Side dishes Archives - Page 3 of 15

Mustard and Maple-Glazed Butternut Squash stuffed with Farro and Winter Greens

June 13, 2024February 25, 2019 by Matt

Mustard Glazed Butternut Squash Stuffed with Farro and Winter Greens

Why do winter-season dinners feel more of a challenge to put together than summer ones? The days are darker, the evenings draw in, there isn’t quite as much fresh local produce at the store or farmer’s market, and maybe we don’t have the energy to get as creative as we’d like. But here’s the key: sticking with simple ingredients such as hardy winter squash, healthy farro and fresh greens, and then packing them with winning flavor combinations will reward you with a dinner as healthy and delicious as it is straightforward.

In this recipe, we’ve partnered with Maille Dijon Originale Mustard to create a hearty seasonal winter supper packed with nutrition and flavor.

Spicy Thai Shrimp Salad

June 13, 2024September 6, 2018 by Emily

A simple, healthy Thai shrimp salad with an authentic sour-savory-spicy-sweet combination of fresh lime juice, fish sauce and chili paste, showered with fresh herbs and crunchy roasted peanuts.

Summer is almost done but we are officially in the middle of a heat wave. You know those shots in movies of a long, empty road, heat lines shimmering up from the pavement? Maybe a tumbleweed blows by, lazy and misshapen? That’s our living room right now. In this case the “tumbleweed” is Arya, our rescue dog who, for a pup who lived her first year on the streets of West Virginia, is hilariously particular about the range of temperatures she finds acceptable. 70º – 75ºF is fine, but a few degrees in either direction and get ready for dramatic sighs and woeful glances.

I hear you, puppy. I’m hot too.

Easy Creamed Corn with Basil

July 2, 2024August 27, 2018 by Emily

Easy Creamed Corn with Basil is a summer staple in our house. These sweet kernels are just barely simmered in a sauce made from silky mascarpone cheese, a little half and half and not much else. Add a sprinkle of fragrant basil and you’ve got a simple, supremely summery side!

When summer corn is at its sweetest, it doesn’t take much to make it shine. A quick steam, a sprinkle of flaky sea salt, maybe a slick of good cultured butter is all that’s needed, and often not even that. But towards the end of the season our taste buds (and our teeth) need a break from gnawing kernels straight from the cob. That’s when we make this Easy Creamed Corn with Basil. Almost as quick as a simple steam, this method brings out the best in the corn, keeping the kernels crunchy, but bathing them in a silky, creamy sauce that’s the work of minutes.

Herbed Potato Salad

July 2, 2024July 9, 2018 by Emily

Everyone has a favorite summertime potato salad recipe, and here’s ours: infused with Dijon mustard, tart white wine vinegar, and plenty of chives, parsley and dill. It’s our go-to BBQ side.

Here’s a not-at-all hypothetical scenario for you. You email somebody an invite to a summer grill-out, and they get tremendously happy and excited and reply “Great! What potato salad church do you worship at?”. Because you have now encountered a Potato Salad Enthusiast and your previous plan of just buying a tub of the stuff at the grocery store is no longer going to fly.

Nettle Risotto with Green Garlic and Taleggio

June 13, 2024June 1, 2018 by Matt

Stinging nettles aren’t just for stumbling into with painful consequences. We’ll show you how to use the leaves safely to make a delicious and super healthy nettle risotto. Flavored with green garlic and Taleggio cheese, this is a knock-out Spring dinner. But don’t worry if you don’t have nettles and green garlic, you can make it with spinach and regular garlic too!

As a kid growing up in a vaguely-rural part of England, I quickly learned that if there was one plant that resisted your attempts to live peacefully with nature, it was the stinging nettle. Wherever it was most fun to run around in the woods, that’s where they lurked. If there was a perfectly tempting blackberry bramble by the side of the road, you could bet your last Rolo that there’d be a patch of nettles right in front of it. Children and nettles existed in a sort of uneasy symbiosis. We would fall into them, and they would sting us … actually, that’s not really a symbiosis, is it, it’s just how both nettles and children tend to work.

We were always encouraged to grasp the nettle! (meaning, just go for it, and it probably wouldn’t sting you, which was a lie). I wonder if many childhoods would have been changed for the better if we’d been encouraged to eat the nettle instead.

Easy Home-made Kimchi

July 5, 2024May 14, 2018 by Matt

Matt here. Emily’s going to come in with the important tasting notes and all that later in the article, but I just wanted to share an anecdote from our very early cohabitation. When we first moved in together, I remember I was clearing room in the fridge – and at the time, Emily had a really beautiful spacious fridge (I think it was even bigger than the one we have now) and there was plenty of room to hide stuff at the back of the shelves. I was clearing out room to fit in whatever we’d bought together at the store, and I spotted a jar whose contents were unfamiliar to me. I opened the lid and, I don’t remember now, but I probably cursed. I think I might have warned Emily that there was something really bad in there that needed to be thrown away right that second, and preferably triple-bagged. I warned her that we might have to replace the fridge. I warned her that we might have to move.