Recipes

Food

Sesame Noodles With A Side of Hope

Why was Kirsten Thorn, a shy 16-year-old, offering plates of addictive sesame noodles in the produce department of Guido's in Great Barrington the other day?  "She's part of the Railroad Street Youth Project," explained her mentor, Daire Rooney, the executive chef at Brix in

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Food

Pavlova: A Dessert That Dances

Well, maybe not. But the pavlova—an airy meringue concoction invented either in New Zealand or Australia, sometime between 1926 and 1935, as a tribute to the ballerina Anna Pavlova who toured both countries several times during that period (believe it or not, the debate goes on)— is so light

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Food

Succulent & Secular: Lamb for Easter or Passover

Though I love the comfort foods of winter, spring is welcome in my kitchen, and not just because it means less cursing as I carry in boxes of groceries. If my first-favorite food holiday is Thanksgiving,  Easter and Passover are close runners-up (though I observe neither, I enjoy celebrating both)

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Food

Carole Murko Cooks Up a TV Pilot in Stockbridge

Like many people who once had big jobs in the big city and traded them in for country life, Carole Murko has been on the reinvention tour. Since arriving in the Berkshires from Boston where she had a successful career in finance, she has worked in real estate and as

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Food

Rice and Beans: Reduce, Reuse & Recycle

One of the most frequent—and most confounding—requests I've received since writing for Rural Intelligence is to serve up a plan for an entire week's worth of dinners. I am not, however, a Monday-meatloaf, Tuesday-turkey kind of cook. Even if I wanted to limit my

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Food

Jeff Loshinsky's Soupe au Pistou

Caterer Jeff Loshinsky's most recent cooking class this season, held on February 19 at the Vince Mulford Gallery in Hudson, focused on Hearty Soups and Chowders.  Below is a recipe for one of the soups he featured that night, a vegetable soup with pistou, which is a pesto-like

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Food

Let Them Eat Pie

Late winter and early spring means birthday season for my family: beginning on Valentine's Day with my husband, our little clan's birthdays then follow in succession through the end of March (save my son, whose outlier August birthday is the source of much consternation, at least

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Food

Winter Dinner Party 101

Though the cold is lifting, neither true spring weather nor the new harvest will arrive for a bit, so to make it through these next few muddy and cold weeks, why not give a dinner party? The shtick in my house (i.e., my husband's shtick) is that

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Food

Perfect for Late Winter: Summer Fish Curry

When the weather turns, as it has this week, from merely cold to utterly brutal, I retreat, as much as possible, to the kitchen. The numbing weather presents cooks with a fork in the road: either make rib-sticking, hearty comfort food (nothing wrong with that, except what  it will do

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Food

Adventures in Slow Cooking: Moroccan Chicken Stew

Since starting my adventures in food here at Rural Intelligence, I've received a few requests from readers. Some I've tried to address, some I'm still working on, and one, until now, had me stumped: recipes designed for a slow cooker. I am, theoretically, the

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Food

Fit for A Dinner Party: Kasha with Preserved Lemons

I know some people who are perfectly confident in most areas of their lives—and perfectly capable in the kitchen—who become paralyzed at the idea of throwing a dinner party. The thing  I've learned is that dinner parties aren't necessarily any more work than a

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Food

A Jolt of Green: Bravo for Broccoli Rabe

I'm surprised—happily so—whenever I find broccoli rabe, also know as rapini, on a menu. Whether in a restaurant or a friend's home, I always feel like my host and I have a shared secret, because I can't believe how few people appreciate—

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