Way back in May, I wrote about the trials and tribulations of making green salad with shrimp. My favorite version of this salad featured an improvised recipe for spicy pan-seared shrimp. What I didn’t realize was how convenient this method for preparing shrimp would be! This shrimp recipe is quick to prepare and requires little-to-no advance planning.

Why so convenient? I use frozen, peeled shrimp. Pop a handful in a colander and submerge them under running cool water. They’ll thaw in minutes. Insta-protein! And since shrimp are small, they take on the flavors of a marinade quickly and cook in minutes, perfect qualities for impatient cooks like me who are hungry and want to eat half an hour ago.

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Sometimes, all it takes is a little inspiration. After months of moping around eating takeout, I finally found mine roaming the Union Square Greenmarket last Saturday with my dear sister. We didn’t know what we would find, but we knew it would be good. We weren’t disappointed.

Besides the blueberries and strawberries (both awesome, by the way), the main event at the Greenmarket this past weekend was greens. We saw all manner of lettuces, wild and domestic arugula, Swiss chard, purlsane. It was a salad-maker’s dream out there!

Our dinner plans morphed for about twenty minutes as we wandered the market and weighed the possibilities. Should we make a bracing arugula salad? I dallied by the rainbow of Swiss chard for a while, too, but we stopped deliberating when we encountered some enormous bunches of pristine dandelion greens.  I had never tried these before, but had always been curious. What fun!

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Since my sister has already thought up a great Father’s Day gift for us both (thanks kiddo!), I wondered if I could find some really terrible things that I would never want to give my Dad for Father’s Day. And while it may not be shocking to anyone who has watched any late-night TV in the last, well, ever, that there are a lot of stupid contraptions out there, the mind boggles at the sheer variety of nonsense out there for your late-night spending pleasure. Honestly, who buys this crap? And where the heck do they put it?

For example: Is it really so complicated to cook hot dogs that one needs a specialized rotary grill to cook them?  Deion Sanders thinks so. Read the rest of this entry »

Want to hear something sad? I can’t remember the last time I fired up my stove. Or opened up my fridge to do anything beyond pulling out some takeout leftovers. I’m pretty sure that there are some very sad, wilting vegetables hiding out in my crisper right now, but I can’t bear the thought of facing them.

Even sadder: It’s finally spring and very nearly summer. There are greenmarkets full of fresh vegetables to eat, if only I were to exert the effort to find them. And wash them. And slice them and dice them. And clean my kitchen after I’m finished eating them.

And suddenly I remember why I’ve been eating takeout lately: Cooking takes effort! And I’m tired!

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I don’t know why, but all I’m eating these days is salad. Is it the onset of spring? The ease of preparation? Is there something in the greenery my body is craving? I honesty can’t explain it, especially because I make a salad at the salad bar for lunch every single day at work. But the salads I make at home are infinitely better.

This week’s inspiration was deliciously ripe mangoes at my local overpriced gourmet grocery. Those sneaky bastards strategically placed a little plate with cubes of yellow mango right in my line of sight, and when I took the bait and tried a bite, I was done for. For serious, these mangoes were perfect. So, of course I had to buy one. The baby mâche looked nice this week, as did those cute little Kirby cucumbers. And the radicchio. (Note to self:  I really need to stop shopping hungry.)

Fast forward to dinnertime. I decided that it might be nice to prepare a salad with an Asian twist. But this salad was harder to perfect than I originally anticipated. It took two tries to get it right. Read the rest of this entry »

I started writing this post two weeks ago, before a deal ate my life.  But I still remember this salad.  That’s good, right?

Between working a lot and traveling weekends these past few weeks, I have spent next to no time in my kitchen. (Though I’ll admit the enormous pile of dirty pots and pans in my kitchen didn’t help either!) When I discovered myself at home with some time on my hands this past weekend, I decided a spring celebration for one was in order.

Spring has finally sprung in NYC in a serious way. After months of incessant rainy, chilly weather, this weekend brought highs of nearly 90 degrees. Thanks for easing us into it, weather gods. Much obliged. With the weather so hot, I was craving a beautiful spring salad to eat on my balcony (read: fire escape) with a glass of white wine after my scheduled late afternoon bike ride.

My local overpriced gourmet grocery always has unfamiliar produce on hand, and this weekend was no exception. This time, a package of celery sprouts caught my eye. I also grabbed some frisee, radishes, baby carrots (the real thing, with stems still attached, not baby-cut carrots) and sugar snap peas, and some dill and green onions to make a proper dressing. Read the rest of this entry »

I always have the best time when my dear friend S. cooks Korean food. I peek over her shoulder constantly, because the flavors and ingredients are so unfamiliar… and delicious! So when S. suggested we make kimbap for dinner one night, I readily agreed, even though I had no idea what it was.

It turns out that kimbap is like Korean sushi. It features the nori and sushi rice that our Debbie loves so well, but the fillings are typically cooked, not raw. We made two kinds of fillings for our kimbap:  spicy shrimp and kimchi and canned tuna and kimchi. S. says her mom also makes kimbap with ground beef cooked with vegetables. Read the rest of this entry »