One evening last week as I was making dinner one of my roommates burst into the kitchen, proudly brandishing the largest pomegranate I had ever seen. It was, he declared, on sale, and destined for consumption in one of his family’s most excellent recipes: pomegranate and pine nut salad with a maple vinaigrette. I was, [...]
I’ll occasionally forget about certain vegetables. It’s a bit like when you lose touch with a friend. You might be still living in the same city, but your paths don’t cross regularly, and, without either of you meaning it, you stop remembering to make the effort to arrange tea dates or adventures. Then one day [...]
One of the things finding out I’m gluten intolerant has pushed me to do is pay attention to potatoes. I don’t dislike potatoes; on the contrary, one of my favourite winter meals is a piping hot baked potato stuffed with plenty of vegetables and cheese. But potatoes were never a food I thought about very [...]
It’s that lovely time of year when people are returning from wherever they have scattered for the summer. In spite of the thousand and one ways we have to communicate in the internet age, you inevitably have a lot of catching up to do. Three or four months is a long time, and summer months [...]
Summer abundance. You can glimpse it in the city, if you find the right places. The farmer’s market, the little fruiteries, the little pots of herbs overflowing from fire escapes and balconies. You can taste the change in yogurt and cheese—a butteriness, a brightness that wasn’t there in the hungry days of early spring. But [...]
Have you ever walked into a cornfield in the blazing sun, pulled off an ear of corn, and shucked and devoured it on the spot? None of the sugars have had time to turn to starch, so the kernels are completely tender and sweet, dripping milkily down your chin until you are as triumphantly sticky [...]
Before I started Kitchen Lark, I spent a while writing a blog called Frying Solo. It was a good way to try blogging—to learn what schedule worked for me, to try my hand at food photography, and so forth—without committing to my own domain name and site design. Among other things, I learned that people [...]
I like to joke that people can tell I’m Dutch because I live mostly on kale and cheese. It isn’t too far from the truth. Three or four of my meals each week seem to consist of a large bowl of kale with whatever I have on hand mixed in. Quite often I’ll make kale [...]
Summer is starting to get to me. At the slightest provocation, I rapturously recount how I found my favourite kind of cherry tomatoes at the market, locally grown and smiling up at me from a sun-warmed pint basket. I attack people at the door with a basket of blueberries and force them to try some [...]
When you go from extreme pickiness to happy omnivorousness, there are a few old prejudices that linger longer than others. I quickly grew to love lettuces and leafy greens. Mushrooms, carrots, spinach, broccoli, even eggplant, that nemesis of picky eaters everywhere—all these I devoured with gusto after only a few initial cautious tastes. But two [...]
