Sausages and peppers are a classic combo that is not only delicious but easy to prepare with only a sheet pan. By using chicken sausage, we can limit saturated fat while maximizing that savory Italian flavor that we’re going for. Add some gnocchi and serve on top of a bed of calcium-rich spinach. Done and done!
Blue cornmeal gives this cornbread its haunting corn flavor and lavender hue, but yellow or white cornmeal will work equally well. You can find blue corn meal in co-ops and online. Store it in the refrigerator or freeze.
Bold, fiery, thick, and creamy, this pasta—great served hot or cold—offers a taste of the beauty of cultural syncretism. In Jamaican immigrant communities from New York to London, Rasta Pasta is a treasured tradition, favored for the way two seemingly disparate worlds—Italy and Jamaica—come together in one bright and unfussy pot. It’s so beloved in Jamaica that the esteemed Evita’s Italian Restaurant devoted an entire menu to the dish’s many variants, including a signature the restaurant dubs Reggae-toni. This version turns the typically dairy-heavy dish plant-based with the use of coconut milk, itself a Caribbean staple, keeping Rasta Pasta firmly in touch with its roots.
I absolutely love making this soup now that I have figured out how to make it using my food processor. It used to be quite labor-intensive to cut all the vegetables by hand. Now, I just throw them into the food processor to chop into small pieces, then toss them into my Dutch oven. So quick, so simple, and I also vastly prefer the texture of the soup prepared this way to the traditional way I was taught to make it. The vegetables don’t all come out the same perfect size, which I like, and the rice or pasta is cooked at the same time, making it possible to get my soup on the table pretty quickly.
You can, literally, put any vegetables in soupe au pistou. In spring, I add asparagus and loads of fresh peas. In summer, more ripe tomatoes. In fall, I add butternut squash. It is a substantial soup, and served with a baguette, it could easily be the meal’s main course. A green salad is a nice accompaniment.
My mother, Larisa, was born in Odessa, Ukraine, and has made borsch all her life. ’This is the hot winter version: vegetarian and super-quick to prepare but also hearty and filling, with a lovely sweet-sour flavor and gorgeous red beet color. It’s served garnished with fresh herbs and a dollop of sour cream.
A sweet-and-sour symmetry is inherent in my style of cooking. If it isn’t expressed through actual components of a dish, it’s delivered via side bowls or ramekins. Okra chow-chow has become one of my favorite media for attaining culinary harmony. And considering that okra is integral to Southern cuisine and agriculture, it’s also one of the clearest examples of two food cultures existing side by side and the ways they intersect. Serve okra chow-chow alongside scrapple (as I so often do), and you could consider this dish the poster child of Amish soul food.
Nicole Taylor highlights one of her favorite spice blends from her book Watermelon and Red Birds in this weekend hash. It makes two cups of seasoning, but if you’re anything like Nicole, you’ll have a jar of this on the counter for everyday use. As an intuitive cook, she recommends vibing how much spice to use when cooking the hash. Want more after it’s cooked? Feel free to sprinkle more- we certainly did!
Tastes great with: Toasted bread (as a starter), or pasta or couscous (as a main course)
Could I write a book without featuring crispy gnocchi? Of course not. So I give you my proudest barbecue creation. Forget about threading just plain old vegetables on a stick —here, you intersperse veggies of your choice (I’ve done bell peppers here, but see the note below) on skewers with just-blanched gnocchi. The result is crisp perfection like you wouldn’t believe.