This is a super simple, tasty recipe for when you want fresh salsa, but tomatoes aren’t in season. Roasting brings out more flavor and adds just a touch of a smoky taste. It’s best to make this a few hours before you serve so the flavors can develop.
I have a salt tooth. Even as a little kid, I was on the fence about candy. Sure, I’ll eat a little dessert here and there, but it’s not a driving force. At one of my first jobs out of college my office mates wanted to throw me a birthday party. I kindly requested that they didn’t buy a cake, but instead encouraged them to get a round of brie and pop a few candles on top. They did and it was perfect! Today I’m mostly “planty,” (my husband’s new perfect descriptor versus the rather dull “plant-based”) so I’d skip the brie, but maybe instead ask for a container of cashew cheese. Most granolas on the market are way too sweet for me, so I came up with this recipe that I think is just about perfect. Sometimes I have all the nuts and seeds listed below, but sometimes not — it’s a very flexible recipe. Often I’ll swap out some for things like ground chia (if you don’t grind the chia, the pesky little seeds embed themselves in your teeth) or hemp seeds. However, if you like things a little sweeter, just add more honey. Or if you prefer a richer, denser version, increase the oil. By the way, nuts and seeds go rancid pretty quickly, so I keep a small amount of the granola in a glass jar on my counter, but freeze the rest to keep it fresh.
This deeply satisfying soup is super simple to make. Please use the full-fat coconut milk — don’t use the “light/lite” unless you want this to taste meh. I also love this recipe because I nearly always have every ingredient on hand, especially in the fall when the butternut squash are in season. The curry powder is from Savory Spice — it’s called Mild Curry Powder (link below). But I call it the “Hippy Curry Powder” because it tastes like every curry I ever had from “vegetarian restaurants” versus actual Indian restaurants. It’s just pretty much a generic, run of the mill Americanized curry powder.
When I was really young my mom would spend hours every August blanching, peeling, de-seeding and then canning mountains of tomatoes in our oh-so humid Missouri home. Her unruly curly hair would be pinned back with multiple bobby pins as she carefully lowered the tomatoes into the massive black tin stock pot water with the Ball canning jar insert. Not sure what happened, but after a few years she stopped canning and started just putting whole tomatoes in panty hose in the freezer. Each tomato was knotted off from the other, sausage link style, to apparently prevent bruising. It was always a little alarming to open the freezer to see the frozen red globes bound by old pairs of L’eggs pantyhose, but it worked for her. In 1994 I got Marcella Hazan’s, Essentials of Italian Cooking and started making her to-die-for classic sauce Tomato Sauce and Onion and Butter in batches to freeze. After one mid-winter visit where we served my mom the sauce three different ways: over pasta, as tomato soup and the base for our grilled pizzas, she never went back to her old ways of preserving tomatoes.
I generally have two ways I put up tomatoes for the winter: whole cherry tomatoes and pureed sauce. I don’t believe in taking the skin off or de-seeding, as I think it adds to the overall flavor.
If you have about 15 minutes and a kitchen full of summer produce, you will love this gazpacho. It’s silky smooth and bursting with flavor. One key is to make it the day before to let it sit in the fridge overnight so those flavors can develop and be able to serve it super chilled. For those gluten-phobes out there, this one is for you. Yes, I know a lot of gazpacho is made with stale bread, but you won’t miss it in this version.
The Smoked Paprika Oil is a recent find from my favorite cooking mag, Milk Street. Ever since I started making it a few weeks ago, I have been drizzling it on everything from hummus to avocado toast to grilled/roasted veggies and more. It’s downright addictive!
I admit that I’m a little late to the make-your-own-oat-milk party, so for the twelve people who don’t know this yet: oat milk is crazy easy to make. Not only is it far cheaper than store-bought, but you also avoid one more container in the trash/recycling bin, and it tastes so much better. You need oats, water, a sweetener (I use a date, but some people like sugar or maple syrup), vanilla and a bit of salt.
Unlike 99% of the other blogs out there, I’m not going to bombard you with twenty-two photos of how to make oat milk. You get one photo: the one of the milk straining in my favorite fine mesh strainer.