Butternut squash, introduced to the public in 1936 and working hard ever since, doesn’t have the cachet of kabocha or the drama quotient of a Blue Hubbard or Red Kuri. What it does have going for it is widespread availability, great versatility, ease of peeling, good, reliable flavor, and now … cuteness. That’s right. Say […]

Salad for supper is an easy out on evenings when we both return home late and in no mind to cook. The greens are already prepped and ready to go, and, odds are, there’s a small jar of homemade vinaigrette kicking around in the fridge as well. After all, lettuces, a cool-weather crop, are gorgeous […]

The French technique of adding freshly chopped parsley and garlic to a dish, usually at the end of cooking, is called persillade (“pers-ee-yahd”), which sounds difficult, but couldn’t be easier. In fact, it’s a great example of how two basic, inexpensive supermarket ingredients can impart resonant flavor to a dish. It’s reason alone, in my […]

Like almost any expat southerner, I am besotted with the shell beans of summer. The native American legumes, often referred to as peas, have pods that must be removed before the moist, tender beans (ie., seeds) can be cooked. Black-eyed peas, pink-eyes, lady peas, cream peas, purple-hulls, and the small, pale butter beans called sieva, […]

On Sunday, Marcella Hazan, Italy’s greatest gift to home cooks everywhere, died at the age of 89. The world is diminished. And I know I’m not alone in paying tribute in a way she would have appreciated: by cooking. There’s an armload of basil in the refrigerator, just waiting to be transformed into pesto, what she called […]