It seems like every time I travel internationally I find some delicious snack food that local folks don't really even think about, but is maybe the best recipe to bring back from that place. In Catalonia, that was obviously pan con tomate; in Paris it was shredded carrot salad; in Oaxaca, cheese empanadas; in Shanghai it was green onion noodles. Unlike the far more elaborate headline "national dishes" featured on the covers of menus and cookbooks, these are all things I've made multiple times since returning.

In Hyderabad, India, that snack food is "crispy corn" or "crunchy corn snack". As far as I can tell, this dish doesn't even have a specific name in Telgu, but it's everywhere. I had my first one at a coffee bar the day of my arrival and the last one in a restaurant at the airport. It makes a great appetizer, and a terrific snack with tea or coffee on its own, and both kids and adults adore it.

And yet, it's super-easy. At least, when you make it my way. You can see the full traditional method here, which is good for restaurants but takes this away from "fun, easy snack".

Now, some notes on the ingredients so that you can make this year-round from whatever you have. We're looking for maximum flexibility here.

Corn Kernels: if you're making this during the summer, use fresh, sweet corn kernels cut off the cob. At other times of year, you can make it using frozen corn, as follows: thaw the frozen corn completely. Then drain it in a colander for 1/2 an hour, and blot it dry with a towel. It won't be completely dry, but mostly dry is fine. Do not use canned corn. While raw corn takes longer to cook, frozen corn needs more drying out, so I find that the cooking time is about the same either way.

Flour: below I use a combination of corn flour (as in finely-milled cornmeal, not corn starch) and rice flour, which gives a nice flavor and crunch. However, you can substitute other non-wholegrain flours, like chickpea flour or fine semolina. If you use AP flour (wheat), then partner it with a pure starch like corn starch or potato starch.

Spices: I give a very simple masala (spice mix) recipe below, but once you get used to making the snack, you can swap in other masalas.

Peppers: make this as hot, or not, as you want. The sliced peppers can be sweet (lunchbox or nardellos) to very spicy (cayenne or serranos), and the chile powder you use can be mild to hot, depending on your taste.

Amchur Powder: this is ground dehydrated mango powder. If you can't get it, substitute coriander seed, and add lemon juice at the end as noted.

crispy corn snack

The masala:

• 1 tsp red chile powder
• 1/2 tsp cumin powder
• 1 tsp aamchur powder (or 1/2 tsp ground coriander)
• 1 tsp salt (or black salt, if you can get it)

The corn:

• 16oz corn kernels
• 2-3 skinny red or green peppers, sliced into rings
• 2-3 shallots, peeled and sliced thin (subs. 1/2 onion)
• 1/4 cup rice flour
• 1/4 cup corn flour (fine-milled cornmeal)
• 3 Tbs vegetable oil
• 1 Tbs lemon juice, if no amchur powder

Mix the masala ingredients. Toss together the corn kernels, pepper slices, shallot, and 1 teaspoon of the masala (3/4 tsp if no amchur). Then, toss with the flours, lightly coating everything.

Heat the oil in a wide pan or wok until at or near smoking point. Scoop in the corn using a slotted spoon, so as to leave any loose flour in the bowl. Fry, stirring regularly, for 5-10 minutes, until the flour has turned dark brown and the corn is scotched in spots.

Dump out the corn onto a paper-towel-lined wide bowl or platter. Shake it around to absorb some of the excess oil, and then pull out the towels while still hot. Sprinkle with 1-2 tsp more masala to taste (and lemon juice, if needed), and toss.

Serve hot or warm. Can be eaten with a fork, or with fingers. If there's any leftovers, re-crisp them in a hot pan.

It's the end of summer, and if you're gardening you have an excess of home-grown tomatoes still to use before they get mushy. Even if you don't have a garden, local tomatoes should be plentiful and cheap at you nearest farmer's market. If you also happen to have some all-butter puff pastry in the freezer, one of the easiest meals you can make is an easy French-style tomato tart.

Like some of my other recipes, this is more of a "kit", because there's really only two ingredients in this recipe that aren't substitutable: the homegrown tomatoes and the butter puff pastry. So, before we get to the instructions, let's go through some of the others:

Puff Pastry: You really want all-butter, or at least part-butter, puff pastry for this. We load up on the Trader Joe's frozen pastry during the winter holidays (the only time they have it); if you didn't, the rest of the year you pretty much need to grab the overpriced Dufour. You can make this with shortening-based puff pastry like Pepperidge Farms, but it won't taste quite as good, but it's still better than no tart at all. You could, of course, make your own but that changes this from a quick weeknight dinner to a major effort.

The Trader Joe's pastry comes conveniently in two 9oz squares, which makes for two nice square tarts. Dufour comes in a single 14oz rectangle, which could be either one really big tart, or cut into two for two more modest ones. For the Dufour, which is thicker and creased, you'll want to roll it out a bit.

Cheese: this recipe requires two cheeses, a soft cheese to put on the base, and a hard cheese to grate over the top. The soft cheese can be almost anything soft and mild, as long as it's not too wet: drained and blotted ricotta, chevre, farmer cheese, neufchatel, cresenza, or a mild camebert. For most cheeses, you want around 6oz per square foot of tart. You could also use a little creme fraiche, but spread it very thin since it's rather wet.

The hard cheese is easier; just 4oz of Comté, Gruyère, parmigiano, or similar cheeses, grated fine.

Tomatoes: This tart can be made either with large tomatoes, sliced 1/4" thick and shingled (photo above) or with cherry tomatoes, sliced in half and packed in, cut side down (photo below). Either works equally well, so use what you have the most of. The important thing is that the tomatoes be fresh and picked ripe.

Herbs: chives, parsley, thyme, or marjoram could all work with this tart, or a mixture. Use what you have access to -- as long as it's minced or cut fine.

In the tarts pictured, I used Black Sea Man sliced tomatoes, sungold cherry tomatoes, Don Froylan requesón cheese for the base, grated DOC Comté cheese, and minced fresh chives.

Now, on to the recipe.

Simple French-style Tomato Tart

• 14-20oz frozen puff pastry sheets
• Either 2-3lbs of large slicing tomatoes, or 2 baskets cherry tomatoes
• 6-9oz soft, but not wet, cheese (see above)
• 3-4oz hard grating cheese
• 2-3 tbs minced herbs
• Salt and pepper

A day before, put the puff pastry in the fridge to thaw.

Heat the oven to 375F with fan, or 400F if you don't have a fan.

Unroll or unfold the puff pastry. Use a rolling pin to gently roll it flat. If it's more than 1/4" thick, maybe roll it out a bit to stretch it. Place it on a baking sheet, and carefully cut a square or rectangle about 1/2" from the edge of the puff pastry, and only about 1/2 way through it (depth of about 1/8" inch). You should end up with a "frame" around the edge which will become your crust. Dock the center rectangle using a fork or a docker (if you have one).

Spread the soft cheese over the center rectangle, making a very thin coating -- thinner the wetter the cheese is. Sprinkle 1/2 of the herbs over the soft cheese, and grind a little pepper on it. If the cheese is unsalted (such as ricotta), sprinkle a little (1/4 tsp) salt as well.

Put it into the oven for 12-16 minutes, or until the frame/crust around the edge puffs up and gets browned on top. If doing two baking sheets because you have two pieces of puff pastry, then remember to swap positions on them after 5 min.

Take the cheesy pastry out of the oven and allow it to mostly cool, 10-15 minutes. Carefully cover the cheesy center with the tomatoes. Sprinkle them lightly with pepper, and then with the rest of the minced herbs. Finally cover the tomatoes with the grated hard cheese.

Place the tart back in the oven for 5-7 minutes, or until the hard cheese is melted and the crust finishes getting crisp and brown.

Allow to mostly cool before slicing. Enjoy with a French green salad.

In honor of BridgetownBites Salad Week and the fact that my porch thermometer reported 100F today (it's still 88F at 7pm), I thought I'd make two salads for dinner, neither requiring any heating at all, just cutting, washing, and marinating. Each also requires one obscure ingredient, but hopefully you can still make use of them for your own heat wave days.

When we have a heat wave like this, I don't want to turn on the stove, and I also don't want to go outside to the grill. So I look for dishes I can prepare which require no heat. Salads top the list, of course, and I could just do a green salad. But in the middle of summer, I can be more creative. Also, the heat wave already killed my lettuce.

I also wanted to take advantage of some produce I had. First, we'd recently been to Walla Walla and brought back a bag of their famous sweet onions (it's the season). Second, Nathan the Watermelon Man started deliveries this week, so I had a delicious Hermiston watermelon. This led to a Persian onion and barberry salad, and a Greek watermelon salad.

Persian Onion Salad

This onion salad comes to us from Naomi Duguid's Persia, with my usual tweaks, of course. It's a very traditional Persian salad, usually served to accompany grilled meats, but delicious on its own if made with sweet onions like the Walla Wallas. I don't recommend making it with regular brown onions except as a topping for meat; without real sweet onions, it would be too sharp to eat by itself.

The obscure ingredient here is dried barberries. These are a staple of Persian cuisine but only found in good Middle Eastern markets here in the US. Fortunately, I live near one. They are quite tart, so if you can't get them, try unsweetened dried cranberries, chopped. The recipe also requires the spice ground sumac, but most major supermarkets carry that these days.

The onion requires a bit of sitting, so start this recipe early.

• Two large Walla Walla, Maui, or Vidalia sweet onions, about 2lbs
• 1 Tbs or more kosher salt
• 1/2 to 2/3 cup dried barberries
• 1 tsp dried mint, or about 2 Tbs chopped fresh mint
• 1 tsp ground sumac
• 2 tsp sherry, champagne, or cider vinegar

Halve, peel, and thinly slide both onions. Layer them in a colander with a sprinkle of kosher salt over each of 4-5 layers of sliced onions. Let sit in the sink for around 1/2 hour. Soak the barberries in 1 cup cold water for the same period of time.

Drain the barberries. Put the sliced onion in a large bowl, fill it with cold water, mix it around, and drain. Then put the onions back in the bowl, fill it with cold water again, and let sit for another 15-20 minutes. This should remove most of the salt and any sharpness from the onion. Then drain the onions, maybe even drying them on a towel.

Toss the onions, barberries, mint, and sumac together. Drizzle over the vinegar. Let sit for a few minutes, then serve.

Greek Watermelon Salad

This type of salad will be more familiar to many readers. I got it from Diane Kochilas Meze years ago when it was less familiar to Americans, and have made it ever since. It's a very tasty salad, and a great way to use up leftover watermelon. Do use quality watermelon, though; if yours is bland or too watery the salad will be meh.

Kochilas' recipe includes a traditional, and hard to find, ingredient that most American recipes leave out: barley rusks. These add a strong, earthy flavor to balance the salad, and absorb the excess watermelon juice. The salad really isn't the same without them, so they're worth mail-ordering.

• Around 3lbs peeled and cubed watermelon
• 2 oz barley rusks
• 1/4 of a large (or 1/2 of a small) red onion, peeled and minced, around 1/2 cup.
• 2 Tbs chopped fresh mint
• 8-12 oz mild, creamy feta cheese, cubed or crushed
• black pepper
• 1 Tbs red wine vinegar

Crush the barley rusks, breaking each rusk into 4-6 pieces. Put these in the bottom of a large serving bowl. Cover them with the watermelon cubes, and then pile the feta, mint, and onion on top. Sprikle with black pepper, and drizzle the vinegar over.

Leave the salad 10-15 minutes for the watermelon juices to soak into the rusks. Then toss thoroughly. Some of the feta will break up during tossing, which is desireable. Serve.

I hope both of these recipes give you some options for dining during a heat wave, too. Have a good Salad Week!

Brunch is a big thing around our house. We rarely go out, because we enjoy making and eating brunchy dishes at home, in our bathrobes. We love both fancier and heartier brunch fare.

Given this, the current egg shortage has been hard to bear. So I've been looking for brunch dishes that require very few eggs, or none at all. One of them is something we had in Oaxaca, enfrijoladas:

See, as an American I was very familiar with enchiladas (who isn't?), but never realized before visiting Oaxaca that enchiladas is just one of a suite of "en-*-adas" dishes, all of which consist of dipping tortillas in some kind of leftover sauce and folding them.

• enchiladas: corn tortillas dipped in leftover chile sauce
• entomadas: corn tortillas dipped in leftover tomato sauce
• enmoladas: corn tortillas dipped in leftover mole
• enfrijoladas: corn tortillas dipped in leftover pureed beans

Notice the "leftover" part of the description; these are all breakfast dishes, because you make them with tortillas (which you always have if you're Mexican) and some leftover sauce, maybe from dinner last night.

Importantly, enfrijoladas consist of tortillas, bean sauce, cheese, and sometimes garnishes. No eggs required (although topping them with a fried egg is delicious).

Now, for my readers who are more familiar with Tex-Mex enchilada casserole, these enfrijoladas are going to seem kind of minimal. But that's really how en-whatever-adas are for most Mexicans, both in Oaxaca and Mexico City. It's a quick breakfast dish, consisting of just tortillas, a sauce, and some cheese. The "stuffed enchiladas" which are standard in so many Mexican-American restaurants descend more from enchiladas suizas, a fairly elaborate restaurant dish from Mexico City.

They are, however, very filling. And easy to make once you get the knack of things.

The recipe below says "Oaxaca-style black beans", which means some black beans, slow cooked with epazote, garlic, onion, chile, and avocado leaf. If you don't happen to have any on hand, but you do have some canned or vac-packed refried black beans, or canned whole black beans, then just season them as follows:

• 2 cups refried or pureed cooked black beans
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 to 1 tsp powdered Mexican chiles (ancho, guajillo, or pasilla)
• 1 tsp dried epazote (if available)
• salt to taste

You'll be making a sauce from the pureed beans. The only part of this recipe that takes some learning is getting the bean consistency right. You need to coat each tortilla in the beans, which means that they need to be neither too thick (in which case the beans won't stick) or too liquid (in which case the beans will drip off). Once they're hot in the pan, start with them fairly thick, and then add warm water to thin them until you have a consistency that works for you as you dip each tortilla.

Because of the beans, enfrijoladas are a lot more filling than you'd expect. The recipe below makes a very hearty breakfast for two people (4-5 tortillas apiece) or a light breakfast for four people (2-3 tortillas apiece).

Enfrijoladas Oaxaqueñas

• Around 2 1/2 cups Oaxacan-style cooked black beans
• 10-12 good quality corn tortillas
• Warm water, as needed
• Salt, to taste
• 4-5oz crumbled queso fresco, or finely shredded queso Oaxaca
• 1 medium or large avocado, pitted, peeled, and sliced (optional)

Equipment: comal, griddle, or large steel pan; 9-10" frying pan, preferrably nonstick; small tongs; towel or torilla warmer

If starting from whole beans, puree them as finely as you can. If they're too thick to puree easily, add a little water. If you're looking to make this as fancy brunch, then push the puree through a seive to remove skins, but I never do this.

Put both the comal/griddle and the medium frying pan on the stove over medium heat. Put the beans in the frying pan, and heat, watching them for when they start to bubble. Turn your oven onto low, around 200F.

While the beans heat, toast the tortillas. Get the comal/griddle very hot (350-400F), and toast the tortillas on each side for a minute or two. They should bubble slightly. Wrap the toasted tortillas in a towel or place them in a tortilla warmer.

The beans should be getting hot by now, or concurrently. Stir them, and then add warm water, a little at a time, as needed; you're looking for them to be thick but still liquid, about the consistency of a hearty tomato sauce or a smoothie. Taste to see if they need more salt. Turn down the heat, and stir periodically to avoid scortching or boiling.

Now it's time to make the enfrijoladas. Get a stack of plates ready, near the stove. You will need to work quickly with each tortilla, so make sure that everything you need is within reach.

Take each tortilla, one at a time, and press it into the bean sauce. Flip it over with the tongs, and get the other side coated with the beans as well. Fold the tortilla in half, and put it on a plate. Repeat, and put the next folded tortilla overlapping the first. Keep going, adding between 2 and 5 tortillas to each plate depending on people's appetites.

When a plate is full, sprinkle it with the cheese, and place it into the warm oven. Get started on the next plate.

As you go, you may need to add a little more warm water to the beans to keep them at the right consistency. If there's beans left after dipping all the tortillas, you can add more water to get them really liquid and then pour the bean sauce around the enfrijoladas on each plate.

Once all the enfrijoladas are made, make sure the last plate gets a few minutes in the oven (for the cheese to soften), then take them out and decorate with the avocado slices, if using.

Serve, together with Oaxacan coffee (if you can get it) and juice. Salud!

Q&A

Can this be made vegan?

Easily, just skip the cheese. You could also use vegan cheese.

Can I use flour tortillas?

No.

Could I use other kinds of beans?

Sure, why not? Black beans just have a bit more flavor.

Shouldn't I dip the tortilla in hot oil?

That's a lot more mess, and also not the way it's done in Oaxaca.

Browsing the Multinomah Library's cookbook collection, I ran across the book A-Gong's Table, which was a vegan Taiwanese cookbook. This enticed me, as I'd long wanted to share Taiwanese cuisine with my sweetie, but most of the recipes I had access to were meat-heavy. So I borrowed it and paged through it.

One thing caught my eye: a recipe for stir-fried Taiwanese cauliflower. I'd noticed that our local Vietnamese grocery had started carrying Taiwanese cauliflower, and I'd wondered what to do with it. So this seemed like the perfect dish to make for Lunar New Year.

Taiwanese cauliflower is a variety known as fioretto in Italy ("flowering"); it has a very loose head with florets that spread out from each other, with bright white flowers and light green stems. Because of its looseness, it's often sold wrapped into a bundle with plastic wrap. Unfortunately, there isn't any substitute for it in this recipe; regular cauliflower is too dense and too starchy, and broccolini has too strong of a flavor.

If you can get it, though, make the recipe below. It is subtle and delicious, and offers you Chinese food that's very different from your standard Cantonese diner fare. Ideally it should be served with "new rice", that is rice that was harvested last fall.

Gong hei fat choi!

Taiwanese Cauliflower

recipe from A-Gong's Table with minor alterations

• 3 Tbs high-temperature cooking oil (sunflower, peanut, canola)
• 1 medium large Taiwanese Cauliflower, around 1kg (2lbs)
• 3-4 medium cooking tomatoes, around 300g (12oz)
• 1 bunch (7-10) green onions
• 2 cloves garlic, minced, around 1 tsp
• small piece ginger, minced, around 2 tsp
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp golden sugar
• 3 Tbs water
• 3 Tbs Shaoxing wine
• 1/4 tsp white pepper
• medium-large wok with lid

Dismantle the cauliflower, snapping off the florets and discarding the larger stems. Cut any especially large florets in half. You should end up with a pile of medium-large florets that will fill an 8 cup bowl.

Cut the tomatoes into 6-8 wedges each, depending on size. Slice the green onions into 1/4" (0.5cm) pieces, separating the whites from the greens. Peel and mince the ginger and garlic. Mix the Shaoxing wine and water in a cup to have ready, and the salt and sugar in another cup or prep bowl.

Heat a wok until smoking and swirl the oil to coat it. Toss in the green onion whites, garlic and ginger, and fry, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the sliced tomatoes and stir-fry for another 1-2 minutes, until the tomatoes just start to soften. Put in the cauliflower florets, and sprinkle over the sugar/salt mixture.

Cook the cauliflower, tossing frequently, for 3-4 minutes, or until they start to cook through and the heads turn pink from the tomato juice. Pour in the wine/water mixture, and toss one more time. Cover and turn down the heat in the wok, and steam for another 3-4 minutes.

Open the lid and check the cauliflower for doneness; it should be cooked, but still somewhat crunchy. Toss in the green onion pieces, the white pepper, and stir-fry for another 30 seconds, then turn off heat.

Serve with rice; serves 5-6 as part of a multidish Chinese meal, or 3 if you're having just this, rice, and spring rolls.

Ingredient Notes:

Shaoxing wine is the standard "Chinese cooking wine" used in many dishes. Sometimes it is sold salted, in order to avoid alcohol regulations. If you have the salted kind, cut the salt in the recipe to 1/2 tsp. If you can't find Shaoxing wine, substitute a light sherry for it. If you don't want the alcohol at all, substitute stock and reduce the salt.

Golden sugar is a less-bleached, very lightly tinged with molasses, granulated sugar which is popular in Britian, but available from Domino in some stores in the US. It's somewhere between light brown sugar and white sugar. In this recipe, you can substitue regular granulated sugar, or Sugar In The Raw if you happen to have some (but don't make a special shopping trip for it, it's only 1 teaspoon).

A little while ago the Washington Post taste-tested various "fake bacon" products -- which I'm hereafter calling "facon" -- with some surprising results. They decided that supermarket-standard brand Morningstar Farms (see endnote) was actually pretty good, and worked as a reasonably convincing facsimile of fried bacon.

This was doubly surprising for me. Morningstar Farms first came out with a facon back in the 80s, just as my family had transitioned to keeping Kosher. We tried it immediately, and were treated to strips that tasted like we'd simply cut up the box and fried it instead.

So, I had to try this.

We bought a box of the Morningstar. The strips come in a tightly-packed stack, and uncooked have a texture like chewing gum strips. I was dubious, but I put several strips in a pan with some vegetable oil and fried them. They cooked much faster than the instructions suggested; I was taking them off the heat in less than 2 minutes per side. I'll try cooking them on lower heat next time.

Once they cooled enough to eat, my bacon-loving sweetie tried a bite.

"That's disturbing," she said.

"Bad?" I asked.

"No, these really taste like some kind of bacon. Super-thin sliced, burnt bacon. But bacon."

"Well, I did burn them a little."

My ability to judge was limited, simply because I haven't had fried bacon strips in over 20 years. They did, however, taste better than cardboard.

Note that Morningstar's facon is not vegan; it includes egg whites.

In summer, what does one do with fried bacon? Make a BLT, of course. Although since it's fake-bacon, I guess it's an FLT.

FLT

Per sandwich:

• 3-4 strips of Morningstar farms fake bacon
• 1 brioche bun, foccacia roll, or other soft sandwich roll, or slices of thick country bread
• 1 small-medium slicing tomato, or 2 slices from a big tomato
• 1 large or two small leaves of soft lettuce
• Mayonnaise or similar spread

Fry the facon according to the instructions on the box. Let cool and drain on paper towels.

Split your roll, and lightly toast it. Spread both sides with a thin coating of the mayo.

Arrange the facon slices overlapping to cover the bottom of the roll. Put the slices of tomato on top, followed by the lettuce, folding or tearing it to fit. Cover with the roll top.

Eat alongside some chips or tater tots.

Notes and variations:

FLTA: peel, pit, and slice 1/4 to 1/3 of an avocado. Put this on the bottom of the roll before adding the facon.

Spreads: mayonnaise is traditional (or vegannaise if you prefer), but I tend to prefer spreads with a little more flavor, such as dijionnaise, aioli, or (in the case of the FLT in the photo) a mild sweet onion mustard.

It's better to make your FLT when tomatoes are in season.

History Note: Morningstar Farms originated as the vegetarian foods venture of President Warren Harding's Seventh-Day Adventist, sanitarium-owning cousin Dr. George Harding in 1939, because he believed that a meatless diet helped calm psychotic and neurotic patients. This venture was so successful -- owing in part to WWII meat rationing -- that Harding was able to buy up most of his competitors. The Adventist Church still owns a large part of MorningStar. It is not determined whether President Warren Harding ever ate a soy steak.

It's now late summer, and if you have a vegetable garden like I do, you're festooned with a glut of tomatoes. Maybe you've already made gazpacho, fresh tomato sauce, Turkish salad, and more tomato things. The tomatoes keep coming in from the gardent.

It's time for something French: a tomato tart.

This recipe is pretty simple, but it does require some gourmet ingredients. It also requires you to be comfortable working with puff pastry. Since the ingredients are so critical here, some notes on them before the recipe.

This tart is really much better with all-butter puff pastry, which I realize is hard to find in the US. I used Trader Joe's, possibly the only butter puff pastry in the US that is both good and affordable, but is sadly only available seasonally (and not in summer). This recipe is sized for TJ's 18oz box of puff pastry (which comes in 2 squares). If you're using Dufour's 14oz box, or some other brand, you'll need to scale accordingly. And, if all you can get is palm-oil-based puff pastry, use it anyway -- or made your own rough puff.

The cheese I used was homemade, a Neufchâtel-style cheese I made from some raw milk a friend gave me. You won't have this, so use chèvre, ricotta, camebert (rind removed), or a similar soft cheese with mild flavor. The cheese needs to be very soft, but not too wet, so if you do use ricotta or farmer cheese make sure to drain it or press it dry.

This recipe also uses olive tapenade. French tapenade is generally very mild flavored and that's what you want here. If you can't get any, then just puree a cup of pitted ripe black olives (not canned). Another option is actually mustard; French tomato tarts often feature it instead of the tapenade.

French-style tomato tart

• 18oz fridge-temperature puff pastry
• 8-10 oz soft mild cheese (see blog post)
• 2-3 oz olive tapenade
• 6 to 8 medium tomatoes or 4 to 6 large tomatoes
• 2 tsp fresh thyme leaves, or 1 tsp dried
• 1 oz finely grated Comte, Gruyere, or Parmigiano cheese
• Fresh ground pepper
• Olive oil for drizzling
• Baking sheet(s), sharp knife, baking parchment, pie weights, rolling pin, spreading spatula

Heat the oven to 375F with fan, or 400F if you don't have a fan. Spread out the puff pastry on top of baking parchment, using one sheet of parchment for each square if using the TJ's pastry. Flatten it out a bit using the rolling pin.

Using the point of a small, sharp knife, cut around 1/8" deep square/rectangle around 1/2" from the edges of the pastry. You're making a box for the filling, where the edge of the pastry will be the "crust". Use a fork or a dough docker to dock (make indents) all over the pastry inside the box. Cut some more parchment to fit the inside of the box, place it on the pastry and pile pie weights on it to keep the center of the pastry compressed.

Bake for 15 minutes. The edge portion should puff up and the pastry should be very lightly browned and dry. If the pastry is still "wet" and the parchment won't pull free, give it another 3-5 minutes. Let cool for at least 15 minutes.

Spread the center of the pastry with the cheese and the tapenade. Which order you spread them in depends on their relative softness; you want to spread the softer thing on top.

Slice the tomatoes around 1/4" thick and cover the cheese with the slices, slightly overlapping. Sprinkle the thyme leaves across the top, along with a little ground pepper. Evenly cover with the grated Comte or Gruyere, and drizzle with a little high-quality olive oil.

Put the tart back in the oven and bake for another 12-18 minutes. It's done when the pastry finishes browning, and the tomatoes soften just slightly. Do not overcook, as it will turn into tomato/cheese soup.

Remove from the oven, slide the tart onto a cooling rack, and allow to cool for at least 10 minutes. Slice into squares. The tart can be eaten warm, but is easier to handle at room temperature. It does not reheat or freeze well; allow left overs to come to room temperature and eat them that way.

Serves four as a light meal with a green salad, or 6-8 as a first course.

Spring vegetables are in, and around our house that means salads and pasta. With enough veggies, you can have both in one bowl. You could call this a "pasta primavera", I suppose, although that name has been abused enough that I'd just as well rather not.

I'll give you an actual recipe with quantities for this pasta, but change it according to what spring veggies you actually have available. Just try to get a good variety. Here in Oregon we've had a terrific asparagus season, with local asparagus available for five weeks now, so that definitely goes in. Our snap peas have started to fruit, so I used those. Herbs, spinach, and spring onions all looked good at the market, so I used those too. And we can get some gentle pungency from garlic spears/scapes; those work well with all of the other lightly cooked vegetables.

You're going to want a mild, gooey cheese for this pasta. We used Trader Joe's "burrata filling", otherwise known as strachiatella in Italy. Cresenza would also work brilliantly, as would a very mild tallegio, and quark would be pretty good. Chevre would work as well, but you'll want to add some additional pasta water for moisture.

Ready? Let's eat!

spring pasta with green vegetables

• 1lbs short twisty pasta
• 4-5 Tbs high-quality virgin olive oil
• 3-4 garlic spears or 6-8 garlic scapes
• 1-5 spring onions (depending on thickness, about 2/3 cup sliced)
• 1 small bunch asparagus, about 11oz
• 1 pint snap peas
• 1 small bunch fresh spearamint, about 1/2 cup chopped
• 1 small bunch Italian parsley, about 1/2 cup chopped
• 12oz mild gooey cheese (see above)
• Fresh grated parmigiano, 1-2oz
• Salt
• Fresh ground pepper
• Large pasta pot, spider or steaming basket, large serving bowl

Prep all the vegetables. Cut the garlic into 1/4" pieces, slice the spring onions thin, stem and snap the peas in half, and strip and mince the herbs. If the asparagus are skinny, cut them into 1" long pieces. If they are thick, slice them into 1/3" slices.

Bring a large pot full of well-salted water to a boil. Put the asparagus and garlic spears/scapes in the spider or basket, and blanche them for 2 minutes. Lift, shake off the water, and put in the bowl. Put the peas in the basket and blanche for 1 minute, and then do the same. Add the spring onions.

Add the pasta and cook according to the given timing. You want the pasta a bit beyond al dente, since it won't cook further, so check that it's done all the way through. As soon as the pasta is done, reserve 1 cup of pasta water, and drain the rest.

Put the still hot pasta into the bowl and cover it with dabs of the gooey cheese. Toss it with the vegetables in the bowl until the cheese evenly coats everything. Then add the chopped herbs and fresh ground pepper and toss again. Taste for salt, and add some if necessary. Finally, grade the parmigiano over the top. Serve warm or room temperature.

Enjoy, and happy spring!

Note: the pasta can be any short, curly/twisty variety. You can use telephone cord pasta like I did, or fusilli, casarecce, radiatore, or similar. It would also work pretty well with farfalle.

One of the few remaining good food magazines is Culture Cheese Mag, to which we've subscribed for more than ten years. Because we love cheese. And one of the things that Culture does periodically is reader giveaways; we've actually won twice, once a decade ago, and once this month. What do they give away? Well, cheese, of course.

This month's contest was six assorted cheeses from Widmer's Cheese Cellars in Wisconsin. It included a butterkase, "Alpine" cheddar, mild cheddar, colby jack, brick cheese, and cheese spread. After a little recipe searching, we have plans for this cheese.

The mild cheddar was used for sandwiches. I'll use the brick cheese for Detroit pizza, the butterkase for spaetzle, and the colby for quesadillas. My sweetie used the "Alpine" cheddar for ... a souffle!

Since this was for a casual weeknight dinner, she cooked Jacques Pépin's maman's souffle. Mme. Pépin's is a great recipe; it's easier, faster, and doesn't dirty as many dishes. That's because she doesn't separate the eggs. According to Jacques, when she got married she didn't really know how to cook, so she made a souffle ... but she didn't know to separate the eggs. And it worked anyways! It's a little less fluffy than a beaten-egg-white souffle, but still quite good and great for an easy meal.

Even though you haven't won free cheese, I know you'll want to make one too, so here's a recipe:

Jacques Pépin's Maman's Cheese Souffle

• 6 Tbs unsalted butter, plus more for greasing
• 6 Tbs all-purpose flour
• 2 cups whole milk
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 5 large eggs
• 9 ounces grated cheese (see below), plus optionally 1oz in thin slices.
• 1/2 oz parmesan cheese or similar
• 2 tablespoons minced chives
• bowl, whisk, medium pot, 2qt wide baking pan or gratin dish

Heat oven to 375F.

Melt the 6 Tbs butter in the pan. Whisk in the flour until well combined. Cook over medium heat for around a minute. Pour in the milk (cold is fine), whisking. Cook, whisking frequently, until the milk begins to simmer and the white sauce becomes thick. Remove from the heat and season with salt and pepper, and stir in the cheese. Set aside to cool for 10-15 min.

Grease the baking pan with butter. Powder it with the parmesan until lightly coated.

Whisk the eggs in a bowl until well beaten and fairly frothy. Add the minced chives. Whisk the cheesy white sauce into the eggs, and then pour the mixture into the baking pan. If using, decorate with a few more chives plus the slices of cheese.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until puffed up, brown all over the top surface, and completely done. This souffle can be a bit soupy in the middle, so if you don't care for that (we don't), cook it for another 3 minutes or so after you think it's already done.

Serve very hot, with a simple vinagrette salad.

Note on cheese: this souffle works best with a semi-soft, melty cheese with a medium-strong flavor, such as cheddar, swiss, gruyere, gouda, manchego, raclette, or kasseri. It will not work well with a blue cheese due to the higher fat content.

I dunno about where you are, but where I am it is super-hot out. Peak of 105F (41C) today. Appalingly hot weather and peak tomato season mean one thing to me: gazpacho. It's a delicious summer dish that requires no heating anything, and is best eaten slightly chilled.

I've shared my regular gazpacho, but this time, with the sungold tomato plants making a bid to take over the entire backyard, I wanted to make something slightly different: golden gazpacho. Almost like the regular, but with a very different color and a more subtle taste.

Like the other recipe, though, this is all about the peak summer produce. Don't make this with off-season imported produce, you won't enjoy it.

Golden Gazpacho

About 2oz leftover stale white bread
1 clove garlic
1/2 large sweet yellow onion, peeled and thinly sliced crossways, about 3/4 cup
1 yellow bell pepper, roughly chopped
1 large or 2 small lemon cucumbers, roughly chopped with peel left on
1 pint of sungold tomatoes
1/2 to 1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp white pepper
1-2 Tbs quality Spanish olive oil
1 1/2 tsp sherry vinegar

Taste the sliced onion. If it's sharp, then put it in a bowl of cold water to soak for 15 minutes, and then drain.

Cut the bread into dice and put it and the garlic cloves in a food processor. Pulse until the garlic is minced and the bread broken down into crumbs.

Add the bell pepper, onion, and cucumber. Run the food processor until it breaks down to a "chunky salsa" consistency. Add the sungold tomatoes, salt, white pepper, olive oil, and vinegar. Run until the vegetables are almost, but not quite, pureed; you still want them to have a little texture.

Let sit for the flavors to blend. Taste, and add more salt, oil, or vinegar if it needs it, or even a little sugar if your tomatoes weren't that sweet. Serve, accompanied by bread and Spanish cheese.

Substitutions: the sungolds could be replaced by around 12oz-wt of ripe yellow heirloom tomatoes, diced. If you don't have sherry vinegar, use champaigne or white wine vinegar.

Several years ago, on Haight Street, there used to be an Eritrean restaurant called Massawa, founded by a burned-out freedom fighter. For around two years of that restaurant's two decades on the Haight, they did brunch as well as dinner. We loved this brunch which included foods you'd never see anywhere else in San Francisco, like kecha fitfit. However, the breakfast dish we loved the most wasn't any of their more traditional Ethiopean breakfast foods: it was their romano bean scramble.

Since we left San Francisco and Massawa left the Haight, I've reverse-engineered the scramble. Every year, when we collect our first harvest of romano beans in the summer, it's the first thing I make with them. You can make it too; it's quite delicious for such a simple breakfast dish.

romano bean scramble

• 3 Tbs clarified butter or ghee (subs. vegetable oil with a little butter)
• 1/2 to 3/4 pound romano beans
• 6 eggs
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/2 to 1 tsp berbere spice mix (subs. chili powder)
• 1/2 tsp sweet paprika
• salt

Crack the eggs into a bowl and beat them with a pinch of salt. Stem the beans, and then cut them into 1 inch pieces. Peel and mince the garlic cloves.

Heat the butter/ghee in a large nonstick frying pan. Fry the beans with the minced garlic over medium heat for a minute. Cover for 3 minutes to allow them to steam. Uncover, stir, and fry until all moisture is gone and some of the beans have browned in spots. Check one for tenderness.

Add the berbere and paprika to the beans, using more berbere is you like things spicy, and fry for around 30 seconds, stirring. Turn up the heat to high and pour in the eggs, and keep stirring to coat the beans and scramble the eggs. Turn off the heat and serve as soon as the curds are set.

Add salt to taste; serve with toast.

Note: substituting string beans for the romano beans does not work in this recipe. The taste and texture are too different.

Passover (Pesach) starts this Wednesday, and for once I thought I'd get you a recipe ahead of time. And there is, of course, no recipe more central to Pesach than matzoh ball soup. I've been making matzoh ball soup since I moved away from home. I started with my mother's recipe, only changing it to make it vegetarian. After years of making it myself, though, I've made a few improvements on the recipe, inspired by Serious Eats and Katchka.

First, the matzoh balls. We love the recipe from my mother, who flavors the matzoh balls with parsley, cumin, and garlic, making them more like spiced meatballs or falafel than the bland Eastern European bread dumplings that matzoh balls descended from. But mom's balls tend to be sinkers, rather dense and chewy. I wanted something lighter and softer. Then Serious Eats published an article showing how to vary matzoh ball texture based on the amount of fat, baking powder, and seltzer in the recipe.

I wanted balls that were a "7" on a scale of rock-to-cloud. After trying a couple of variations, I found that the one thing I needed to change was the amount, and type, of fat in the recipe. To the existing 3 Tbs of vegetable oil, I added another 3 Tbs of butter. Not only does the additional fat make the balls more tender, the solid fat of the butter stays in them and moistens them better than just adding more oil would. I did try going all-butter, but it was too much. If you're non-vegetarian and/or making these to go with a meat meal, use schmaltz instead of butter.

The second improvement comes from Bonnie Morales' cookbook Katchka. In it, she gives her grandmother's recipe for a super-simple vegetarian stock: garlic broth. After using this for a couple other soups, I made it the base of my new stock for matzoh ball soup. So, read on for Improved Matzoh Ball Soup.

Because these things go full circle, though, Mom is now using my improved recipe for the matzoh balls. And, so that you don't need to look at my older article, I'm going to do the full step-by-step below, with an eye towards doing this for a multi-course Passover meal. This recipe enough for 4-6 people, but the photos were taken when making 1 and a half recipes.

If you already know the basics of making it, you can skip to the recipe at the very bottom.

Making the Stock

As a very simple soup, matzoh ball soup depends heavily on having a good, homemade stock base. Stock-in-a-box simply won't cut it here. The standard recipe uses homemade chicken stock, so for a vegetarian version we need to put some extra effort into it. We're going to make Morales' garlic broth, and then boost it with some of the same vegetables (and trimmings from those vegetables) that will go into the final soup, later.

Soup-making tip: you can save a lot of time making stock and soup if you preheat any water you add in a kettle.

Take the two heads of garlic and cut them in half sideways, trying to go about midway through each clove, so that both halves of each head hold together (if possible). Put a large stockpot on the stove, with enough vegetable oil to slick the bottom (around 2 Tbs) and heat over medium heat until hot. Place all four garlic head halves cut-side down in the oil. Fry until the exposed clove halves are dark brown (but not black), 5-8 minutes.

Pour in 2 quarts of hot water and bring to a simmer. Turn down, and simmer, covered, for 15-20 minutes. If you simply simmer this for 45 minutes it actually makes a good broth for varniki or pelmeni, but we're making vegetable stock instead.

Next we're going to add the stock vegetables. Importantly, this includes the skins of the brown onions, which you need to give the stock some color. Other veggies, most notably the celery and parsley, can be the trimmings and stems you're not using in the final soup, if you have enough of them. You're also going to add some salt and spices here. As usual, start with the smallest amount of salt recommended and taste after the stock has cooked for a while. The cinnamon stick may seem strange, but try it -- it gives the stock a bit of an "exotic" flavor.

Add another quart of hot water and simmer for another 30-40 minutes. Strain into another pot, or back into the same pot, for making the soup. While the stock simmers, make the matzoh balls.

Making the Balls

This matzoh ball dough is meant to be spicy and flavorful. I know there's folks out there who like theirs delicate and tasting only of the soup, but when going vegetarian, it's far better to have something robust since you don't have any chicken to compliment it. The flavor profile here is something that's a crossover between Middle Eastern flavors and Eastern European ones.

Dump the matzoh meal in a medium-large bowl. Add the baking powder, salt, spices, and minced parsley and mix. Grate the onions and grate or press the garlic into the bowl, follow with the beaten eggs and melted butter, and mix. Finally, add the seltzer water, starting with just 1/4 cup, and gently mix. The dough should have the texture of a thick cake or brownie batter at this point. If it's still stiff, then add the other 1/4 cup of seltzer to loosen it up. If it's soupy, add 2-3 Tbs additional matzoh meal. Make sure the dough is 100% mixed down to the bottom of the bowl.

Cover in plastic and let rest for at least 1/2 hour, ideally in the fridge. Do not skip this resting step, which you need for the dough to work. While it rests, it will transform from a loose, sticky batter to a workable but still sticky dough. You can leave it for several hours, or overnight in the fridge.

Once they are rested, it's time to shape the balls. The ideal way to do this is with a cookie scoop; I use one that's 1.5" in diameter. Since the dough is quite sticky, have a bowl of warm water for dipping the scoop and wetting your hands. Scoop all the dough into 13-18 balls onto a wax-paper or parchment-lined sheet pan or tray, and then roll each ball with damp hands in order to make it nice and smooth. These balls will look quite small, but don't worry, they expand a lot.

At this point, you could cover the balls in plastic and keep them in the fridge up to a day. Don't freeze them, simply because they're hard to defrost. Once you start cooking them, though, you're committed to finishing the soup within hours.

The balls cannot be cooked in the soup itself, because they need to be cooked at a boil, or like other dumplings they will fall apart. However, to avoid flavor loss to the water, it's a good idea to cook them in stock. Since you don't want to waste the nice garlic broth on this, your options are to use some stock-in-a-box, water with bouillon cubes, or to use lightly salted water with bay leaf and a couple whole garlic cloves. Put this liquid in the largest, widest deep pot you have that has a well-fitting lid, ideally a 12" to 14" diameter soup pot or Dutch oven. Bring it to a boil.

Then, drop in the balls. With a 12" or greater pot, you should be able to fit all 13-18 of them, but with a narrower pot you'll need to do batches. You do not want to crowd them since they will all be doubling in size. The balls will sink to the bottom at first, but should start bobbing to the surface as the pot comes back to a boil. Cover, turn the heat down, and keep it at a gentle simmer for 35-45 minutes, until they are doubled in size and tender.

Contrary to some folk wisdom, you can periodically peek at the cooking matzoh balls. However, you don't want to lift the lid too often (more than, say, 2-4 times during cooking) lest they lose heat and fail to expand properly.

When the balls are done, keep them in the hot stock until ready to use. If that's going to be a while, put some very low heat on under the stock so that it doesn't cool off.

Putting It All Together

For final assembly, you're going to make a basic soup of well-cooked vegetables and then add the matzoh balls to it at serving time. Add the vegetables except for the parsley and green onions to the strained stock. Bring to a simmer, and cook for 25-30 minutes, until both the potatoes and carrots are quite tender, but not falling apart. At this point, the soup can be held, off-heat, for up to a couple of hours. If holding, re-heat it just before serving.

Grab several wide, deep bowls of at least 20oz capacity. Add two matzoh balls to each bowl. Fill the rest of the way with hot vegetable soup. Put some parsley sprigs and the sliced green onions or chives in each bowl. Serve.

Recipe

short version

Equipment

Large stock pot, at least 6qt, preferably with lid
Deep, wide soup pot, preferably 12" or more in diameter, but at least 4" deep, with tight-fitting lid
1.5" cookie scoop (optional, but really helpful)
Large tray or cookie sheet
Large mixing bowl
Fine-holed grater
Garlic press (optional)
The usual knives, peeler, and cutting board

Garlic Broth With Vegetables

2 Tbs Vegetable oil
2 large heads garlic
3qt water
Salt
2 carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
3/4 cup parsley stems, or just parsley
1 brown onion, with skin, cut into 4-8 large pieces
2-3 brown onion skins from the onions for the soup
2 waxy potatoes
3 stalks celery
2 bay leaves
Large sprig/branch thyme (optional)
1 cinnamon stick (optional)
6-10 peppercorns

Cut the garlic heads across their equators. Heat a large pot coated with oil at the bottom. Add the garlic, cut side down, and fry for 3 minutes, stirring occasionaly, until the garlic has browned and is very aromatic. Pour in the water and a little salt. Simmer for 15-20 minutes.

Add all of the vegetables above and simmer them for 40 min. Strain and reserve.

Improved Matzoh Balls

1 cup matzoh meal (plus 0-3 Tbs)
4 eggs
1/4 cup seltzer water
2 tbs melted butter (or schmaltz)
2 tbs vegetable oil
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp fresh-ground pepper
2 large garlic cloves, pressed or grated
1/2 large onion, grated fine, about 1/2 cup
2 Tbs finely minced parsley
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp paprika (or other mild-medium chili powder)
2-4 quarts cheap stock for cooking (see above).

Mix all ingredients. Let sit for at least 1/2 hour (to overnight in fridge). Make 13-18 matzoh balls. Put them in the pot with the boiling cheap stock, and simmer, covered, for 35-45 minutes. Keep warm in the stock until ready to combine with the soup.

Soup

1 recipe garlic stock (above)
3-4 stalks celery, with leaves if possible, cut into 1" segments
1.5 to 2 lbs waxy potatoes, such as new potatoes, cut into 1-2" pieces
3-4 large carrots, around 3/4 lbs, peeled and cut into 1/2" slices
2 medium-large brown onions, cut into large pieces, like 8-10 per onion
Small bunch parsley, separated into bite-sized sprigs
3-4 green onions or a handful of chives, green parts sliced thin (optional)

Simmer the celery, potatoes, and carrots in the stock for 25-30 minutes, until tender. Add a little parsley and green onion to each bowl when serving.

Now that tomatoes are finally coming into season, it's time for some pasta salad that really makes the most of summer produce. It also has the advantage of being a dish that only requires boiling a pot of water, but no other cooking, which is going to be welcome to a lot of y'all contending with heat waves.

The "warm" part of this recipe is that we usually serve it somewhat warm, rather than cold. It's a bit better that way. But if you're dying of heat, it can be eaten cold. The important part is that the past be dressed while still warm, so that it absorbs the dressing.

What's below is less of a recipe and more of a set of guidelines, because you have a lot of flexibility in what you put into your salad. There are lots of tips to make it better, though, and read below the recipe for notes on ingredients. Also, these guidelines make a large portion because this pasta salad makes excellent leftovers.

warm pasta salad

The Pasta

• 1 lbs (500g) short curly pasta
• 1 large pot boiling well-salted water

The Dressing

• 1-4 cloves garlic, whole peeled OR 1 Tbs roasted garlic paste
• 3 Tbs quality red wine vinegar, plus more to taste
• 1/2 cup quality olive oil, plus more to taste
• 2 Tbs minced fresh herbs, OR 1.5 tsp dried herbs
• 1/2 to 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 to 1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper

The Cheese

• 8-11oz flavorful semi-soft Italian cheese.

The Veggies

The trinity of required veggies:

• 1 to 1.5 lbs ripe tomatoes or cherry tomatoes, diced or sliced in half
• 5-8oz bell peppers or other sweet peppers, diced or sliced OR roasted and peeled sweet peppers, chopped large
• 6-10oz cucumbers, peeled if needed and diced

Plus none to a few veggies from this list:

• 1 cup diced sweet onion
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions
• 1/2 to 1 cup chopped fresh herbs
• 1/2 cup olives, pitted and halved or sliced
• 1-2 Tbs capers
• 1 cup fresh snap peas
• 1-2 cups blanched green beans
• 1/2 cup sweet peas, steamed
• 2-6 young carrots, peeled and sliced, either raw or blanched
• 8 oz grilled, roasted, or steamed asparagus, cut into 1" pieces
• 8-12 oz grilled, roasted, or fried summer squash, cut into 1/2" pieces
• 4-6oz diced marinated artichoke hearts

Equipment: pasta pot, colander, very large salad bowl

Instruction

Heat the pot of pasta water. If you don't have roasted garlic, then peel the garlic cloves and blanch them in the water for 1-2 minutes. Cover the pot and push it aside; you're not ready to cook the pasta yet.

Make the dressing. Mash the garlic with the salt and vinegar, using a mortar & pestle, minichopper, immersion blender and cup, or just a fork. Add the olive oil, ground pepper, and the herbs. Whisk together until blended.

Dice and prep all of the vegetables, piling them in a large bowl. Put veggies you want to treat gently, like cucumbers, herbs, and tomatoes, on the bottom, and put veggies that could use a little heat, like onions and peppers, on the top. Finish with the diced cheese.

Now you cook the pasta. Use the maximum time listed on the package; since this is a salad, you want it a bit more done than al dente. Drain the pasta, and immediately dump the still very warm pasta on top of the ingredients in the salad bowl. Drizzle it all over with the dressing, and then start gently tossing until all of the ingredients are mixed.

Taste it. Add oil, vinegar, salt, or pepper as needed.

Let sit for at least 10 minutes for flavors to blend and the pasta to cool. Then serve. Makes 4-7 dinner servings, or dinner for two plus 2-3 leftover lunches.

Ingredient Notes

Pasta: you want a short, "curly" pasta for this, such as such as strozzapreti, fusili, rotini, cavitappi, radiatore, or mafalda (as pictured). Farfalle will also work, and his is a great use for flavored pastas. Tubular pasta like penne and rigatoni, or small shapes like elbows or orzo, do not work well because they don't hold the dressing.

Cheese: you are looking for a semi-soft cheese that has distinct flavors but is not too strong. Flavored cheeses, including smoked ones, work great. Italian cheeses that work include scamorza (smoked mozz), marinated mozzarella, provalone dulce, fontina, asiago, caciocavallo, or young pecorinio. You can also use cheese curds, particularly garlic cheese curds, and manchego or gouda also can work. Plain mozzarella gets lost in the ingredients. Cheddar and feta are a bit too salty, and blue cheeses are not a good idea. If you're vegan, use vegan cheese such as Vegan Smoked Mozzarella, Babybel plant-based, or Just Like Smoked Provalone.

Veggies: At a minimum, the salad needs tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. The salad benefits from adding a few other veggies, either cooked or raw, and you don't want any specific veggie to be too strong. Strive for variety and balance, like onions and one kind of bean, or squash and olives, or herbs and peas. You're looking for 5-7 cups of diced veggies and cheese, total.

Herbs: appropriate herbs include basil, oregano, parsley, cilantro, chives, and thyme. Herbs should be chopped roughly for the salad, and minced for the dressing.

Now that the raspberries are coming in, we need something to do with the excess -- particularly the ones that are a bit squished and won't keep in the fridge. One way to use those up is a fresh raspberry salad dressing (also works fine with thawed frozen raspberries).

We got this recipe 20 years ago from a retirement home chef who was doing cooking demos at the Sonoma-Marin County Fair (now, that's a retirement home I'd like). It's a wonderful alternative to lettuce salads, while still relying mostly on cheaper produce. The combination of super-crunchy veggies with the tart raspberry dressing makes it a great side for any kind of grilled or roasted meat or fish.

The one tricky thing is finding a small enough napa cabbage; most of the ones sold here on the West Coast are big enough for three salads! Aside from the cabbage, you'll want some other crunchy salad veggies, sliced thin. Optinonally, you can also include croutons.

napa cabbage salad

Dressing:

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 3-4 cloves roasted/toasted garlic
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 2 Tbs red wine or cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup mashed raspberries
• 1 tsp dried basil (or 1 Tbs minced fresh)

Salad:

• 1 small napa cabbage, around 1 lbs
• Fresh ground pepper
• Optional extra ingredients, any of:
  • 3/4 cup croutons
  • 2 carrots, peeled and sliced, around 2/3 cup
  • 1 cucumber, peeled and diced, around 1/2 cup
  • 1 bell pepper, sliced
  • Other crunchy veggies, such as radishes, celery, etc.

Equipment: large salad bowl, salad spinner, measuring cup, immersion blender

To make the dressing, first thaw the raspberries if frozen. Toast the garlic cloves (see below). Put all of the dressing ingredients together in the measuring cup, and then puree them with the immersion blender (you can use a regular blender instead if that's what you have). Set aside.

Separate the leaves of the cabbage. Slice any large leaves in half or thirds lengthwise. Slice them crosswise, 1/4" to 1/3" wide (around 1cm). Wash and dry. Put the napa cabbage in the salad bowl, together with any of the optional ingredients you're using.

Toss with the dressing and ground pepper to your taste. Serve within 1 hour of making it (after that, it gets soggy).

Toasting garlic cloves: if you don't have already-roasted garlic on hand, drop a few skin-on cloves of garlic in a small, dry, hot pan on the stove. Toast them on one side for a minute or two -- until the skin scortches -- and then flip them and toast on the other side. Then peel and use.

Substitutions: might work with iceberg lettuce. Would not really work with other varieties of cabbage; their taste is too strong. Could work with other berries, like marionberries, although most would need to be seeded.

Given what's going on in Europe right now, it seemed like time to share a Ukrainian recipe. Ukrainian, at least, courtesy of my great-grandmother the Ukrainian Jew, who emigrated to the US as a young child fleeing a Tsar-ordered Russian Cossack pogrom. Hmmm, seems familiar somehow.

Of course, me being me, I've modified the recipe some. Fortunately, my great-grandmother is long gone so she can't berate me for corrupting her recipe.

First, I made it vegetarian (vegan if you omit/swap the sour cream). Second, I simplified the recipe via a "four bowl" system. Since there are a lot of ingredients in this one, I've made it easier to track what goes in when by prepping everything into bowls of ingredients that go in at the same time. I also switched to grating the beets, which eliminates the requirement to par-cook the beets as you would with diced beets.

This is a hot borscht, suitable for eating, well, now, when it's cold and wet and wintry out (offer not valid in Australia). If I could ship some over to the Ukrainian refugees I would, but I'll settle for donating to WCK instead.

Hot Borscht

Prep Bowl #1 for Stock:
3 cups low-salt vegetable stock
3 cups water
Skin from the onion (below)
2 bay leaves
1 tsp smoke salt
1 medium white or red potato, sliced
6 dried mushrooms

Soup:
3-4 tbs sunflower oil

Prep Bowl #2
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 large carrots, diced
1 green pepper, diced
2 medium white or red potatoes, diced

Prep Bowl #3
2 to 2 1/2 lbs beets, peeled and grated
3 cloves garlic, smashed or minced
2 plum or small tomatoes, diced
3 tbs tomato paste
Juice of 1-2 lemons (about 1/4 cup)
2 Tbs sugar

Prep Bowl #4
1 tsp smoked salt
1/2 cup minced parsley
1/2 cup chopped fresh dill, or 1.5 tbs dried dill
Additional salt to taste

At the table:
1 cup sour cream

Equipment
1 3qt pot, 1 6qt pot, strainer, box grater, four bowls of assorted sizes

Pour the ingredients of bowl #1 into a 3qt or larger pot, bring to a boil, and simmer for 15 to 25 minutes. While the stock is simmering, chop and grate the rest of the vegetables.

Heat the oil in a large soup pot (5qt or more) over a medium-high flame.   Throw in the contents of prep bowl #2, and stir occassionally until the onions wilt and the carrots sweat, about 10 minutes.  Dump in the contents of Prep Bowl #3 and strain the hot stock in to the large pot.  Stir, then cover.

Turn down the heat as soon as the soup begins to boil.   Simmer for 25 minutes. Pour in the ingredients in Prep Bowl #4, stir in contents and then turn off heat. Taste for salt and add more as required. Let sit uncovered for 10 minutes.

Serve in wide soup bowls, with the sour cream at the table for diners to add as they please.  Serve with rye bread to make a meal for 4 or a first course for 8.

Notes

If you omit the sour cream, or use plant-based sour cream, this recipe is vegan.

Smoked salt replaces the roasted flavor sometimes added to borscht via pork or beef fats. It is available from various specialty markets. I recommend salt smoked with lighter woods over hickory, which tends to be a bit much.

The three cups of packaged veggie broth can either plan broth or mushroom broth, or it can be beef broth if you're not vegetarian. It can also be replaced with instant stock and water, but if your instant stock is high-salt you'll want to cut the smoked salt.

If you can get quality unrefined sunflower oil for this soup, it adds a nice flavor.