Food and Recipes

I was a little frustrated yesterday when I steamed a dozen frozen tamales (handmade by a local mom) for a potluck we were hosting, and discovered after steaming them that we were out of tomatillo sauce.  I’d sworn we had at least half a bottle left in the fridge, but no, there was no tomatillo […]

(2-3 hours, serves 8) I’ve been reading a lot about Mediterranean cooking recently, and wondering if I could adapt some of our Sri Lankan flavors to that style of cooking.  This dish started with Beef Smoore,  a dish of Dutch / Sri Lankan origin, one of those recipes where you just dump everything in a

(30 minutes, serves 4) Creamy, tangy, richly-spiced, with just a little heat; I was aiming for something my daughter would love.  Of course, feel free to amp up the chili powder or toss in some chopped Thai green chilies for a spicier version!  Use whatever seafood you have on hand — I pulled some frozen

With the New Year, I’m trying to more consciously eat plenty of fish (and serve it to my kids).  I’ve been eating lox and bagels for years, but only recently have I discovered whitefish salad.  I think it was at my friends Ellen and Delia’s apartment in New York, where we had a weekend writing

Not so much a recipe, just my lunch. 🙂  A toasted mini-bagel with a scrambled egg, seeni sambol, and some avocado (with a bit of salt and pepper).  Yum.

(30 minutes, serves 4) The goal for this dinner was to make the spicing very simple, make something the kids would happily eat, and have it all ready in thirty minutes, for an easy weeknight meal.  Success on all counts! The flavors are honestly a little too similar for what I’d consider ideal — normally,

(30 minutes, serves four) It is honestly still a little bewildering to me, growing up in a Sri Lankan tradition, that one can make quite tasty food without chopping several onions and utilizing a host of spices.  But I have to admit, on a weeknight when you want to cook fast and get back to

(30 minutes, serves 4) New year, new eating plan.  Our kids are eight and ten, and we’re trying to eat a little healthier all around, and hopefully get them to eat more of the same foods we do; we’ve spent too long making separate meals.  All of us could stand to rely a little less

I was not a very good cook in college. I’d called my mother, somewhat desperate after months of dorm cafeteria food, and she taught me how to make her beef and potato curry over the phone. I made it regularly, sometimes eating with bread, sometimes with rice. I thought I had it down. Then one

“But why are you making stock?” It was a fair question — Kevin had asked what I planned to do today, on New Year’s Eve, and I said, ‘make stock,’ and that was confusing because while we cook with stock all the time, we generally just buy it ready-made. But it made sense to me