Happy new year! I’m starting 2012 with one simple resolution that will benefit you and me–cooking from cookbooks that I received as treasured gifts in the past couple months.
This I decided during today’s walk around Walden Pond, as I thought about the meaning of life and dismissed tedious fitness goals, and then resolved to cook from more cookbooks this year and read Proust. Continue reading
The Cement Truck Kitchen was in full holiday gift manufacturing mode this month. We made triple batches of this granola, gearing up for all the bags to deliver from Chanukkah through the new year’s parties.
I’ve been auditioning granola recipes for years. My family has been happy about this and is at the ready to do batch comparisons and blind taste tests.
This recipe is a distant cousin to a long ago Martha Stewart recipe.
In Cement Truck Kitchen taste tests, it’s less sweet, but still tied with Melissa Clark’s olive oil granola and Molly Wizenberg’s granola. I encourage you to make this recipe your own–replace the almonds and pecans with other nuts that you like (pistachios, walnuts, hazelnuts?), swap whole flax seeds or pumpkin seeds for the sesame seeds, and mix in your favorite dried fruits.
Continue reading
There are some ingredient combinations that get the attention of the pleasure-seeking part of my brain. Dates and bacon, chickpeas and cumin, and harissa or cardamom with anything, and I’m ordering it or making the recipe.
It was exactly those combinations that played out in last night’s dinner. Lucky for me, my friend Josh likes making the entree and is happy to leave the sides to me. So when I told him that I wanted make a chickpea and date dish, barley pilaf, and a kale salad, he decided that coriander-spiced grilled lamb steaks would be just the thing. Continue reading
My favorite part of this time of year is thinking about and making homemade treats for my friends and family. A gift that a friend makes with great care and thought says “hey, you are special,” as I can attest to, having just received these beautiful handknit cashmere socks.
Since you can’t touch them, I will tell you that they are as sumptuous as petting the world’s softest cat and are made from Ellie’s reclaimed cashmere. After having met Ellie and seeing a huge display of her yarns spun from recycled sweaters into gorgeous and subtle color combinations, and having spent many hours knitting a lone sock, I appreciate these socks even more. Continue reading
Party season is upon us, and so I’m sharing one of my favorite go-to party recipes, a curried pea dip that takes 10 minutes to prepare. It’s sweet and spicy and looks pretty in a white bowl.
This is one of my mom‘s recipes, from her book The Nut Gourmet. She drizzles it with pomegranate syrup and calls it hot karachi pea dip, because she’s much cooler than I am.
If you are serving it for a holiday appetizer, feel free to get crafty and form it into a tree or a wreath–with tiny red bell pepper pieces for ornaments! Serve it with crackers or celery sticks. You can even use it as a spread in a roasted vegetable sandwich, or as a topping on a flatbread pizza along with feta or goat cheese.
Even better, it’s a pantry recipe, if you keep a bag of peas in the freezer and have a lemon or a bottle of lemon juice in the fridge.
Curried Sweet Pea Dip
1 1/2 cups frozen peas, thawed
1/2 cup pistachio nuts
5 TBS water
1 TBS lemon juice
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp curry powder
1/8 tsp cayenne, or more or less, depending on how spicy you want it
Put all ingredients in the food processor and mix until blended and creamy. Serve warm or room temperature with crackers and celery. Can be made up to 2 days before serving.
cement truck kitchen 