Category: Lentils & Legumes

  • One thing you should know about living in Berlin is that there is no good Indian food here. None. There are plenty of Indian restaurants, but for some reason they all serve a variation on the same strangely insipid, gloppy mixtures that hold barely any resemblance to the Indian food I ate in Boston and…

  • So here's a little story for you. On Saturday morning. I was strolling around my favorite green market, filling my bag with snappy asparagus, hyacinths and peonies, rosy little radishes and rondes de Nice, those round zucchini that you're meant to stuff with seasoned ground meat and bake in the oven. I didn't expect to…

  • It is 80 degrees in New York City today (that's 26 degrees Celsius – one degree warmer than would be required to close school in Berlin!) and I'm spooning up pork ragout like it's the first day of winter and I've just settled in for the long haul. Strange? Perhaps. But awfully tasty. I'll blame…

  • A secret: for nigh on 4 weeks now, I've had a plastic bag full of potatoes sitting on my butcher block counter. They've been sprouting strangely pretty purple and green nubbins, which I rub off each time I pass them. Their skins have grown wrinkly and I've felt worse and worse every time I enter…

  • I have been rendered mute by a chickpea. (Can you say mute when you mean your ability to type?) To be more specific, a jumbo can of chickpeas simmered for close to an hour in a thick, spicy tomato sauce spiked with jalapeño and lemon juice and finished with fresh cilantro (two nights in a…

  • I cannot, for the life of me, stand the sight of turkey any more. We were meant to take a Tupperware packed with shreds of it home with us when we left Beacon yesterday, but forgot it in the fridge. Honestly, it was a relief. I think I’ve come quite far in battling my aversion…

  • I've been doing this thing lately where I try to spend less than five dollars on lunch during the week. It's more difficult than you'd think, though perhaps not to those of you who work in Manhattan. A slice place opened up near me recently advertising one-dollar slices of pizza, which worked once or twice,…

  • I have three minutes to write this post before I fall asleep on the couch and I don't want to break NaBloPoMo right in the very first week, for Pete's sake. Give me seven days at least. The emotion and the nerves from the past few weeks, wait, months, wait, oh hell, years seem to…

  • My beans have arrived! With their cheeky packaging and glossy little hulls, they are simply gorgeous. Giant white limas, Good Mother Stallards, Ojo de Cabras, and Christmas limas. Speckled and smooth and a delight to behold, I've quite literally not been this excited about something in my kitchen in a long time. Ben and I…

  • Hmmm. Okay. I think I know what you're thinking. But you try and scramble eggs mixed with soy sauce and see if you don't end up with a plate full of, well, brownish-brackish-looking slop. Thank goodness there are those little bits and pieces of pink shrimp to brighten things a bit, but still, I know…