T. Susan Chang
T. Susan Chang regularly writes about food and reviews cookbooks for The Boston Globe,NPR.org and the Washington Post. She's the author of A Spoonful of Promises: Recipes and Stories From a Well-Tempered Table (2011). She lives in western Massachusetts, where she also teaches food writing at Bay Path College and Smith College. She blogs at Cookbooks for Dinner.
-
Summertime inspires dizzying feats of laziness in the kitchen. Liquid lunches, random fruit meet-ups, meals consisting of things you can throw in a blender -- anything to avoid summer's Public Enemy No. 1: the stove. These easy-to-make, easy-to-eat salads won't impose on your downtime.
-
Instead of obliterating the plant pests in your garden, try harvesting them. After all, they've been fattened up on your good compost and diligent watering all season. All you need is an open mind — and the appetite to go with it.
-
This year has yielded a bumper crop of cookbooks for the farmers market regular. Food writer T. Susan Chang has sorted through this bounty to come up with an armload of recommendations — as well as a score of great summer recipes — for the locavore in your life.
-
Like its dark, tarry candy form, the flavor of licorice can overstay its welcome. So food writer T. Susan Chang prefers dishes in which other ingredients complement and tame its sweet refrain. In the right context, she says, the essence of licorice — in fennel, tarragon or basil, for example — charms and captivates.
-
The shank — the lower part of the leg, from the knee down — is one of the toughest cuts you can find on a lamb. But what makes it impossible to saute is what makes it ideal for braising. And after a good long stint in the oven, the reward is a succulent, meaty dish.
-
If you're the kind of person who's always believed that a book can teach you to do anything, this year's crop of cookbooks will prove you right. Cooks lacking confidence will find comfort in detailed instructions and comprehensive how-tos.
-
A full-grown octopus is a lot to take on in the kitchen, but the babies are tender and unintimidating — and can be had for a very persuasive price. Cook them fast and hot, or cook them low and slow.
-
When the days grow shorter and corn is harder to come by, the ears smaller and less plump, turn to corn pudding for the perfect marriage of butter and corn. The sweet, silky concoction could be called "carnal pudding," but we'll just call it heavenly.
-
These edible flowers have a texture that's soft and delicate when raw or steamed, crisp and toothsome when fried — and especially delectable when encasing dollops of soft, white cheese.
-
Minimal cooking lets green beans shine — and keeps the kitchen cool as summer heats up. These crisp, bright dishes are a snap to make in the morning and leave in the fridge all day.
-
Alone, mint is piercing and paprika rounded. Together, their sweetness converges into something completely different from either — an herbal, fruity wake-up call, confused and aromatic; cool on the sides of the tongue and warm at the tip.
-
This year's crop of spring and summer cookbooks is a sprawling, eclectic collection, hard to summarize and harder to sort. In these books we find a world of thrilling arcana, seemingly custom tailored for a summer in which eating in looks to be the greatest adventure of all.