You go along in life, understanding the course of things, but never really imagining that what you see others endure will befall you. That might be the definition of youth. Because, inevitably, it happens to you. To paraphrase Mia Farrow, life is a series of losses and it’s all about the grace and resilience with which you respond. My former mother-in-law once looked at a photo of Liv Ullman on the cover of the New York Times Magazine and said, “Ugh, she’s really let herself go.” Never mind that the Swedish actress was being lauded for directing a film, what mattered to this woman was that a former beauty now looked like the 62-year-old she was. And I remember feeling disgusted by that, and vowing to forever construe “letting oneself go” as something quite liberating and wonderful.

I let my grey hair come in over the past 2 years and there was a certain loss that needed to be mourned there; quietly, mind you. I went from a tousled brunette to an elegant silver without more than a whimper. But now that I am finding it difficult to fit into any of my clothes, now that my skin is becoming slacker and my muscle tone less defined—all those clichés of middle age—I begin to feel a bit of that desperation that sends women under the scalpel. I’m not going to start in with the whole I’m invisible routine. Unless you’re Elle Macpherson, that pretty much sets in after age 40. And I’m lucky enough to have a husband who tells me I’m beautiful all the time. But, pathetic as it may be, I am newly committed to holding on to what I have for as long as possible. That entails lots of exercise and watching what I eat. Because, to me, being a glutton is all about expanding your palate not your waistline. It’s being greedy for the things that are good and good for you. It means that lunch is about salad.

step on the scale

Our friends Laquita and Tim brought us some delicious smoked trout over the holidays. It actually comes from a local business, Samaki, in Port Jervis. The owner is a white African who somehow ended up in this little town cold-smoking fish that goes to venerable city retailers like Russ and Daughters, Barney Greengrass and Zabar’s. Rich and peppery, it’s got lots of protein, iron and vitamin A, and relatively little fat, most of it the good kind. The skin is so gorgeous, no?

where there’s smoke…

I love smoked fish. I saw a great video recently on how to create your own stovetop smoker, and I just ordered a bunch of different wood shavings so I could experiment with making my own. I have a piece of black cod that I’m going to try first, as sable is my go-to order at Barney Greengrass. If you’ve never been to this New York institution, by the way, you should definitely make a pilgrimage. It ain’t cheap but it’s the real deal. I’ve also been known to frequent the outpost at Barneys in Los Angeles.

what a flake

Use a fork or your fingers to flake the fish apart. This is nicer than chopping it with a knife. Another great way to eat smoked trout is whizzed in the cuisinart with some cream cheese and scallions. Spread this on dark rye and go to heaven.

crunch time

In the middle of a busy day, I made a quick, satisfying and healthy lunch with just a few ingredients. If you work in an office, this is an easy meal to transport. Bring the salad in one bag, the trout in another and the dressing in a jar, and combine just before eating. When I worked at Saks, I went through phases where I brought my lunch a lot, and it’s so much more “sustainable” all around.

greens keeper

Frisée is like lettuce with a perm. Its texture holds dressing really well, almost like penne holds sauce. Of course you could use any combination of fresh greens you like; something with a hint of bitter goes nicely with the smoked fish. Sliced radishes add an excellent crunch, but fennel or celery would also work.

cuts the mustard

I decided to use a little mustard oil for the dressing. What I’m talking about here is pure mustard oil, a deep golden elixir with a spicy, nutty flavor that’s used quite a bit in Indian cooking. (And in Ayurvedic massage to stimulate the muscles and circulation, as well as the male member prior to sexual congress!) It smells like very powerful horseradish and is a good source of vegetarian omega-3 fatty acids. A little goes a long way, and it can be used in conjunction with other oils to mute its strong taste. Because horseradish is traditionally served with smoked fish, I though it would go well with the trout, and I was right. I drizzled some on the frisée and radishes, then added the juice of an entire small lemon.

slim chance

It was a bracing, fresh combination that satisfied. I aspire to be eternally slim, but I am not about deprivation and I will never, ever sacrifice flavor. Would you?

A much heralded character throughout history, the virtues of the pomegranate are extolled in the Koran, the Book of Exodus and Homer’s Hymns. Punica granatum has been cultivated in the Caucasus since ancient times and continues to be popular amongst the antioxidant-slurping, fountain-of-youth-seekers of modern day. It’s in season now in the Northern Hemisphere and widely available in supermarkets and Korean delis near you. The name comes from the Latin for “seeded apple” and, indeed, its leathery red shell breaks apart to reveal a spongy web nestling a treasure trove of glittering garnet jewels. So glorious is this fruit that the ancient city of Granada in Spain was renamed for the pomegranate during Moorish reign. The flavor is most often a combination of sweet and tart, with a mouth-puckering quality from the tannins contained in the juice of the aril, as the watery part surrounding the seed is called. These have a slight crunch to them and a hint of bitterness that adds to the complex flavor of this fruit, as delicious eaten out of hand as it is mixed fresh into salads, cooked in stews, or rendered into syrup to flavor all manner of drinks and traditional dishes from the Middle East.

pomniverous

Pomegranate juice is rich in vitamin C and a good source of vitamin B5, potassium and polyphenols (tannins and flavonoids) and other antioxidant phytochemicals. The seeds themselves contain beneficial unsaturated oils. Some studies have shown pomegranate juice to be effective in reducing risk factors of heart disease, including lowering blood pressure and bad cholesterol. It may also inhibit viral infections and be effective against dental plaque. And it will also wash your car. Kidding. (The FDA issued a warning to  POM Wonderful in 2010 for making illegal claims of unproven antioxidant and anti-disease benefits.) Keep in mind that eating the seeds whole is best; fresh juice comes next; and the bottled stuff last, although it’s not without its benefits.

voluptuous curves

In Ancient Israel, scouts brought pomegranates to show Moses the fertility of the promised land. They are symbolic of plenty in so many cultures and religions, including Islam, Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism.

to dye for

After opening the pomegranate by scoring it with a knife and breaking it open, separate the arils (seed casings)  from the peel and the white membranes. This is easily done in a bowl of water because the arils sink and the inedible pulp floats. Freezing the entire fruit also makes it easy to separate.

immersive experience

Another very effective way of quickly harvesting the arils is to cut the pomegranate in half and score each half of the rind about six times. Then hold the pomegranate half over a bowl and smack the rind with a large spoon. The arils should pop out directly into the bowl, leaving only a relative few to dig out.

garnet jewels

These fresh kernels are delicious scattered over hummus; mixed into a salad of fennel or endive or in a rice or quinoa pilaf; stirred into thick, honey-drizzled labne or yogurt; or made into a sauce for fish. Their flavor also pairs well with citrus, lamb and saffron.

honeyed tones

Pomegranate molasses is a thick, syrupy concoction that—unlike grenadine, it’s thinner, sweeter cousin—is rather sour and complex, almost like an aged balsamic vinegar in flavor. In Turkey, we ate it in muhammara, a dip for bread and vegetables made with roasted red pepper, walnut and garlic. It’s also wonderful pooled around panna cotta.

Last weekend I attended a dinner with a Middle Eastern theme and was asked to provide an appropriate cocktail. I had a bottle of our local Peace vodka that I was infusing with saffron and decided to start there. Combined with blood orange juice, pomegranate molasses and a bit of orange flower water, it would have gone a long way toward convincing Moses he’d reached the promised land.

divine right

I’m not one of those people who’s at a loss for what to cook. I have a repertoire of favorites and a list as long as my arm of new things I want to try. This is not bragging. There are plenty of things I do not have: Children. A Pulitzer Prize. Thin thighs. Yet on some nights even I don’t have it in me to start whirling around the kitchen like a culinary dervish. On those nights, I just want something delicious to appear on my plate. But there’s no takeout up here, remember? So I like to store a few tricks up my sleeve. Nothing wrong with a little help from your friends, though I can’t recommend fast food. Nor canned food, for that matter. Not to harsh your mellow, but do you know about the epoxy liners in most cans? They’re made with Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical that can mimic human estrogen and is linked to breast cancer and early puberty in women. (The horror, the horror.) The Environmental Working Group tested canned food bought across America and found BPA in more than half, at levels they call “200 times the government’s traditional safe level of exposure for industrial chemicals.” So much for those canned beans, my darlings.

master class

Luckily for us, Agrodolce for Fast Foodies has created the delicious and glass-bottled Master Stock. It’s an intense mix of soy sauce, yellow rock sugar and Shaoxing Rice Wine that is boiled and infused with fresh garlic, ginger and spices. Slightly sweet and slightly salty, you can use it to successfully braise chicken, duck, beef, lamb and pork. The Australian chef responsible for this witchy brew, Prue Barrett, explains that “unlike other stocks and sauces, it’s not discarded after use. It’s simply boiled, strained and frozen for the next time. So while the meat absorbs the flavors of the stock, the meat also imparts its own flavor into the stock making it more rich and complex with each use.” Talk about sustainable cooking! The Agrodolce site includes a couple of nice recipes:  one for salmon, and one for crispy-skin chicken. (And check out their other products while you’re at it.)

into the drink

I’ve used Master Stock for poaching skinless chicken breasts, and the directions are right on the bottle. Plunk in the boobs, bring to a boil, simmer and then cool in the liquid. That’s it. They emerge juicy and flavorful, with a decidedly Asian accent.

oh boy, bok choy

I like to serve them with a little brown rice and a quick stir-fry of bok choy and wood ear mushrooms.

they really do feel a little too much like ears

These mushrooms are pretty easy to find dried, but recently I have come across the fresh ones. They are incredibly cool! Velvety on one side and slick on the other, and the most gorgeous tortoise-shell hue, reminiscent of Titi, my sweet kitty.

wok on by

Stir-fry is just a catch-all term for throwing things in a skillet and sauteing them quickly over relatively high heat. Once you get it down, you can get all bold and creative, tossing in all manner of things, from pea pods to bean sprouts to celery to cashews. There’s not much to get down, really. The thing to know is that ingredients often have a different optimal cook time. So you start with the things that take longer, and gradually add the rest.

cilantro and scallions

I poach the chicken breasts, and while that’s happening, I make some short-grain brown rice and stir-fry the vegetables. I serve it garnished with a lot of chopped scallions and cilantro. Maybe a little chile oil drizzled on top. Simple, fast, delicious. Oh, and healthy. Of course. You know me by now.

short order cooking

So easy, you don’t even need a recipe. What? Tell you exactly how to make that stir-fry? OK, but then you’re on your own, kid.

I have always had a passion for beets. Never a picky eater, I enjoyed these somewhat polarizing purple root vegetables from an early age. I can still remember the thrill of seeing my pee, subtly pink, circling the bowl. In college, I seemed to be the only one helping myself to Harvard beets, a sweet-tart staple of the dining hall salad bar. Although beets are now widely embraced as part of the unavoidable farm-to-table syndrome, they rarely make an appearance in our home as they are one of the few things for which my husband simply does not care. With their assertive color and distinctive earthy sweetness, they’re not exactly the sort of thing you can just slip into a dish. Although I may roast a few on occasion for my own consumption, I am not in the habit of adding them to our morning juice or recreating the divine beet crumble from The Fat Radish. So you can imagine my delight when G urged me to go ahead and make that borscht I was daydreaming about. Not that I needed his permission, but it’s kind of lonely to cook up a whole pot of soup and then have to eat it alone. Cooking for one is a very specific thing that lends itself more to simple pastas, elaborate salads and the occasional pot pie, don’t you think?

brush up on your beets

The Brits call it beetroot. (They’ve got so many fanciful names for vegetables: mangetout for snow peas; aubergine for eggplant; marrow for squash; courgette for zucchini; swedes for rutagbagas.) The Beta vulgaris was cultivated all the way back in the second millennium B.C. somewhere along the Mediterranean, then it spread to Babylonia by the 8th century and as far east as China by 850 AD. It is currently a widely cultivated commercial crop for producing table sugar.

in the pink

Beets are a unique source of betalains, phytonutrients that are antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and detoxifying. They’ve been shown to be an important contributor of two carotenoids, lutein and zeaxanthin, which are especially beneficial to eye health and common age-related eye problems involving the macula and the retina. Another interesting tidbit is that only about 10% of people experience beeturia (the reddening of the urine), similar to how only a percentage of people can detect that weird post-asparagus pee smell.

beyond the pale, but not for long

There are so many different kinds of borscht, a Central and Eastern European staple: with and without meat; with beef; with pork; beets only, or loaded up with other root vegetables. One standard bearer is from Veselka, the longstanding East Village fixture and bastion of Ukrainian soul food, which is made with pork butt, beef stock and lima beans. Mine is a sort of hybrid of various kinds I’ve eaten over the years. It’s made with beef stock and meat and, in addition to beets, has turnips, parsnip, potato and cabbage. I use some allspice and caraway, but I go easy on the clove as it can be too strong if you’re not careful.

lose the fat

I don’t know if you’ve tried, but I find it incredibly difficult to get my hands on any conscientiously raised beef bones in Manhattan. Seems like chefs are snapping them up, plus so many good butchers now have adjacent kitchens that press them into service. Since this recipe also calls for meat, you can make the stock with oxtails or short ribs, and it works out rather well.

a loving spoonful

I roasted oxtails in a hot oven along with some onions and carrots until it was well browned and caramelized; deglazed the pan with a little white wine; then poured it all into a big stockpot with plenty of water to simmer for a few hours. I removed the meaty bones and stored them separately, and strained the stock to chill overnight. The next day, I discarded the layer of fat and was ready to assemble my borscht.

tails from my kitchen

Once cold, it’s easy to pull the fat from the meat, and the meat from the bones. If you’ve never had it, oxtail is rich and flavorful, much like short ribs or brisket. It makes a wonderfully gelatinous stock that’s full of nutrition.

follow the beet

Scrub the beets, wrap them in foil and roast them in the oven until tender. Cool slightly, slip off the peels and grate them coarsely. Of course they impart their beautiful magenta hue to the soup.

grate expectations

As you can see, I had two different kinds of beets. The larger, paler ones were much less sweet than the small deep purple ones. Isn’t the color extraordinary? (As an aside, I once tried to use beet juice to dye a caftan and it turned it yellow!)

from my salad days

Even knowing that I would have borscht for dinner, I couldn’t resist eating the extra few beets for lunch. I quartered them, tossed them with some orange slices, sheep’s milk feta and a spicy olive oil and sprinkled minced parsley and coarse sea salt on top. It was the ideal solo meal. And later, I affirmed once again that I do indeed belong to the lucky 10%.

I’m about to pick a major bone, so if you’re not in the mood—and I’m not talking about steak for dinner—turn away now. There’s been a media pigpile on Paula Deen this week and I’ve got to get in my licks. It’s not just that she has consistently used her Food TV show to promote unhealthy (and foul) food and been a longtime paid shill for industrial-meat giant Smithfield (whose inexcusably raised products are proven to increase the risk of diabetes), but now she’s a spokesperson for Novo Nordisk’s diabetes treatment Victoza (the 2010 FDA approval of which came amidst powerful evidence of a link to thyroid cancer), after disclosing that she was diagnosed with the disease three years ago. I find this all so deeply disturbing. And then I read a review by Nigella Lawson on the Piglet, Food52′s wonderful Tournament of Cookbooks, where she writes about being suspicious of Heidi Swanson’s excellent Super Natural Every Day “because I always fear a certain smuggery, and words like ‘my natural kitchen’ set off the alarm bells.” How have we come to this place where natural and healthy are deemed “smug,” and doughnut burgers for breakfast are the order of the day? As I used to say in junior high, gag me with a fork. I think you know where I stand on all this. Bacon and kale are both welcome in my kitchen…

set your cap

…as is my fabulous new dehydrator, a Christmas gift from G, who knew I had been coveting one for some time. (How’s that for a segue?) It’s yet another way of preserving food, something I am increasingly interested in as the apocalypse approaches. Kidding. Sort of. People have been using this method since antiquity; think jerky, figs, tomatoes, chiles, salt cod, etc. It essentially removes the water content, which inhibits the growth of microorganisms and hinders decay. Dehydrated foods retain a great deal of their nutritional value so, at the risk of sounding smug, I’ll point out that they are quite healthy. I’m looking forward to using my new machine to make fruit leathers, vegetable chips, even yogurt.

a good ribbing

I read about a portobello mushroom jerky made by this company, but apparently it’s been discontinued. Not to be deterred, I decided to attempt my own. Mushrooms are inherently meaty and also rather spongelike, so they absorb flavors well. Don’t have a dehydrator? You can try making this using the lowest setting on your oven. Maybe prop the door open with a wooden spoon. Just watch carefully so the mushrooms don’t crisp up. You want the texture to be dense and leathery, with the right tooth-tugging chew.

shroom for more

The slices will shrink as they dry, so cut them about three-quarters of an inch thick. Incidentally (she said smugly), mushrooms are low in fat, relatively high in protein, and full of vitamins and minerals. If you’d like to find out more about the wonderful world of fungi, listen to this fascinating interview on Fresh Air with botanist Nicholas Money.

soak it up

I made a tangy marinade with maple syrup, tamari and pimentón, but you can play around with any flavors you like. Assertive ones work best, as does a combination of sweet-tart-salty-spicy. I love Dickson’s beef jerky made with an addictive mix of star anise and red chile, and may try recreating that next time. When using meat, lean is best as fat turns rancid more quickly (see: Paula Deen).

into leather (one of the all-time great move lines: watch this)

This is a really satisfying snack! The texture is addictive. Too bad it’s so fucking healthy. How uncool. Paula and Nigella would not approve. I guess in a pinch you can always stick it between a couple of doughnuts and call it breakfast.

The opening of Greens Restaurant in San Francisco in 1979, under the auspices of the San Francisco Zen Center, forever changed the image of vegetarian food in this country. I began cooking from The Greens Cookbook in 1989, during the year I returned home to Santa Cruz as my father was dying from stomach cancer. It opened my mind to a new kind of cooking based upon vegetables, of which there was a constant, seasonal stream from our garden and local farmers markets. I also had a chance to eat at the restaurant, a beautiful spot overlooking the bay where a subtle message of health and harmony was offered in an elegant organic environment. The restaurant has since evolved toward a lighter, leaner cuisine, and I think the latest edition of the cookbook also differs somewhat from the one I have, but the essential philosophy of founders Deborah Madison and Edward Espe Brown remains intact. I have misplaced the book now (hopefully it’s in storage somewhere), but I recall many of the dishes: saffron custard with eggplant; butter-fried potatoes with curry; baked polenta with tomato and gorgonzola; and a simple recipe for dried apricots poached with ginger and served cold with a dollop of crème fraîche.

golden orbs

I went out of my mind reading the latest issue of Lucky Peach, David Chang’s inspired magazine, and was especially taken with Adam Gollner’s article about the apricots of Tajikistan. I tracked down the source and ordered 9 pounds of these dried beauties, most of which I plan to use for jam. They are juicy, pliable and bursting with notes of honey, flowers and citrus.

The apricot’s scientific name, Prunus armeniaca (Armenian plum), derives from the assumption that it was originally cultivated in Armenia. Although an archaeological excavation there found apricot seeds in an Eneolithic-era site, the true origin of the fruit’s domestic cultivation appears to be either China or India in about 3000 BC. Its introduction to Greece is attributed to Alexander the Great, and the Roman General Lucullus (106–57 B.C.) also exported some trees from Armenia to Europe. I love the image of battle-weary Roman soldiers licking the sweet orange juice from their fingers.

poaching with ginger

I remembered this very easy recipe from the Greens cookbook right away when I saw the apricots and knew I had to make  a batch. There’s not much to it, but you do need to take the time to peel and slice lots of ginger and a bit of lemon peel into slim matchsticks. This creates just the right texture in the final dish, when you have a bite of velvety sweet apricot offset by chewy, pungent strands, bound together in an amber syrup. You can tell by their color that apricots are loaded with beta-carotene; they’re also high in vitamin A and fiber.

sweet and spicy

Although you may be tempted to dig right in while it’s still warm, something magical happens when this is thoroughly chilled. A thick pour of heavy cream or a generous blob of crème fraîche is all you need to bring out the best in this simple dessert. The apricots are wonderful on their own; served alongside panna cotta, poundcake or cornmeal biscuits; or spooned over yogurt for breakfast. Any leftover syrup is delicious stirred into soda or prosecco, or makes a lovely cocktail with gin.

TO HELP STOP THE INTERNET CENSORSHIP BILLS, SOPA & PIPA, CONTACT CONGRESS NOW.

Even though it may seem like I am the most organized kitchen bitch on the planet, there are definitely times when I reach for something and it’s not there. Although once I was not above keeping canned (or boxed) stock in my pantry, I now resist that easy (and nutritionally challenged) out. Tragically, my source for chicken feet dries up in the winter and though I’ll make stock from whole birds, it’s just not as good. Dashi, the Japanese broth made with kombu and bonito flakes is one option, but its flavor is very specific. So when I came across a recipe in The River Cottage Preserves Handbook for a homemade vegetable bouillon, I got very excited. It’s basically just a bunch of vegetables ground into a paste and preserved with salt. You stir a bit into hot water to make an authentically flavored stock for soups, stews, curries, whatever you like.

the quality of your vegetables does matter

Pam Corbin, the author, says you can use just about any herbs or vegetables you like, so long as they are fresh and taste as “vegetable-y” as possible. In addition to the ingredients in this recipe, you could also use young turnips, shallots, celery, rutabagas, beets or peppers, as well as bay leaves, thyme, lovage or mint, bearing in mind that the character of the stock will vary depending on what you include. Ingredient quantities for this recipe are given in weights, so do yourself a favor and get a scale if you haven’t already. This is the one I use; it’s efficient, handy and doesn’t take up much room.

how dry i am

Sundried tomatoes were such a fad in the 80s that they really fell off hard. It’s too bad because, skillfully employed, they are quite wonderful. I like to store mine in good olive oil, so they become soft and gooey. Then you can toss them with goat cheese, black olives, fresh thyme and pasta; throw a few into soup; slice them thin and add them to an arugula salad…

chop chop

A food processor is essential to make what Pam calls her “souper mix.” You grind the ingredients into a fine paste that is dense and granular.

the colors make a lovely mosaic

This makes quite a lot of the stuff, so you may need to process in batches. Or grind a few ingredients at a time, so they condense and make room for others.

jarring effect

Run your jars through the dishwasher, or wash them with boiling water and soap, and dry with a clean towel. Fill and seal the jars, then keep one handy in the fridge. The rest can be stored in a cool, dry spot as the high concentration of salt acts as a preservative.

into the soup

Just moments after making my batch, I pressed it into service in a very light and simple vegetable soup. I heated 4 teaspoons of it in 4 cups of water and added some minced celery root, carrot and fennel, a few handfuls of arugula and a crumbled dried chile. I simmered this until the vegetables were tender, tossed in some grated parmesan and sat down to the perfect winter lunch.

Hoary old chestnuts. Those are well-worn aphorisms and anecdotes, close kin to the cliché. Curious as to the origin of this phrase, I searched online and found a long-winded reference tracing it back to an English play of the mid-19th century. I had thought it would refer to the fact that chestnuts, encased in their hard shells, last a rather long time. Did you know the chestnut is also called chinkapin or chinquapin? By any other name, it’s still the nut of a tree that belongs to the same family as the beech and the oak. I’d never prepared chestnuts, nor particularly enjoyed eating them on the rare occasion they appeared on my plate. They’re always so dry and chalky. People do seem to love them, though—Americans in their Thanksgiving stuffing, the French obsessed with their marrons glacés. Vendors with carts full of roasting chestnuts—a romantic throwback to sweeter times—are still a common sight in many cities (London, New York, Rome), but I have to confess that acrid and sooty smell has never been my favorite. So it’s no wonder that the jar I convinced myself to buy last year sat forlornly at the back of my cupboard these long months, getting hoary. Then I came across a recipe for chestnut and parsnip bisque. A vegan recipe, no less.

also known as sardian nut, jupiter’s nut and husked nut

You can roast the chestnuts yourself, but it’s easiest to buy them in a jar or package, already prepped. They are low in calories and contain no cholesterol, no gluten and very little fat, mostly unsaturated. With twice as much starch as potatoes, they do a beautiful job of thickening and are also made into flour which is used for dense, rich breads and cakes. The only nut that contains vitamin C, chestnuts lose almost half of it when heated.

headline

Chestnuts, quite popular in Asia, are traditionally served around the New Year in Japan, so this seemed like the perfect time to try this bisque. The recipe, posted on Tasting Table, is from a new “vegetable restaurant” in Philadelphia, Vedge. The chefs—a husband-&-wife team named Richard Landau and Kate Jacoby—have been getting lots of praise for their inventive and delicious food. I followed their recipe pretty closely, which meant buying tofu sour cream, something that is not usually found in my fridge. It doesn’t taste anything like “real” sour cream, but it did add a rich smoothness to the soup and a dollop of it even made a very nice garnish.

parsnips are related to carrots

The chestnuts are paired with parsnips, which have a slightly buttery, sweet flavor with a subtle hint of cardamom. These are sauteed in olive oil with some onions or shallots, and cooked down with a splash of sweet Marsala wine. Vegetable stock is added and some warming spices—allspice, clove, nutmeg; a light hand is essential here as these can be overwhelming. Once the parsnips are tender, you puree everything together with some tofu sour cream or cream cheese. I used my new Vitamix, which is amazingly efficient at creating a frothy liquid in no time.

black beauties

The soup was delicious—rich, velvety, subtly nutty—but it looked a little drab in the bowl. This is where finishing touches make all the difference. I toasted some black walnuts in a small skillet (regular ones would also be lovely) and sprinkled them on top along with a flurry of flaky Maldon sea salt and a generous blob of the tofu sour cream. Alongside a radicchio-&-apple salad cloaked in a sharp mustard dressing, this was dinner last night.

finish it off

In addition to this lovely recipe, I’ll leave you with a couple favorite old chestnuts:

Slow and steady wins the race.

This, too, shall pass.

A while back, I believe I mentioned a desire to explore some lesser-known ingredients with you. I’ve been keeping a running list—including pickled tapioca, sorghum molasses and dried Persian limes—so do let me know if there’s anything you’re curious about. This is kohlrabi—from the German “kohl,” meaning cabbage and “rabi,” meaning turnip. It’s a brassica, like cauliflower, kale and collards, and has all the same nutritional benefits: low in carbs and calories, high in fiber and antioxidants. It also comes in a deep purple color. Slightly sweet and fresh, with the faintest peppery bite, kohlrabi can be eaten raw or cooked. If raw, it needs to be peeled, but after cooking the tougher outer skin softens up plenty. With all the cozy soups and hearty braises we’re eating at this wintry time of year, it’s nice to have some cool, crunchy salads as a counterpoint, (here’s one with celery root, and another with radicchio and grapefruit), so I used my kohlrabi in a crisp, sprightly slaw.

like the happy marriage of a cabbage and a turnip

Look for kohrabi bulbs no larger than 3″ in diameter with healthy green leaves which can also be eaten. The tenderest, smallest bulbs won’t even need to be peeled, and can be snacked on out of hand like an apple. Try grating kohlrabi raw for salads and slaws, slice thinly and sprinkle with salts and herbs, or cut into sticks to use with dips. You can steam it, either whole for about 30 minutes, or thinly sliced for 5-10, or dredge in flour and briefly fry. It goes well with lemon, butter and herbs or curry. Add it sliced or cubed to soups, stews or stir-fries. Kohlrabi will last for a few weeks in plastic in the fridge; store the leaves and bulbs separately.

the fine art of chopping

I can’t tell you what a difference my new knife makes with any slicing and chopping tasks. (It makes me so curious about this one!) With any slaw, texture is quite important. It’s nice to have all the ingredients roughly the same shape/thickness. If you don’t have the time/patience to julienne like this, you can always use a hand grater or food processor.

in the pink

The Pink Lady apple is among my favorites. It’s a blush apple with a firm texture and a balanced sweet-tart flavor that offsets the mild, slightly radish-y kohlrabi.

in the sticks

Leave the skin on, so the slaw is not quite so albino.

flavor boosters

To spice things up, I used what I had on hand: jalapeño, lemon zest and tarragon. I was inspired to build on the slight licorice flavor of the tarragon with the addition of some fennel seeds.

ready to go

There is something very satisfying about setting out all your ingredients—your mise en place—as you prepare to assemble a dish. It eliminates all that frantic scrambling about when you haven’t properly read the recipe.

seeds of an idea

Toasting the fennel seeds in a dry skillet brings out their oils and creates a richer, more complex flavor and smell. They brown very quickly, and will taste bitter when burnt, so cook over low heat and watch them carefully.

back to the grind

I have a dedicated spice grinder for this, but you can also use a hand mill or a mortar and pestle, especially if you don’t need a very fine powder.

good to the grain

I felt like a good strong mustard would complement the Germanic roots of the kohlrabi, and I’m always looking for ways to use my Kozlik’s. This Canadian company makes so many delectable mustards, it’s tempting to collect them all. The one above is their Triple Crunch, made with three kinds of seeds and Canadian Club whiskey. It’s almost like a spicy, vegetarian caviar.

see slaw

As you work, be sure to drop your slices of kohlrabi and apple into the waiting lemon juice, to prevent browning. Once you toss everything together, the flecks of red apple skin, yellow zest and green tarragon and jalapeño make a very pretty combination for the eye as well as the palate. This slaw couldn’t be healthier, more refreshing or more delicious.