Mirin is a sweet rice wine often used in Japanese cooking. If you don’t have any on hand, substitute 1 tablespoon honey for the mirin instead.
The buttermilk, cream, and cheddar are nostalgic, while the addition of caramelized shallots and sage add a modern touch.
Spoon cooked barley into soups or stews or use it to make hot breakfast cereals and grain salads.
For vegetarians, bake hollowed out eggplant halves filled with zucchini, tomatoes, and feta, and topped with bread crumbs and Parmesan. For a hearty second-day dish, mix leftover eggplant with pasta, ricotta, and feta.
This gratin of sliced potatoes baked with cream and milk is a French classic. Some versions contain grated cheese, but this one does not. You can also blanch the potatoes first, which we skip here. Slice the potatoes very thinly, either on a hand-held slicing gadget or fancy mandoline. Food-processor feed tubes are so narrow that potatoes must be halved or quartered lengthwise first, which will taste fine in the finished gratin, but it won’t look as elegant in the dish. Layer the potatoes with milk, cream, salt, and pepper. Not much to it.
You need half the cooked potatoes from the gratin, which are baked with lightly beaten eggs until the edges set. This Spanish dish is similar to an Italian frittata.
A hearty bowl of pasta plus savory cheese? You'd never know this whole-grain comfort food is diet-friendly! Squash supplies all the vitamin A you need for the day.
Meena Kumar doesn’t use standard curry spices when she makes zucchini because, she says, “Every vegetable needs its own specific blend of ingredients to bring out the uniqueness of the dish.’’ Because zucchini is a soft and watery vegetable with a delicate flavor, she says, it needs few spices. Here, she uses chili powder and mixes ground cashews and sesame seeds into the vegetable, which is garnished with fresh cilantro.