Chawanmushi

Japanese breakfast for dinner? We ate this at Smallwares on Fremont Street in Portland, and it was so delicious I wanted to figure out how to make it at home. It was surprisingly simple and cheap, and delicious too. Also, open to endless variations. How to make Chawanmushi: Put on a pot of beef broth: …

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 …

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. …