Red pepper, sausage, and chard risotto

I made a variation of this red pepper, sausage, and chard risotto. I used red swiss chard. This was my first time cooking with it and I did not realize that it "bleeds." I don't know if you can tell from the photo but the risotto turned pink after added the chopped chard.

Tomatillo salsa verde

This absolutely blew me away. I am positively addicted.

Using pesto: Basic bruschetta

I don't know about you but when I get home from work in the evening, I am positively famished. I'm talking faint with hunger. The only thing I can think about as I'm walking up the stairs (up the stairs! this is sometimes still a little new and exciting to me, even though I've been above ground for five months) to my apartment is what I am going to eat for dinner.

This is why I spend time pre-making stuff that I can re-heat for dinner, or find small shortcuts to make a faster dinner. Even so, a small and quick snack just as I get home is ideal.

The Bean Chronicles: Garbanzos, and roasted tomato soup

It is clearly no secret that I enjoy cooking. I enjoy the process, the time, and the results (mostly - I've had my share of failures). I make a lot of stuff from scratch: salad dressing, cupcakes, tomato sauce, pesto, pickles, granola, chana masala, chicken broth (hey! that's an impressive list, if I do say so myself). Nonetheless, despite the encouragements out there in the cooking world, there are certain things I still refuse to make from scratch: bread, pasta, beans, yogurt, jam, frosting that involves raw eggs. At one time, kimchi was on that list, and seeing as I've broken that barrier (sort of, albeit with kaktugui)... I've tackled the mighty bean.

Kaktugui

My first attempt at making kimchi! I never thought I'd see the day. I believe I am officially an ajuma now.

Roasted eggplant spread

You guys, I think someone needs to stage an intervention... for me. I'm addicted to the farmer's market.

Oi vey!

I'm venturing into cooking Korean more (gotta be true to my roots). Despite having grown up eating Korean food that my mom made from scratch, I really have no clue as to how to cook it. In fact, I believe there was one point where I swore I would not bother (this was years ago, after making a batch of kongjaban (black bean banchan) that stunk up my kitchen to high heaven). It seemed to me such a labor-intensive process, when I could easily just buy various banchan at the market - the only downside being that there is only one Korean market in all of Manhattan.