Riding around in the Abruzzo hills of Italy I spent one fall with my friend Kay riding motorcycles up in the hills around Rome – well, we rode on the back of the motorcycles like girls, and our Italian friends Paolo and Alberto drove the motorcycles. That’s a lot easier! When we stopped for lunch, …
Author Archives: Karen Carr
Spinach soup
Cold day, warm appetizer or lunch It hardly ever snows in Portland anymore, thanks to global warming. But when it does, the kids get really excited and rush out to play in it. Coming from the Northeast, I always think it’s funny when the kids are excited about two inches of snow. How to make …
Salmorejo
Andalucia and morning sickness The first summer I spent in Andalucia was also the summer I was pregnant with my first child. Even though Andalucia’s a great place to eat, with all kinds of new foods I was eager to check out, practically everything I ate made me feel ill. I wound up sadly eating …
Roasted chickpeas
How to roast chickpeas: At breakfast, put a cup of chickpeas to soak in a large bowl of water. An hour and a half before dinner, rinse the chickpeas and put them in a saucepan over high heat in plenty of fresh water. Bring to a boil and simmer for half an hour or until …
Potato-squash puffs
Delicious, nutitious party treats! I was running a free store, and somebody brought these and left them on the food table. I’d been working all day and missed lunch, and I was starving, and when I found these they were so good! Sadly, the person who brought them was long gone, and so I had …
Pork rillette
Impressive, delicious, and easy Pork rillette’s one of those luxury treats you pay a zillion dollars for at the store, but it’s ridiculously easy to make at home, and it keeps for a week in the fridge. And much cheaper to make at home too. How to make pork rillette: Set the oven to 275 …
Pistachio soup
Again with Ottolenghi: This is a radical simplification of a recipe from Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem, which was delicious the way I did it, though I’m sure it would be better the way he did it. Only more expensive and harder. I left out saffron, and substituted an onion for leeks and shallots, among other things. How …
Parsley boniet
Early spring fresh food! Here in Portland, parsley grows like a weed in my yard, and it’s one of the few things that grows in February and March. But it turns out parsley’s way more than a garnish. Instead of using parsley in little sprinkles, try recipes that involve a cup or two of parsley …
Bread – no kneading
Greek bread On an archaeological dig in central Greece (the same one where our cook Vasiliki made us that wonderful string bean stew), we also ate a lot of the Greek bread baked by the local bakeries in our village. Well, not really our village – Proskyna was too small to have a bakery, but the …
Homemade mayonnaise
A French Habit Americans don’t usually eat hard-boiled eggs with mayonnaise on them. My partner says it seems wrong, redundant because the mayonnaise is also largely made of eggs. But in France oeufs mayonnaise is a very common appetizer. I think the main difference is that American mayonnaise has no flavor, and the French mayonnaise …