posts by Debra Samuels
Stick with ribs for these two tasty meals
Boston Globe, May 5, 2010 Chinese spare ribs are restaurant food, and usually gnaw-the-bone good. You can also make delicious ribs at home, where you don’t have to worry about table manners. There are three cuts of ribs: meaty pork ribs, sometimes called St. Louis-style; baby-back pork ribs that have less meat; and country-style ribs …
Read moreConza – Bean, Cauliflower and Fennel Soup
Boston Globe, March 31, 2010 Conza is a traditional Sicilian sauce/soup made with chickpeas, favas, kidney or cranberry beans, white beans, black-eyed peas, and lentils. You can add a handful of whatever dried legumes you have on hand; think of it as spring cleaning your pantry. Nina Groppo cooks each variety of bean separately the …
Read morePreparation is half the fun for Feast of San Giuseppe
By Debra Samuels, Globe Correspondent March 31, 2010 GLOUCESTER — In the garage-cum-kitchen of Nina and Franco Groppo’s home here, more than 20 friends and extended family are preparing for the Feast of San Giuseppe. That means pasta making — lots of it — along with plenty of fun. Flour sifting through the air around …
Read moreWhich is the better butter?
March 10, 2010 Few things taste better than crusty bread spread with butter. Real butter. Many families have banned bread and butter from their tables, but restaurants are serving premium butters again, rather than presenting little dishes of olive oil. We tasted seven brands of unsalted butter, first just the butter, then some of it …
Read moreChinese egg drop soup
Chinese egg drop soup Serves 4 This popular restaurant bowl is easy to make at home but the technique is a little tricky. The finished soup should have pale yellow petals of barely set egg floating in a rich chicken broth. To achieve this, you have to wave chopsticks above the surface of the hot …
Read moreMaking the most of tender rib-eye
Open with classic roast beef, then a hearty shepherd’s pie Boston Globe, December 30, 2009 The classic pairing of roast beef and potatoes can go from Sunday night supper to something special – depending on the cut of meat you use. For a New Year’s Eve celebration, a rib-eye roast, which has plenty of flavor for …
Read moreNavigating a veritable sea of tuna salads
February 3, 2010 For many people, tuna salad is the ultimate lunch, spread between hearty slices of toast, tucked inside a sub roll, or scooped onto shredded lettuce. It’s filling and deliciously old-fashioned. Eight people tasted prepared tuna salads from the deli departments of four supermarkets and one delicatessen. Of the five sampled, only Barry’s …
Read moreAn Evening at Kwang Jang Market in Seoul
Well I am going to try something new for this post. Come with me for a slide tour and commentary as my husband Dick and I go in search of a hot meal on a cold night as we cruise around the hopping Kwang Jang Market. Click on the photo to start the slide show …
Read moreA Stay at a Traditional Korean Inn
Professor Hee Sun Jeong of the Korean Food Institute at Sookmyung University and I met when she came to Boston with a team to cook a meal of Imperial cuisine for 100 people! I visited the Institute when in Seoul and was greeted with a warming and refreshing cup of hot yooja tea. A piece …
Read moreFour Tasty Tofu Recipes
Boston Globe, January 6, 2010 Chinese steamed silken tofu with ginger and scallions Serves 4 At Rice Valley in Newton, cooks use silken tofu, which they steam with shreds of ginger and scallion. Then they bathe the cubes in hot soy sauce and chicken broth. You don’t need a wok or steamer. Use a deep …
Read moreTofu is all about the texture
Tofu is all about the texture Each of the three styles of soy bean curd has a purpose Those large white blocks of tofu can be intimidating. No matter how carefully you prepare them, the dishes never seem as good as they are when you eat out. It’s all a matter of determining which texture …
Read moreAsian Sojourn
On December 13, 2009 my husband Dick and I started on our trip to North Asia. We were in Seoul, South Korea for 10 days then onto China – Beijing for 6, Shanghai for 6 and now we are in Tokyo until January 29th. Both of us have been working along the way and here …
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Bento:Build a Better Lunch
Debra Samuels, bestselling author, food writer and cooking instructor, wants to give the American lunchbox a makeover. In the chapter on “bento,” the traditional Japanese lunch box, in her upcoming book, My Japanese Table, Debra encourages the use of color, texture and taste to create healthier and more visually appealing meals.
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