Quinoa Burger (Nikki Sawyer Moore photo)

I’ve long been intrigued by quinoa. It’s got a great story. Cultivated high in the Andes of South America over 5,000 years ago, quinoa is a whole grain that is a complete protein with all eight essential amino acids. It cooks quickly, which, combined with its nutritional benefits, have resulted in me keeping a bag of it as a staple in my pantry. The only problem: I’m not head-over-heels in love with quinoa’s taste. I find it a little bland.

Before you cry slander, hear me out. I’ve given it a fair shake. I’ve made quinoa pilaf and added the distinctive spiral-like grains to salads and soups. Yet when I stand in front of my kitchen cabinet, I’ll reach for time-consuming brown rice, chewy Farro, or bulgur wheat ahead of quinoa every day of the week. Or I did until I came up with this recipe for quinoa burgers. Read the full story

Ginger, rosemary and lemon sweet tea.

Last weekend a client asked me to make a non-alcoholic drink for a party.  I did a little research and stumbled across this recipe for a non-alcoholic spritzer on theKitchn website.   It was everything you would want in a drink:  full of flavor, refreshing, and interesting enough to not miss the alcohol.

The flavor of the drink , which is primarily composed of sparkling water, comes from a simple syrup infused with orange, lemon, and rosemary.  It’s yummy stuff and stored in a mason jar in my fridge, it didn’t last long.  Before the week was out,  I found myself in need of making another batch. Read the full story

Southern caviar incorporates black-eyed peas and veggies. (Nikki Sawyer Moore photo)

Beans are a pantry staple in my house. Economical and a good source of protein, they can be kept around in canned and dried form.  Canned beans in particular are good in an emergency when the pantry is bare and people are hungry.

Heated with a few seasonings one can serve them atop rice, throw them into a salad, or blend them into a quick dip.   Canned beans compared to dried beans are a time-saver, but they are also more expensive and often contain a high amount of sodium.  I justify the higher price based upon convenience, and I cut the sodium by always rinsing canned beans under water before serving.  This simple step can reduce the sodium count by up to 50% and makes me feel better about taking the shortcut. Read the full story

Mussels with white wine, shallots and tomatoes. (Nikki Sawyer Moore photo)

I typically advocate a jump right-in approach to cooking.   After all, more often than not, it’s a lack of confidence on the part of the cook that gets them in trouble.   The nervous back and forth between the dish on the stove, rapidly charring before them in a most undesirable way, to the recipe, where they search for answers.  When should I remove it from the skillet?  Is this golden brown?  Has it been exactly 3 minutes?  Is it normal for it to be smoking this much?

Most people would benefit from relying on their own instincts a bit more.  Despite our personal cooking skills, most of us know what burnt looks like and most problems in the kitchen are easily solved with a little commonsense.  With that being said, there are some things that need a bit of prior knowledge on the part of the cook in order to be approached with confidence.  Mussels are one of these things. Read the full story

Stir-Fried Long Beans (Nikki Sawyer Moore photo)

With sizzle and steam this fragrant recipe yields a side dish of intense flavor in minutes. You briefly sauté ginger, garlic, and shallots before you add the long beans (or green beans) to the wok or skillet. Add the sliced green onions and toss everything together just long enough for the long beans to sear in spots before you add chicken broth, soy sauce and a pinch of sugar to the wok. Cover the dish and let it steam until the beans are crisp tender before serving as an accompaniment to your favorite Asian meal. Read the full story

Vegetarian Pad Thai with baked tofu (Nikki Sawyer Moore photo)

Stir-frying requires a bit more from the cook than your average culinary technique. It demands organization and a hefty amount of prep work. Dinner happens in a flash with lots of sizzle and steam. The aftermath, lots of prep bowls, mere minutes ago filled with a little bit of this and some of that, need a bit more attention.

My husband cringes when it’s Asian night in our home. The dishwasher of our partnership, he dutifully cleans up after every meal, and I, in gratitude, try to clean as much as I can as I go. On Asian night however, it’s all saved for the end. My bowls of ingredients, carefully lined up in the order in which they will go into the dish, are quickly emptied into a blistering wok and then stacked haphazardly by the sink as the house fills with the aroma of ginger, garlic, and soy. Read the full story

Grilled fish tacos, with homemade flour tortillas. (Nikki Sawyer Moore photo)

Last week, when spring was supposed to arrive, but didn’t, I made this recipe.  It would be perfect eaten with a cold margarita in hand in the fading light of a warm spring day.  Instead, I enjoyed the brightly colored slaw atop smoky grilled mahi-mahi inside my home where the thermostat remains set on heat.  No matter.  It’s a dish I’ll make again.

This dish is a fine illustration of the point that delicious food isn’t complicated food.  Good ingredients, combined with the proper seasoning, make this Mexican-inspired slaw refreshing and the perfect accompaniment to the mahi-mahi’s earthy rub that brings just the right amount of spicy kick.  Store-bought flour tortillas will bring dinner together that much more quickly, although I urge you to make your own.   Far from complicated and assembled from ingredients you are sure to have on hand, flour tortillas take this meal from satisfying weeknight dinner to something that demands a little more celebration. Read the full story

Baked brioche.

My husband and I celebrated the arrival of 2013 in Paris.   Except for taxi rides to and from the airport, we explored Paris by foot.

We stumbled upon pastry shops, ate meals that demanded more walking, and drank cups of coffee and wine while resting our feet in bistros. On our last day in Paris, being good tourists, we shopped and our first stop was to famed cookware store Dehillerin in Les Halles. Read the full story

Lunch is served: Kale, roasted bell pepper, onion and Gruyere frittata.

I’m on a mission. My pantry and cabinets are stuffed to overflowing with food. I’ve got half-empty bags of pearled barley and farro, scant teaspoons of xanthan gum, about eight different types of flour, and enough chilies to catch a hundred mouths on fire precariously stuffed in my cabinet. Vinegars, from champagne to white balsamic, sit between an assortment of preserves and a plethora of dried fruits and nuts. Typically I find comfort in having so many staples close at hand, but recently I’ve found it a bit overwhelming. I’ve felt the urge to spring-clean my pantry.

So over the past couple of weeks, I’ve limited my grocery store shopping and instead have looked to the freezer and the pantry for inspiration. Read the full story

French Yogurt Cake

The first time I saw the recipe for “French Yogurt Cake” in last May’s Bon Appetit, I knew it would be a classic in my repertoire. It looked like pound cake, but with a lighter crumb, and the fact that it contained Greek yogurt as well as many other ingredients common to my pantry, made it immediately attractive.

I made the recipe last spring and it met my high expectations. No heavy mixers were dragged out of cabinets, it could be made in minutes, and it froze well. This latter point being critical since, as a two-person household, we rarely are able to eat a whole cake or bread loaf before it becomes stale. The cake’s versatility as a sweet breakfast, an afternoon snack, or even dessert was just another point in its favor. Read the full story

Upside Down Banana Cake (Nikki Sawyer Moore photo)

Bananas have a rough go of it here in the United States. Even the most basic grocery store has at least 4 or 5 varieties of apples. Carrots come in a variety of colors and sizes and even the pear section continues to expand. Bananas however remain the same: one kind, many bunches, green or yellow.

Bananas have a better go of it in other countries. I taught English as a Second Language in Ecuador after college. I lived on the coast in a town called Manta and Hotel Oro Verde (the Green Gold Hotel) in honor of bananas being one of the country’s largest exports was the nicest hotel. With many varieties of bananas, they take them seriously there and it was in Ecuador that I first tried plantains. Read the full story

Pierogi (Nikki Sawyer Moore photo)

They buried my grandfather with a paintbrush in his shirt pocket. Painting was his passion and he loved nothing more than painting pictures of the sea and the ships that sailed across it.

The walls of my grandparents’ house were covered with his oil paintings of navy vessels, historic ships, and tossing seas.  If you found a nice piece of driftwood on the beach, my grandfather would paint a picture of the ocean on it, complete with dolphins dancing on the surf.  He painted cards that we would receive twice a year, for Christmas and our birthdays, with $25.00 tucked inside. Read the full story

Valentine’s treat: Scones with dried cranberries, served with jam. (Nikki Sawyer Moore photo)

Let’s forget about the Godiva, the long-stem roses, and the impossibility of getting dinner reservations at this late date.   Let’s not worry about who has a sweetheart, who’s looking for a sweetheart, or who’s planning to dump their sweetheart.    Let’s get to the heart of matter and talk about scones.

As a little girl, I remember going with my mother to get afternoon tea at a tea shop in Tallahassee, FL.  I’m still contemplating why Tallahassee had a tea shop, but we did, and it had an entire wall filled to the brim with jars of loose leaf teas.  The whole place smelled of spices and warm milk and it rang (or rattled) with the sound of women chattering. Read the full story

Udon noodle soup with shiitake mushrooms (Nikki Sawyer Moore photo)

Forget macaroni and cheese, chicken pot pie, or meatloaf.   When I want comfort food, I look East for steaming bowls of soup.   Miso, sweet and sour, and wonton all warm my belly and delight my mouth, but it is noodle soups, like Vietnamese pho, that after slurping a bowl leave me content and satiated like nothing else.

The key to these soups is a broth that is unctuous, but not cloying; full of flavor, yet endlessly sippable. I’ve struggled for a while to create an udon noodle soup that achieved this balance.   I’m happy to report that this udon noodle soup, that uses both fresh and dried shiitake mushrooms for the most flavor, does just that. Read the full story

Kale salad (Nikki Sawyer Moore photo)

Every month I have the privilege of getting together with a small group of women under the pretense of discussing a book.  While we always devote at least a minute or two to the book, we spend most of our time catching up on each other’s lives over dinner.

This past Sunday was no exception.  We laughed a lot, commiserated some, and ate a memorable meal together.  My friend who was hosting this month has serious food-style.  She’s got a knack for making approachable, soul-warming food and then giving it a bit of a twist.  She makes it looks effortless, yet I always push back my chair from her table feeling inspired. Read the full story