If you’ve taken Purple Kale’s workshop, you know that we use a large set of ingredients for easily pulling together creative and delicious meals.  However, we always stress that the Purple Kale system works even with just a few items prepared in simple ways.  Here is the first installment in a new blog series to [...]

Rhubarb debuts in spring’s signature strawberry rhubarb pie, but as an ingredient, it spans the kitchen’s savory/sweet divide.  Many cooks appreciate, conceptually, that rhubarb pairs as well as cranberries with a range of poultry and meat, but the question for many is how to take it there.  What gets that tart, fibrous stalk into delicious, [...]

The doors of my refrigerator hold a growing stockpile of preserved ingredients: anchovies, assorted mustards, capers, hot sauce.   I use each item frequently.  In fact, these are the pantry staples I buy often without checking if I I’m out.  Like toilet paper—another roll never hurts, just in case.  When duplicate jars pile up, I gather [...]

I am not opposed to the recent growth of pre-prepped ingredients. I understand why, for instance, a home cook finds it tempting to buy pre-cut vegetables or packaged stocks, especially if he/she is typically pressed for time to prepare meals. But while it is understandable to buy a bit of mise en place to help [...]

Sometimes, lethargy leads to innovation. This is helpful, especially, when inspiration is scarce. My lazy tomato sauce proves this point.

Thanks to everyone for a great weekend of workshops.  Next round is coming up on February 8th (for Parents) and February 9th (Calling All Cooks).  For more information, and a link to register, click HERE.

This weekend, I attempted Panforte, a classic Italian sweet of dried fruits, nuts, cocoa and spices.  It is a fruitcake, technically, but one not undone by bad alcohol or pasty icing.  Panforte is a fork-able confection, sweet, dense, and rich, sticky and divinely good.

Most of us have one: an artfully set bowl, shelf, or basket, filled with root vegetables.  Staples like potatoes, onions and garlic find frequent housing here, before we use them to anchor whatever else we’re eating.  Rarely, though, do we look to this food arrangement as a meal unto itself.  But tonight, rid at last [...]

Our family was on vacation when lunchtime rolled around. One day, my husband peeked into the fridge to see what there was to eat. “We have nothing for lunch,” he declared.  We’d been to the grocery almost every day on this trip, so it was odd to think we would have depleted our stock. “We’re [...]

You know the perfect melon when you read one—food writers become hopelessly poetic in the face of hyper-seasonal food.   But what happens when the food we pay homage to falls short of expectations?  What do we do when perfectly ripe produce is anything but? Few things are as disappointing as a mealy piece of fruit, [...]

Purple Kale has been in moving limbo for over a month.  Our books and files are in boxes, still strewn about.  Our kitchen equipment is caught in an endless and hilarious migration from cabinet to cabinet (we now have more than two!), and our office equipment remains unplugged and in boxes.  In the midst of [...]

We talk a great deal about improvisation at “2 Minutes” and Purple Kale Kitchenworks. Here is a great example of when inspiration (a love of summer produce) and situational constraints (a hodgpodge pantry, the summer heat) come together in delightful culinary riffs. Jessie, a former workshop student, and now friend, invited me over for what [...]

Those who know well the idea of “holding point” likely have encountered the following scenario: After a terrific day of “modular” food prep, and several days of eating well from this pantry, you are left with smaller amounts of the same selection to eat. While we go out of our way at Purple Kale Kitchenworks [...]

Thanks to a fun group a parents for giving over the better part of their Sunday to talk food and feeding families well. I applaud each person’s willingness to improvise at the stove and see how even unfamiliar ingredients come together. With our 25 or so provisions at the ready, here are some of the [...]

The following menu is from a demonstration I gave on October 13 at Eden Village Camp in Cold Springs, NY. My hosts were Eden Village Camp, in association with the Jewish Farm School, and the Foundation for Jewish Camp, organizations that, among other things, help strengthen Jewish communities through agriculture and recreation, respectively. I was [...]

If restaurants weren’t cautious about food costs, many would go under, quickly. Food cost is the amount of a dish’s raw ingredients taken as a percentage of its sales price. If, for example, a whole fish costs $7 wholesale, and its accompaniments (say, garlic, white wine, and thyme) cost $1, the cost to the restaurant [...]

There are two kinds of ricotta cheese. The kind I had in Noto, Sicily nine years ago, brought by a cheesemaker to a pastry shop where I was working–and every other. In New York, I have discovered some that evoke that sweet, pungent, creamy Sicilian bowlful, but while they might approximate the cheese in quality, [...]

Never refuse an offer of duck confit. It’s not like milk, of course. Or sugar. But occasionally, and especially if you’re my neighbor, someone knocks at your door with a container of duck confit. Just for you. You can refuse it on the grounds that you have no special occasion to share it. Or you [...]

Thanks to everyone who participated in Purple Kale Kitchenworks‘ workshops this past weekend.  It was a great time, and your enthusiasm for the work we did kept me thinking for hours about the possibilities for what we teach. As an example to others, and to remind ourselves, of what a small group of culinary novices [...]

I found myself with a surplus of chicken stock (see note below) and the need to make each meal stretch beyond one day.  I built the flavors around either pork or turkey and added whatever pre-prepped things I had.  These soups just kind of made themselves. If you find that you’re using chicken stock more [...]

Wheatberries are as they sound, the whole kernel of the wheat. You can buy them soft and white or hard and red, depending on the type of wheat harvested. The red ones require some diligent planning and soaking, but the soft, white ones cook rather quickly. Their texture is chewy in a way that few [...]

Pulled straight from the ground, parsnips are rough and soapy, tough and chewy.  But peel them and braise or roast or fry them and they succumb to a sweetness that their cousins, the carrot, can’t match. Like carrots, the thin ones are the most flavorful.  Whatever is left of the mess that you cook can [...]

My favorite thing about having a lot of good chicken stock around is that you can often toss all the little bits of mise-d leftovers into one pot and turn it into a tasty soup.  Here are a couple of examples. Barn Broth (Root vegetable and chicken soup) Remember those days that were colder than [...]

I once participated in a bean tasting contest.  It was a friendly enough group of food writers and chefs, hosted by someone who had a silly column to fill in her weekly assignments.  The contention she posited was simple:  all beans taste the same.  To prove this, she cooked 10 varieties of beans, all in [...]