Simple herb cheese spread.

Last week, I posted about discovering labneh, the Middle Eastern yogurt cheese. This stuff is fantastic, and it’s incredibly versatile. I mixed labneh with dried vegetable flakes, a splash of wine and some seasoned salt into …

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Fun ingredient of the week: Labneh.

Cooking with my mom recently, I encountered an ingredient I hadn’t tried before: labneh (also spelled labna) or Middle Eastern yogurt cheese. In a nutshell, it’s plain yogurt that has been strained for several days to remove the …

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Tasting summer tomatoes: part 1.

Farmers’ markets are well-stocked with tomatoes this time of year, in the heat of late summer. And that’s good news for those of us who can’t get enough tomato goodness. Rob and I decided to do …

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Spiced steak and tomatoes.

There are two dishes that combined prevent me from becoming a full-on vegetarian: Rob’s always-perfect grilled hamburgers and this: Fennel-spiced steak that’s grilled and served over sliced tomatoes. When summer tomatoes are at their best—big ones, …

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Sweet and seasonal strawberries.

In most of the U.S., strawberries are an early- to late-spring crop. But some growers also plant “everbearing” varieties that produce fruit well into summer. Those secondary crops are beginning to show up in farmers’ markets …

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The art of eating locally.

A foodie friend of mine (see her Leaf and Grain blog) pointed me to this wonderful video on CNN’s Eatocracy site, in which Mario Batali extols the notion of eating truly seasonally—of fully enjoying a local …

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Garbage gazpacho.

Though my smallish frame might indicate otherwise, my eyes are often bigger than my stomach. And so it is that in summertime I kind of overbuy produce. Everything looks so good at the farmers’ market and, …

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Summer succotash.

In the heart of summer, I cannot get enough of corn, zucchini and tomatoes. They taste intensely of sunshine, they’re incredibly easy to prepare and they’re endlessly flexible. An article in the July/August issue of Eating …

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Quick pickles.

I hate pickles. Let me be clear: I. Hate. Pickles. Hate them so much that I avoid at all costs what I call pickle contamination: that is, when the juice from an unwanted dill pickle sogs …

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