Easy Turkish: red lentil soup

There are few people that are as proud of their cuisine as Turks are. Most of them are positively certain that their cuisine is the best of all, and some of them even get offended if you try to defy that. But they have a point. If you've ever eaten or cooked Turkish, you know…

Easy festive: black bean quesadillas

Once I thought of writing a cookbook. I actually wrote the most important part of it: the title. It went like this -- How to cook a sheep and other stories, and it was to be all about families coming together, celebrating some of the biggest holidays of the year, making a feast. As is obvious,…

Vegan Minestrone

To make a good soup out of very few ingredients is truly an art. You need good flavors, flavors that go together and make the soup you want. In soups with multiple ingredients might seem a little easier to achieve a rich broth, but amassing a required quantity of ingredients sure is tedious; occasionally we…

Sichuan-style braised eggplant with garlic and chili

I can never tire of talking up home cooking. Best on all fronts; healthy, accessible, satisfyingly yours. Still, there are times, places, or occasions that call for restaurant eating. While travelling, for example. When sampling an unfamiliar cuisine. Or if wanting to have that favorite dish from now familiar but still not your cuisine. When…

Okra stew for (non)picky eaters

Have you got a picky eater around? Are you one yourself? No? Really? The truth is, we all are picky eaters occasionally. Almost anything can set off one's unfancy: cooked onions, raw onions, tomatoes, carrots, fish, mushrooms... The list goes on and on. As with many such rejected foods, the losers aren't they. We shortchange…

Learning to love pumpkin

Pumpkin has a difficult reputation.  Universally acknowledged as ultra healthy (unless as part of a pumpkin pie), beautiful, potentially entertaining, but... generally unloved (except as part of a pumpkin pie). What's up with that? Well, it's difficult. Pumpkin is just a bit too pumpkin-y.  Not just with strong colors, but also strong flavors.  On the…

Harira: a Moroccan tradition

The soup of Morocco is harira, and the soup of Ramadan (the month of fasting for Muslims) is harira. That is how it is in Morocco. Every evening of Ramadan you break fast with this hearty soup. It is usually accompanied on the side with little deep fried sweets covered in honey. Sometimes, of course,…