A quicker, easier cassoulet Recipes for cassoulet are full of instructions like “simmer for four hours” or “stir for an hour” or even “let sit overnight”. I like recipes you can make in an hour, and this is an amended cassoulet recipe that takes – okay, not an hour, but maybe two hours, and most …
Author Archives: Karen Carr
Caramelized cabbage
This is a stove-top version of a Times recipe that involved long slow baking I never have time for, but we liked it this way. First make some noodles to serve on the side: In a medium-sized mixing bowl, mix 3 cups of flour with 6 eggs and 1/3 cup oil. Knead and divide in …
Calamari and fries
Pulpa! In Rome, I once took a bunch of American students out for dinner. We all ordered different appetizers, but when the waiter brought the food, he had brought pulpa – sliced cold octopus – for everybody, instead of whatever they had ordered. He explained (in Italian) that the pulpa was really exceptionally good that …
Broccoli Soup
Special vegan ingredients? No thanks. I’m a historian, and part of my interest in cooking is to see what people might have eaten a long time ago. I like to cook using only ingredients that I really understand where they came from. That means I don’t like to use soy milk, vegan butter, and things …
Braised endives
Eew, endives? Isn’t that some weird foreign food? Well, it’s not the most ordinary American food, but in France people think of endives as perfectly normal, regular food. Children eat them. Think of them as small cabbages, or thick asparagus. My kids loved these braised endives – generally kids like soft cabbage, and of course …
Black-eyed peas and rice
Don’t you need bacon for black-eyed peas and rice? You can put 1/4 pound of chopped bacon in to saute with the onions if you want. We’ve found that spices can make a good black-eyed peas and rice even without the bacon, and we’ve been trying to stay away from bacon and other processed meats …
Beans and beef stir-fry
Another use for string beans If you have a lot of string beans in your garden and you’ve already made Greek String Bean Stew and Salade Niçoise, this is another good choice. How to make Beans and Beef Stir-fry: Break the tips off about a quart of string beans. Put a cup and a half of rice in …
Bean burgers
Sometimes in the summer it just seems like burger time, maybe with corn on the cob, but what if you don’t want to eat beef? These bean burgers are great with ketchup, mustard, pickles, slices of tomato, lettuce, or whatever you like to put on your burgers. How to make bean burgers: After breakfast or …
Boston baked beans
Doesn’t it take forever to make baked beans? No, not really. You can start after lunch and have delicious baked beans in time for dinner, if you’ll be home all afternoon. There’s not more than half an hour of total work time involved, but it’s spread out over four hours. So yeah, it’s not something …
Avocado Soup
AVOCADOS ARE YUMMY Avocados are so delicious, you practically don’t need any other ingredients to make this delicious soup. It takes a few minutes, and you can leave it in the fridge all day and then serve it at dinner to your guests, without spending any time in the kitchen at all after they arrive. …