Category — Side Dish Recipes

Eating seasonally in the winter can be tough, because while I can easily eat my body weight in citrus fruits, the vegetables can be less exciting. That is, of course, if you ignore all of the gnarly roots like rutabagas, turnips, and celery root. But don’t ignore those: with the right preparation and enough butter, they can be really delicious. To wit, I present a near-perfect winter side dish: a creamy puree of celery root, cauliflower, creme fraiche, and butter.

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To me, mashed potatoes are like a blank canvas. They can be creamy and pillowy or rich and silky. They can be chunky or smooth. They can have green stuff in them. But most importantly, they can be really really really good or just so blah and boring that they’re not worth the calories.

I always make mashed potatoes a little differently, so I’m not here to share a specific recipe – but rather a group of the most important scientific potato facts and chef tips gleaned from years of experimentation and experience. Armed with this knowledge, you will never need a recipe to make fabulous mashed potatoes under any circumstances.

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With the last tomatoes of summer, there is something you must do. You must make jars and jars and jars of this extremely addictive tomato jam so you can have some until next summer comes.

It’s a little sweet, a little spicy, and a lot delicious. You can put it on toast with a little ricotta or cream cheese, you can put a little dish of it on a cheese platter, you can put a dollop on a pork chop or some chicken, or you can eat it straight from the jar. No judgment here.

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As much as I hate unnecessary quotation marks, I can’t think of any other term for this. The process is so simple, with a little time on the stovetop and the bulk of the time in the oven, and yet the texture comes out closer to risotto than anything else. More good news: it’s almost impossible to overcook it, too.

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This is so good that I can’t wait to share it with you- I’m still eating it as I type. It only takes about 5 minutes to make, and I think as long as watermelon is in season, I might have to eat it every day.

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I’m a big fan of pureed cauliflower as a side dish (in fact, I posted a recipe for it  recipe for it pretty recently.) Sometimes a big bowl of white mush isn’t what I’m after, so I thought I’d try to add some color and some nutritional value by combining it with sweet potatoes. Roasting all of the vegetables together in the oven with cumin and olive oil is easy and low-maintenance, and adds a bit of that caramelized flavor to the end product. A few times around the food processor with Greek yogurt and you’ll have a creamy, satisfying side dish in no time.

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Every year, it seems like all of the restaurants get together and decide they’re going to put some new food on every single menu in town. Whether it’s purslane, chicories, Calabrian chiles, or ramps–I’m quite convinced that the restaurant mafia is constantly figuring out how to promote some non-mainstream produce item that suddenly shows up everywhere. A few years ago, you couldn’t eat out in San Francisco without being offered roasted Brussels sprouts (not new per se, but new to fancy food). Years before that, you couldn’t open a menu that didn’t have fingerling potatoes on it. Last year, this nouveau item was padron peppers (or sometimes, shishito peppers, which look pretty similar.)

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When I walk by those cute little baby artichokes in the store, I can’t resist them. They are adorable! Plus, unlike fully mature adult artichokes, they don’t actually have a “choke” to contend with, so they’re a bit easier to prepare. I like them parboiled and sauteed, then simply tossed with balsamic vinegar, a squeeze of lemon, a splash of tabasco, a handful of parmesan, and some savory garlic chips.

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Today was a really weird day. But that’s a long story. Suffice it to say, around 4 PM on a work day I found myself… making two kinds of cheese and sour cream souffles? Really? Yes, really.

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I can never resist an unexplored food product I come across (tiny rice, anyone?), so when I spotted these black chickpeas last week, they were in my grocery cart before you could say “garbanzo.”

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