Food tips

I'm not big on most convenience foods, but I am a fan of sausages. I always keep a package or two in the freezer. They are quick to cook and combined with a few other ingredients they can take the leading role in soup, stew, casseroles or pasta dishes. I’ve paired them with everything from pears to rapini to make meals on the fly. During the Fancy Food Show  last month I got a chance to try Mulay’s Sausage at Food Fete . I was impressed by their products and especially founder Loree Mulay’s dedication to using high quality ingredients. Her Italian sausages were juicy but not greasy. “No one should see how laws or sausages are made” goes the Otto von Bismarck quote, but I'm not so sure about that. Loree spoke passionately about the sourcing of meat that goes into her sausages made according to her family’s recipes. She uses meat from animals never treated with anitbiotics. She doesn't use nitrates, MSG, soy, dairy, sugar, artifical flavors or colors and her products are g...

Summer is in full swing and so are the farmers markets. It’s a joy to walk around and see all the juicy peaches, luscious strawberries, plump eggplants, and many colors, shapes and sizes of peppers and squash. Much as I like Summer squash, I’m even more crazy about their younger selves—squash blossoms. They are wonderful stuffed and fried, in frittata, risotto, in quesadillas and of course, with pasta.  I am a pasta maniac and swear I could eat a pound of it in one sitting. But I’ve been experimenting lately and I’ve found I can be satisfied with a whole lot less pasta if I add a lot of other ingredients. This recipe is a perfect example. It has plenty of vegetables and just a little pasta. It uses very few ingredients so use the absolute best you can get from either your garden or a farmers market.  Squash blossoms are very delicate and I like this technique of just blanching them in the pasta water rather than sauteeing them. Many recipes use to many other strong flavored in...

When I was growing up we had a second freezer that I swear was packed full of halibut. My father got it somewhere and we ate it for what seemed like years. I remember that it was dry, tough and somewhat stringy. Was it terribly freezer burned? Only recently my mother told me it might not have been halibut. What it actually was will forever remain a mystery. But it was years before I tried halibut again and imagine my surprise to discover that it is a delicate, creamy and luscious fish. Recently I was in Alaska to learn more about seafood so naturally I went fishing. Our boat caught a tremendous amount of halibut. Halibut can be very big fish and now I've come full circle and am enjoying having a freezer full of it. I believe the secret to cooking halibut is to be extremely gentle. It cooks up wonderfully when roasted slowly and is much harder to overcook at low temperatures. In this recipe you roast vegetables at high heat, give the fish a little rest at room temperature with a  sp...