Blog

I am not sure where I first read about it, but before burgers and dogs, the tradition in New England for July 4th was salmon and peas and freshly dug new potatoes. Back when people mostly had to eat what was in season, the salmon were running in the rivers of the region this time of year, and peas were among the earliest vegetables that were ready to eat. Although salmon still do run in a few places in New England, most of us can only acquire it from other places. Still, I think it’s important to be mindful of eating seasonally and many of our food traditions come from the seasonality of produce and other food products, so i offered a modern variation in the Berkshire Eagle this past week.

I realize it is a bit early in the season here in the Berkshires to be offering a recipe with corn! But a few weeks ago it was reported in the Berkshire Eagle that Elizabeth’s, one of our favorite restaurants in Pittsfield, had been sold, and so I wanted to write a column in gratitude for the special place that Liz and Tom created for the community.

Sometimes I call this soup T and 4 Cs, because that’s how I remember the ingredient list: tomatoes, coconut milk, corn, curry powder, and cream. That’s it. Be sure to adjust the amount of curry powder depending on your taste and the intensity of your curry powder, and you can omit the cream for a vegan version.

If this combination sounds unusual, I’m not surprised. Most people look a bit puzzled when I mention this recipe, but it is a favorite of my younger son. My older son, on the other hand, hates raisins! In any event, this week’s Berkshire Eagle column contains not only the recipe, but also, in the narrative, some tips I’ve realized over the years from making a gazillion meatballs, and how to make them ahead for the freezer to facilitate a quick weeknight dinner. During my children’s school years, I mostly made a more traditional version, of course, since everyone would eat them, and my tips here will work with any meatball version you choose!

I’m not very good at pacing myself through all the things I freeze during the summer and fall harvest seasons. And it’s different every year, as we can see the next summer on the horizon, which items I find still tucked away in the freezer, so I never feel like I can plan accurately.

This year we still have a good amount of pesto cubes in the freezer, and so for this past week’s column in the Berkshire Eagle, I decided to share the recipe below. I think I like this even better than on pasta, as I find the acidity of the vinaigrette to be a nice counterpoint to the richness of the pesto.

There’s a sort of template I’ve used more times than I can count when making a vegetable pasta dish. The variations are endless, but generally speaking I rely upon the Sicilian addition of golden raisins and pine nuts to give some unexpected flavors to the recipe. I’m sure I’ve offered some version of this before, and yet here is another!

But my narrative here is one I want to highlight. Tastes can change; not always, but sometimes, an item we once swore off forever, can become a new favorite. Maybe it was poorly prepared, or maybe it was just a piece of meat that wasn’t great or an underripe piece of produce. Whatever the reason, I have now learned to keep tasting and keep trying, and I’ve definitely continued to expand my palate!

I think last spring I blogged at least three times about ramps! Although now you can find them in specialty stores and farmers’ markets, it’s so much more fun to forage for them yourself if you can find a secret spot for them.

In this week’s Berkshire Eagle column (actually one of two I wrote for this past week!), the grilled ramp hollandaise from one of last year’s posts makes a reprise. I also offered my idea for a risotto to highlight spring produce – peas and asparagus – using chopped ramp stems and bulbs in place of the usual onion or shallot, with the leaves stirred in at the end.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may recall that I’ve included several recipes with figs. It’s no surprise, as fresh figs are among my favorite seasonal treats. I very much wish I could grow my own, and perhaps someday I will start that endeavor, but from what I’ve read, our climate in the Berkshires makes that a challenge!

Nonetheless we are lucky that they are available in local markets, and I have tried pretty much every fig recipe I have ever found – and then some! There are plenty of other times that I just improvise and create something off the top of my head, and this recipe below was one of those ideas which became my Berkshire Eagle article this past week.

I was really hesitant to offer this column (link here) for the March 31 edition of The Berkshire Eagle. We had enjoyed a little taste of spring, and it seemed out of sync to write about anything that would require a long simmer on the stove. And then it snowed on April 1, a pretty lousy April Fool’s Day joke if you ask me. So it turns out this was well-timed!

Of course I know it can snow well into April here in the Berkshires. Last year it was snowing on April 18 and I cooked and posted about French onion soup! The nice thing about the recipe below is that it yields enough sauce that you can use some right away and put the rest in the freezer for a quick and easy meal or two without having to stand at the stove.

I hear that these days we needn’t worry about children and grandchildren fighting over the family silver, because no one wants it anymore! But I do worry that with thousands of recipes available at the stroke of a few keys, many family favorites are not getting handed down, and those memories, those heirlooms, are all the more precious because they are intangible. Sure, some of us may have these recipes written down, and I treasure the ones that I have in my grandmother’s handwriting. But it’s more than just the yellowed recipe card that needs to be passed down; it’s also the collective memory of a special dish across generations, and often the features of those recipes carry the echoes of migration and adaptation to new lands, combining beloved traditions with new ingredients.

I hope these treasures from my family inspire you to safeguard some favorites from yours, to pass down to your children and grandchildren.

For my regular column this past week I decided to offer an easy favorite. You can find the column on the Berkshire Eagle website via this link, or you can scroll down here for my introduction and the recipe itself. We very often serve this with our favorite peanut (sesame) noodle recipe, available at this blog post.

As I suggest here, it’s great to have some stuffed shells in the freezer, ready for an easy dinner when you’ve had a busy day. It looks like next week might just be one of those weeks, so I’m glad I still have some of these ready to go! If you want to see the column online click here, or continue reading below.

Yes, I just posted about pasta e fagioli, and because the snow keeps falling and it was 12 degrees this morning, it’s good to have a wide-ranging soup repertoire! This past Wednesday my column was about corn chowder, and I’ve also linked some other soup recipes below. Stay warm!

It’s always a good idea on a cold winter’s day to make something that will keep the oven on for some time. And it’s even better when it uses a hearty winter vegetable – red cabbage – with a bit of sweetness from an apple and some cider, in an adaptable recipe that can easily be vegan! (Here’s the link to the column in The Berkshire Eagle or continue reading here.)

For my regular column this past week I was looking for something cozy and warming for a cold January night. Beef Stroganoff eats like a stew, but is a much quicker recipe, not needing a long simmer on the stove. I always like to serve it with egg noodles to enjoy all the delicious, creamy sauce!

I was asked to write a “centerpiece” column for this past Wednesday in The Berkshire Eagle with ideas to make a New Year’s celebration special, even if we all stayed home.

I decided on a main course and a dessert for New Year’s Eve, and something for brunch on New Year’s Day.

While it’s too late to make these for the turn of the calendar this year, these recipes can make any meal special. A friend of mine even told me how excited she was to make the brunch quiche as a dinner main course with a salad!

Click on this link to the article, or continue reading below!