One Sweet Potato, Two Dozen Ideas
One of the most versatile vegetables on earth is being harvested on Garden State farms right now. Time to stock up – and stockpile ideas for giving it a star turn on your dinner table.
Sunday Kitchen
Comeback Farm Asian Pears
The most intoxicating little tree fruits come in dazzlingly mottled packages. Maybe not the popular view of beauty, but definitely the good food lover’s ideal.
Chef Train
Drew Araneo, Drew’s Bayshore Bistro
The newest inductee into TPW’s chef-picks-chef society of top toques might be Jersey all the way, but the food at his destination in Keyport speaks with a decided N’Awlins accent. The very personal ways this local hero reinterprets Southern classics with Garden State ingredients have been drawing diners for almost two decades.
Pawpaw: Personal Pudding
Some use this large tree fruit in baking, but its growing number of fans know it’s best straight from the “cup” Mother Nature wraps it in, a kind of custard that needs no accoutrements to adore.
Fortnightly 5
Smoke, without Mirrors
Three of five favorites this go-round use various notes of smoky flavors to their advantage. You’ll catch those notes more with taste than sniff, no games being played. Then there’s a fine fry and a statement in ice cream, no gaming, either.
Sunday Kitchen
Smoked Whitefish Salad Spread
The end justifies the wee bit of effort to make from scratch a salad that tastes infinitely better than the prepared version. Work those extra minutes into your schedule and exult in the result.
Smart Shop
Balkan Market
For New Jersey residents of Balkan heritage, the fundamentals of home-cooked meals often depend on procuring critical ingredients made in their homelands – ingredients that, fortunately, are imported and found in the Garden State at small, family-owned and independent groceries, such as this shop in Manalapan run by Timi Marke and his family.
Chocolates, with Super Powers
It’s actually elemental: cacao and honey, with a sprinkling of functional superfoods. That’s how a couple working out of a 1940s repurposed building in Union City is crafting a guilt-free line of chocolates by hand.
Game Day Take-away
Call this Mid-week Quarterbacking: Up your game-watching eats into next-level nutritional value by faking out your mates with a spread that allows everyone to pass right by the antacid aisle.
Sunday Kitchen
Fresh, Young Ginger, for Gari
Youth isn’t wasted on this rhizome that’s juicier and livelier in its smoother-faced prime. As the cognoscenti know, now is the time to kick into ginger-pickling production.
September Musings
It’s the Thinking Cook’s month, prime time of a Garden State year to let the confluence of summer and fall harvests inspire. In other words, take advantage of having it all at once and put noggin to bounty.
Food Find
Ube Ice Cream, at Sweet Dynasty
The purple yam popular in the Philippines shines in ice cream form at this diminutive shop in Edison. Subtle and sophisticated, it’s a flavor to favor in fall.
Sunday Kitchen
Lobster Causa
Party time? Think this versatile dish from South America that can star shellfish or chicken or vegetables or anything that partners with potatoes. Its flexibility is its touchstone.
Salad Upgrade
’Tis the season to re-think the tosses that have served you well these last several months. It’s time for something more challenging and complex – something not accomplished by adding cheeses, seeds, fruits and nuts.
Life on the Farm
The Priceless Miracle
Stewards of bees and their hives, harvesters of the precious crop of honey that is bequeathed by Mother Nature, the Garden State’s true beekeepers are committed to the processes that speak to terroir and uncompromised purity. Lauren Vitagliano, founder of Pine Barrens Post, explains why she is proud to be one of them.
Sunday Kitchen
Ol’ Bean
Has a new bean at the market caught your eye? Give into temptation! Tasting it is likely to turn a mere flirtation into a long-term love.
Homemade Tomato Sauce
The greatest gifts do come from the heart, but the best of the greatest gifts come as well from harvests at our Garden State farms and the backyard gardens of friends.
Chef Train
Fredy Umanzor, Chef Fredy’s Table
The newest inductee to TPW’s chef-picks-chef society of top toques has spent 40 years in Morris County pro kitchens. Today, as chef-mentor and devoted community member, he’s the proud co-owner of his own restaurant in the competitive county seat.
Fortnightly 5
Mostly Meaty
Beef, pork, a mix, even a hot dog: Dominating this round’s favorite foods are meats, in all their hearty, sauced, spiced and marinated glories.
Sunday Kitchen
Lose the Labor
Time’s always precious, but never more so than on holidays – especially one seen as the unofficial curtain call to summer. That’s why we’ve got extra-quick eats on today’s docket.
Right in His Own Back Yard
For Jake Hunt, it’s not just about making pizza and ice cream at the highest levels, it’s about making both on the land where he grew up: Windy Brow Farms in Fredon.
Food Find
Hot Off the Farm: Chilies
Tyler Olsson takes the chilies he grows on a small farm and makes a little bit of magic in eminently simple-to-use form.
Sunday Kitchen
Watermelon Pals
A little accenting magic can turn a wedge of rosy melon into a treat of a different stripe.
All’s Shared in Love and Food
Peruvian classics are never better than when prepared in a home kitchen by a cook who not only honors traditions but creates them for the family and friends who gather at his table.
Tomato High-Q
It’s that cherished time of year when, all at once and quite gloriously, our Jersey farm- and garden-grown tomatoes are everywhere. But only one person in the Garden State can be the best at growing tomatoes, and that person is Lena Halberstadt.
Fortnightly 5
Scrutiny of the Bounty
A good dozen eats made it to the shoe-in roster for this round of F5, the list of this-one’s-a-sure-bet for the top five. The hits in food just kept on coming. That means these winners are a level beyond extraordinary.
Sunday Kitchen
The Eggplant Bowl
Why not let this high-season vegetable be the star of an entrée bowl? Rice, beans, salad greens, grains of all sorts, pastas and noodles – if they can do it, so can a nightshade that comes in so many varieties.
Tomatoes Terrific
It's high season for the crop that our Garden State is known for and brings our state deserved respect. So, we asked a cadre of culinary pros to tell us: How do you use our Jersey tomatoes, prepare them and/or eat them that best expresses their incomparable taste? Today, it’s answer time.
Sunday Kitchen
Ajvar: Red Pepper’s Muse
In today’s very special Sunday Kitchen column, all-pro baker-chef Zora Levkovski illuminates the powers of the spread that gives red peppers a true star turn.
Food Find
S’mores Cake
Pretty much everything at The Artist Baker in Morristown is a Food Find because everything Andrea Lekberg and her crew bring into edible being is over-the-rainbow magnificent. But this? This reimagined classic? It redefines more than a campfire dessert.
