Simply Recipes Food and Cooking Blog

Have you ever seen a lingcod? They are almost primeval looking—huge, gaping mouths with sharp teeth. As with any fish, the most important factor for how good it tastes is its freshness.

Winter in California is the season for arugula, along with many other lettuces. A few years ago we planted some in our garden and now each year the arugula re-seeds itself and takes over with a flourish, starting in December. Arugula was popularized a few years ago as a central component of California cuisine. For those unfamiliar with it, it tastes a lot like watercress – peppery and slightly bitter. In this recipe the goat cheese mellows the pepperiness of the arugula, while the beets offer a sweet contrast to its bitter quality. Chopped walnuts add a little more texture to the salad.

Arroz con pollo means “Rice with Chicken” in Spanish. It is a classic dish of Spain and Latin America, with many different traditional ways to prepare it, unique to various countries. An arroz con pollo you find in Cuba may be quite different than one you find in Peru. Please read the comments at the end of this recipe to see some wonderful classic versions of this dish.

Do like garlic? Do you like chicken? Then you’ll love garlic chicken, a classic recipe of chicken parts that have been browned in olive oil, then cooked with white wine and garlic. It’s also known as “40 Clove Chicken” because that’s how many garlic cloves you’ll use to make the dish.

Albondigas soup is a traditional Mexican meatball soup (“albondigas” means “meatballs” in Spanish) that my mother has cooked for our family for more than 50 years. It is our version of comfort food.

Walk in to practically any taqueria in California and you’ll likely find super-sized containers of agua frescas, right next to the soda dispenser. The usual flavors are horchata (a sweet rice drink), tamarindo (from tamarind, and agua de jamaica (pronounced hah-MY-kah), an infusion of dried red hibiscus flowers.

Once years ago, when I was six years old, visiting my aunt and uncle in Washington D.C., I ate an entire box of Ritz crackers. We never had anything like those crackers at home, so buttery, so delicious. And once I started, I couldn’t stop eating them.

The first is the stock. Your soup will only be as good as the stock you are using. This soup traditionally is made with beef stock, though sometimes a good beef stock can be hard to come by and expensive to make. If you use boxed stock, taste it first! If you don’t like the taste, don’t use it. (If you cook a lot of beef or beef roasts, save the scraps and freeze them to make a stock with later.)

We all love quesadillas, and we could all use more leafy greens in our diet, so let’s add some shredded kale to our cheese and tortillas and call it a “kale”sadilla! This could even be a rather clever way to get your kids to eat more greens. Though it’s not exactly “sneaky” as you can clearly see the kale.

People either love turnips or they hate them. And if they love them, it was probably an acquired taste. I can still remember making a face when thinking I was biting into a yummy potato in one of my mother’s stews I had speared a turnip instead. Yet this dish is another proof point that almost all things taste better with butter and cream.