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Recipe for Improvisation: Rustic Root Vegetable Soup
Maria Robledo I love recipes I can make from whatever I have on hand, like this Rustic Root Vegetable Soup. It is made from refrigerator staples: long-keeping root vegetables – leeks, potatoes, celery...
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Improvisation-Inspiring Cookooks + a Fab Close-Roasted Meats Technique
Maria Robledo In the past week, I received two three affirmations that cookbooks I wrote years ago —The Improvisational Cook and A New Way to Cook —are still resonating strongly. Both encourage...
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Table Setting: Flowers Right on the Table
Sally Schneider We’ve documented our friend Maria Robledo’s inspired vase-less flower arrangements before. Usually, she would lay gorgeous flowers from her garden right in the center of the table....
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Quick, Easy Mortar-Made Sauces
Maria Robledo To illustrate just how useful it is to have a mortar and pestle —and to accompany our essential post about this great, ancient tool — here are some favorite mortar-made preparations:...
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Yogurt Sauce with Toasted Spices, Lime Peel and Basil
Maria Robledo While I was putting together the recent post about mortars and pestles, I came across Maria Robledo’s beautiful image of one of my favorite mortar-made sauces. I learned the deceptively...
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Easter Dinner: Herb Salt Lamb, (or Pork, Chicken, Cookies WhatEVER…)
Anthony Giglio Last weekend, wine writer Anthony Giglio tweeted the instagram, below, of a pork loin roast he’d slathered with an herb salt recipe I published years ago. The salt — garlic, salt and...
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Wines to Drink with Easter/Spring Dinner, via Anthony Giglio
Maria Robledo We’ve long relied on our friend Anthony Giglio for advice on wine-and-food pairings. Here are a handful of Anthony’s “Pasqua Picks” to pour with any roast on Easter, chosen with help...
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For the Table: Water Pitchers, To Buy and DIY
The pristine, white sculptural water pitcher featured at A Cup of Jo is so pretty, it briefly made us consider abandoning our tried-and-true DIY ones, below. It holds about 2 1/2 quarts, has a...
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Taco Improvisations for Boeuf Bourguignon + Other Leftovers
Sally Schneider This winter, I found myself cooking up slow-cooked stews of various kinds including Boeuf Bourguignon (a classic French stew) and freezing them, so I could have a stock-pile of...
View ArticleNilla Wafer Phases of the Moon…Party?
In Yummy Moon, artist Yona Lee uses 450 partially eaten Nilla Wafers to depict the different phases of the Moon. She turned one of the most ordinary of commercial cookies into…something rather...
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Wild Ramp’s Short Season is Almost Over: Cook ’em NOW
Sally Schneider Thirty years ago, ramps, the delectable leeks that grow wild throughout the Appalachian and Catskill mountains, were virtually unknown except to locals of those areas. Since them,...
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A Minature Tabletop Pond of Floating Blossoms
Maria Robledo At Maria Robledo‘s house the other evening, a huge glass bowl of floating blossoms and petals replaced the usual flowers on the dining table: a charming and surprising “pond” made from...
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Annals of Misleading Design: Chilewich Dahlia Coasters
chilewich.com Chilewich, maker of now-iconic, minimalist woven polypropylene floor mats we’ve admired, recently introduced their Dahlia Coasters. Their website shows icy drinks resting on the coaster...
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Spring Delight: Parsnip Fries
Maria Robledo Spring is parsnip season, the spicy-sweet root vegetable that looks like a plump pale yellow carrot. My favorite way to cook them is to cut them into sticks, slick them with olive oil or...
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Vergé’s Fab Citrus and Olive Oil Sauce + Fennel Roasted Fish
Maria Robledo I was sad to learn that the great chef Roger Vergé died last week at age of 85. When I was a young cook in the late 70’s, he was one of a handful of chefs who changed the way I thought...
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Strawberry Shortcakes (with our Foolproof Biscuit Recipe)
James Ransom This Sunday is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year and we can’t think of anything more celebratory of the first day of summer than strawberry shortcake. So here’s our...
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A Sauce for All Seasons + Deconstructed Caesar Salad
Maria Robledo Throughout the Mediterranean, the combination of garlic, anchovies* and olive oil finds its way into scores of dishes, from salads, pastas and vegetables to seafood and even lamb and...
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16 Super Fast, Easy, GREAT Recipes for July 4th + All Summer
Ellen Silverman Everyone is heading out-of-town early for the 4th of July weekend, and we’re just wrapping our heads around the fact that it’s HERE! Since we’re unprepared for the celebration, we...
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Celebrate The Splendid Table’s 20 Years of Food Inspiration
ToledoBlade.com This weekend marks The Splendid Table’s 20th anniversary show. Lynne Rosetto Kasper launched the famous radio food show with a conversation with Julia Child about the 4th of July which...
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The Unexpected Pleasures of Shelling Spring Peas and Summer Beans
Sally Schneider At twilight recently, I sat on the terrace with a friend shelling a huge bag of fresh peas. Our conversation meandered as we worked. We could have been sitting on a porch in the...
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