April 24, 2013 | By Adam Roberts | 3 Comments

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, a musical can be built around the poetry of Ezra Pound.
Wait, that was a ridiculous line from last week’s Smash (as recapped, hilariously, by Rachel Shukert here). What I meant to say was: I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, it’s worth knowing how to make a curry. I’ve done it with chickpeas, I’ve done it with cauliflower, and today I’ll show you how to do it with a sweet potato.
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April 10, 2013 | By Adam Roberts | 24 Comments

They look like the aliens in Toy Story, the ones that gaze up and worship The Claw; only those aliens are cute and kohlrabi, which I often see at the farmer’s market, is rather beguiling. What is it? What are you supposed to do with it? What does it taste like? Last week, I bought a few orbs and brought them home in order to finally unpack the mystery of kohlrabi.
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December 17, 2012 | By Adam Roberts | 13 Comments

Cooking without a recipe. How do you do it?
You start with ingredients. My favorite way to do that is to open my refrigerator to see what’s there: on Friday night (when Craig was working late and his parents were flying in from Seattle) I saw carrots, I saw celery, I saw onions. I decided to cut them all up into big chunky pieces.
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April 27, 2011 | By Adam Roberts | 0 Comments

Snooki may like to smoosh, but when it came to the root vegetables that I brought home from the farmer’s market last week, I was in the mood to smash.
I was making roast chicken (my go-to weeknight dish) and my standard practice is to stick some root vegetables under or around the chicken, to crank up the oven and to rejoice as all that chicken fat infuses the vegetables with its chickeny goodness.
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January 21, 2009 | By Adam Roberts | 8 Comments

Easy. Shockingly easy. Are you ready? In one paragraph, here we go (courtesy of David Tanis and his marvelous book, “A Platter of Figs.”) Buy parsnips (4 to 5 pounds). Heat the oven to 375. Peel the parsnips. Quarter them lengthwise; remove the central core. If they’re large, cut them into 3-inch lengths. Toss with olive oil (appx. 3 Tablespoons), salt and pepper and roast in a small baking dish for 45 minutes until they’re tender and brown. They’re sweet and earthy and delicious and go great with roast chicken, pork, or other roasted root vegetables. And they take less than one paragraph to make.
November 10, 2008 | By Adam Roberts | 233 Comments

You know you’ve done something right with broccoli when the person you made it for describes it to someone else the next day as “better than biting into a steak.”
Those were Craig’s words and they were a marked change from the first words he uttered about the broccoli, before he bit in: “You made broccoli for dinner? Broccoli and sweet potatoes?”
Then he did bite in and his eyes lit up. “Oh my God,” he said. “This is the best broccoli I’ve ever had in my life.” Later he said: “If parents made this broccoli for their kids, kids wouldn’t hate broccoli. They’d beg for it.”
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September 28, 2007 | By Adam Roberts | 11 Comments

After watching that Alice Waters video last week and reading the accompanying article, I was determined to recreate the meal she made for NYT author Kim Severson. I’m not sure I recreated it exactly–I added too much oil to my aioli so it broke a bit; and I used purple carrots just because they were fun. But this was a simple, delightful, and mostly healthy dinner. Although, come to think of it, I did fry the potatoes in oil: but c’mon, who prefers boiled potatoes to fried potatoes? And don’t carrots and radishes cancel out fried potatoes? If you do the math, this did more good for me than bad.