Celery ice

A fancy early-spring dessert The first edible plants that grow in the spring are stems – because stems are what plants grow first – like chives and celery. This is a simplified version of a New York Times recipe: a dessert made out of nothing much more than celery and sugar. It requires practically no …

Chopped chicken liver

Why chopped liver? Spring’s a good time to eat eggs and chicken, and this recipe has both! It’s not your usual chopped liver that’s a smooth paste; this chopped liver is more like egg salad and at least half vegetables. This is the chopped liver my grandma used to make in Brooklyn. She used a …

Chicken soup with matzoh balls

First the soup: Put a chicken carcass (the bones of a roasted chicken with most of the meat off) in a large saucepan and add enough water to cover it. Bring the water to a boil and then lower the heat and simmer. Meanwhile, chop an onion, two or three peeled carrots (my grandma did …

Lentil soup

Halloween The first time I make lentil soup in the fall is usually for Halloween, when the kids are just itching to be off trick-or-treating and I want them to have something solid in their stomachs before they start eating all that candy. Lentil soup can simmer on the stove, so if anything upsets the …

Egg Salad

Easter Eggs Do you hard-boil your Easter Eggs? At my house we always blew ours out, so we could make the eggs into matzobrei, and keep the eggs forever (or until we smashed them). But if you hard-boil at your house, well, that’s what egg salad sandwiches are for. You can also use the eggs to …

Chicken soup and matzo balls

Chicken soup for a cold: Official scientific studies have finally shown it: chicken soup is about the best thing you can do for the common cold. So enjoy! Raw chicken or leftover chicken? The great question in making chicken soup. My grandmother always used a fresh chicken for chicken soup, never leftovers. I hate to …

Celery-mushroom soup

Celery Season Celery’s one of the first spring vegetables to come into season, because it’s basically a stem, like rhubarb or chives. It’s so exciting to have a new food after all those root vegetables and apples in the winter! But you can’t just be eating celery sticks all the time, so you need some …

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 …