch all the sugars that seep out of those holes you just made and make clean up so much easier.)

Bake your sweet potatoes on the prepared baking sheet until they are very soft. This should take about an hour to an hour and a half.

Remove the potatoes and reduce the (toaster) oven temperature to 350°F.

As soon as the potatoes are cool enough to handle, scrape the insides into the bowl of a food processor, and add all of your remaining ingredients.



Then give it a whirl until everything is whipped up all together.

(If you don't have a food processor, you can use a stick blender or even a regular blender, though it'll probably be a whole lot more difficult to get your whipped potatoes out of a regular blender. OR! You can mash the peppers up with a fork into a fine paste in a large bowl, then add the other ingredients and whip that all together with a hand mixer.)

(You might also be asking yourself what you are going to do with the rest of those peppers from that can. Well, I have no idea what you are going to do with them. But what I do with them is I put them in a small, freezer-safe container, and I stick them in the freezer. Then, whenever I make chipotle-whipped sweet potatoes I take that small, freezer-safe container out of the freezer when I put the potatoes in the oven. By the time I need peppers to throw in the food processor, they're thawed out enough so that I can pull a couple out and put the rest back into the freezer. And then I repeat that process until I'm all out of peppers, at which time I buy a new can and start all over again. But feel free to do whatever it is you want to do with them.)

Spoon out your puree into an oven-safe receptacle of some kind.



Then bake your whipped potatoes until they're hot, for about 20 to 25 minutes. Then serve. And hopefully enjoy. But if you don't then, meh, there's nothing I can really do about that now can I?

About Pea-Whipped Potatoes

Confession: I have a love-hate relationship with Michael Chiarello. Seriously, I have no idea if I love the guy or I hate him and his oh-isn't-Napa-just-the-end shut-the-fuck-up-already lifestyle. But then I saw him make pea-whipped potatoes on his television program, and I think perhaps beneath his is-he-or-isn't-he? exterior, we might just be kindred spirits. Because I love mashed potatoes. And I love mushy peas*. But to mix mashed potatoes with mushy peas? BRILLIANT!

* We'll actually be doing a mushy pea recipe that is slightly different than what you will be seeing here. Sometime. In the future. Promise.

So here's what we need:

• 1 Idaho russet potato
• a little warm milk or cream
• a little melted butter
• 1 cup of frozen peas
• maybe a bit of olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Yeah, now I guess you know what I mean when I say "all measurements are approximate," because I have no idea how much of anything this is going to take. It's all a matter of preference. So just go with it, okay?

POTATOES!

First, peel and dice your potato into about 1-inch cubes.



Next put your potatoes in a pot and cover them with cold water. Add salt. Bring the pot to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to a gentle rolling boil and let that roll along gently until your potatoes are soft enough to stick a fork in them. But not so soft they are falling apart, because then you'll have some problems with the next part, which is draining the potatoes in a colander. So drain your potatoes in a colander, and if you have a ricer or masher now's the time to get it out.

Hopefully while your potatoes were rolling gently you got yourself a bowl and added a little milk and/or cream and/or butter to the bowl. (Start with about 1/4 cup of milk and a tablespoon of butter.) And hopefully you heated that bowl up in the microwave or something until everything got warm. Because you need that now for your potatoes.



So get your potatoes in the bowl, and mix/mash that all up until it's creamy, and if it's too dry add A LITTLE more milk or cream at a time until you get it to the right consistency. And when I say "little," I MEAN little, because you can always add more if you need it BUT YOU CAN'T TAKE IT BACK OUT AGAIN IF YOU ADD TOO MUCH. The importance of this should be evident by the caps lock, but just in case it isn't, I have added this sentence. To point out the importance of that stuff up there written in all-caps.

Add a little salt and pepper to this and, hey! Look! You made mashed potatoes!



BUT WE'RE NOT DONE!

Rinse out the pot you just used to boil up your potatoes in and add your frozen peas. Maybe a little olive oil for extra flavor if you like. Put the lid on that baby and let everything steam over medium-high heat until the peas are tender.



Now put those peas in a food processor with a pat of butter and blend it all up until it's smooth. (A stick blender also works well for this, but I broke mine sometime after my iPod died but before my camera, DVR, and laptop hard drive bit the big one. Apparently there was a month in there when I did nothing but give off electronic-destroying EM radiation. I could have been one of the Watchmen!)



Here's where things get tricky: dump the pea puree into the mashed potatoes and stir it all up until combined.



Give it a taste. If it needs more butter, add more butter. If it needs more salt and pepper (which it probably will), add more salt and pepper. Then, serve. And think about Michael Chiarello. Or, you know, don't. I can't help it. I AM OBSESSED.