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Entries Tagged as 'Vegetarian'

Spicy Sweet Potato Gratin — a different sort of Sweet Potato

November 9th, 2010 · 17 Comments · Autumn, Entertaining, Holiday, Make Ahead, Recipes, Seasonal, Vegetables and Sides

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Despite having a decent reputation for cooking, a killer turkey recipe and not one but TWO autumnal table runners, I haven’t hosted Thanksgiving since 2004, and I’m thrilled about that. One of the reasons we moved to Los Angeles back in the day was to give our (then unconceived) children the experience of growing up with family holidays, and for Thanksgiving we always have a place at the table at the house of my parents, my grandmother, or one of my aunts. And since family meals in my family are always pot luck, I get the fun of cooking what I want for Thanksgiving without the stress of worrying that I don’t have enough wine glasses, or bringing in extra chairs from the garage.

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And while my contribution to the family Thanksgiving varies, I always always make these sweet potatoes. They are not gooey with brown sugar, or covered in marshmallows. What they are is creamy and spicy and sweet and smoky. They’re also easy and practically foolproof and, depending on how liberally you apply the cayenne, almost universally popular.

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Sweet and Spicy Roasted Pumpkin Seeds — Happy Halloween!

October 31st, 2010 · 6 Comments · Holiday, Quick, Recipes, Seasonal, Vegetables and Sides

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As an adult, I am wary of jack-o-lanterns. You see, I had a traumatic jack-o-lantern experience in college, and I’m still suffering the psychological wounds. As a member of the Senior Class Council, it was my job (together with my roommmate’s) to plan the annual Senior Class Halloween Masquerade Ball. We planned to turn the college dining hall (a gorgeous, soaring Palladian space) into a veritable autumn wonderland, complete with hundreds of twinkling fairy lights and pumpkin lanterns. A week or so before the ball, we visited the pumpkin patch and loaded up my boyfriend’s little blue Ford Festiva with over 50 pumpkins, and carried them up the stairs to my dorm room to await carving the following week. And there they sat, until I noticed a smell. And tried to pick up one of the pumpkins, only to have its flesh dissolve on the floor. The pumpkins were rotting. And slimy. And the stench of those pumpkins was entrenched in my dorm room for quite some time. Talk about a horror story! I still have nightmares about it.

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But now I am the mother of a three year old, and to the three year old set, Halloween is a BIG DEAL. There have to be spiderwebs and princess costumes and candy (natch) but most of all there have to be jack-o-lanterns. So I overcame my pumpkin phobia, scraped out the insides with a metal spoon into a bowl (I’m not touching the slimy stuff — the memories!) and carved not one, not two, but three Jack-o-lanterns (OK, Ken, he of the former Ford Festiva, carved one, but I scraped out all three).

Of course, three year olds being the tiny tyrants they are, having three jack-o-lanterns was not enough — she wanted to roast pumpkin seeds (I blame preschool for putting these notions into her head). So, because I love her dearly, my gorge rising, I sorted through the bowl of slimy, smelly pumpkin guts (OK they weren’t that smelly — these pumpkins had been living outside instead of near a radiator), and separated out the seeds. Now that, my friends, is maternal love. And then I roasted them, and thanks to the magic of spices, even thought they tasted pretty darn good!

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The only Guacamole Recipe You’ll Ever Need

September 3rd, 2010 · 8 Comments · Entertaining, Quick, Recipes, Soups and Starters, Vegetables and Sides, Vegetarian

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With Labor Day weekend coming up, and outdoor parties and barbecues on the horizon, it’s good to have a classic guacamole recipe in your back pocket.

Although I don’t have brothers or sisters, I never felt lonely when I was growing up. My mother and father had siblings to spare, and my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins gathered often — to celebrate birthdays, holidays, half birthdays, television events. One of the main reasons I wanted to move back to Los Angeles from New York was to give the Nuni (then just a twinkle in her parents’ eye) that family and community that I grew up with.

The menu varies — my mother makes mean spare ribs, my aunt often grills sausages. My grandmother’s fallback is barbecued chicken, and the sweet spicy taste of her favored brand of barbecue sauce takes me immediately to childhood summer evenings, shivering in a wet bathing suit while the scent of charcoal smoke fills the air. But whatever the main dish was, we always began with guacamole.

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