When I read the instructions for preparing orzo, I was a little taken aback.
Orzo is sometimes referred to as “Italian rice.” And rice, I know, absorbs the liquid it’s cooked in. So, when the instructions called for 2 quarts of water to cook 1 cup of orzo, I was a little confused. With a water to orzo ratio of 8:1, thoughts of football-size orzo grains popped into my head.
Fortunately, I read the rest of the directions, and noticed …
Summer is a good time for fresh fruits and vegetables. But it’s not the best time to spend stuck in your kitchen, laboring over a hot stove. The perfect summer salad solves this potential paradox.
The grilled peaches took me outside for a few minutes, and provided a sweet taste and a vibrant color for the salad. After that, I laid some arugula down as a base, topped it with roma tomatoes, feta cheese, toasted pecans, and a homemade vinaigrette. The salad was ready in fewer than five minutes – which left me plenty of time to enjoy a sunny Sunday stroll in Saint Louis.
Incidentally, if you’re looking for more salad ideas, …
Tomato gazpacho is not redundant.
Gazpacho got its start in Andalusia, the southern-most province of Spain, sometime between the 8th and 12th centuries – long before the tomato arrived on European soil. Owing to its origins and its meaning – gazpacho comes from an Arabic word meaning “soaked bread” – some food historians believe the Moors brought the dish to Spain as a sophisticated field ration.
Other food historians trace the dish to the early Romans, who soaked their stale bread…
Tomatoes have long been a source of suspicion and derision.
Tomatoes were first cultivated by the Aztecs around the 8th Century, who had given the fruit the name “tomatl.” A few centuries later, the Conquistadors brought tomato seeds back with them to Europe. But despite its arrival in the Old Continent, the tomato was not yet for eating. European botanists placed the tomato alongside the Solanaceae family, a group of poisonous and narcotic plants, and came to view tomatoes as poisonous and hallucinogenic.
Even once edible, tomatoes still served as a source of derision. During the days …
Bruschetta (broo-SKET-uh), as you might suspect, is an Italian dish. It does not refer to the topping, however, but to the grilled bread. The word itself owes its origins to the 13th Century word “brusare,” which referred to the act of passing a flame over the keel of a boat to aid in waterproofing. A few centuries later, the word evolved to the Latin word “bruscare,” and came to mean to toast.
All of which is to say that bruschetta …