One upside of working from home, as many of us are these days, is the ability to upgrade your lunch from what you might normally tote to the office. Take a sandwich, for example. At home, you can incorporate small transformative elements typically impossible at work, such as warming it to me…

Chopped salads live in a kind of no man’s land. There is an ambiguity about them, so many varieties and approaches. If there are any rules that govern what goes into them or how they are constructed, they are few and frequently challenged.

I have struggled to understand America’s love affair with quinoa. Sure, it’s packed with protein, about eight grams per cup, and it’s quick-cooking, which is always a bonus. But the flavor? I find it dusty and dull, a far cry from the floral overtones of, say, jasmine rice. It also may as we…

I love a fried fish fillet but sometimes can’t face the mess: the egg wash, the flour/cornmeal coating and the skillet of hot oil.

These are not typical flapjacks with bits of apple and carrot mixed in for seasoning. Here, the produce leads the way with mounds of shredded green apple and carrot bound into tender, lightly browned skillet cakes with just enough egg and whole grain flour to hold them together in pancake form.

Sometimes a serendipitous food discovery can send you down a delicious path.

Like everyone else I know, I’ve been cooking at home much more than usual these past several months. I have enjoyed it and have been eating well, but after awhile I found myself getting bored with my own culinary repertoire.

When it comes to Rosh Hashanah desserts, apple cake or honey cake might sound most familiar to Ashkenazi (Eastern and Central European) Jews celebrating the Jewish New Year. But the Jewish diaspora is as wide as its global recipe box, which boasts other sweet delights, such as this fine and …

I never get tired of chicken salad. Maybe that’s because that recipe title can refer to seemingly endless combinations of ingredients and flavors to suit any mood or whatever we might have on hand.

One evening, back when I was in private practice as a dietitian, I was happily strolling down the street, fully immersed in the drippy deliciousness of an ice cream cone, when a client snuck up on me with a loud “Caught ya!” Forced out of my revelry, I slipped into professional mode to expla…

Each family has its own lore, often-repeated stories and catchphrases. One that I’ll always remember, although told to me secondhand, is from my oldest niece, who while at her great-grandparents’ farm had a simple request: “More ‘cumbers, please.”

A few weeks ago, I came home with probably the biggest watermelon I’ve ever purchased. I got to the farmers market later than usual, so the smaller melons were gone, and from there I lugged away the behemoth in the bright red wagon that used to tow my son and more often now carries my produce.

One of the most gratifying experiences I can have as a food writer occurs when readers send an email to tell me that a dish I’ve shared is now part of their regular recipe rotation. I do a little happy dance in my desk chair.

Roasting cherry tomatoes until they just start to collapse then removing them from the oven before their liquid evaporates yields a saucy delight, tasting somewhere between fresh and cooked and bursting with concentrated tomato flavor.

Los Angeles chef Jocelyn Ramirez remembers when it hit her: She and a friend were making a salad for dinner, and her friend brought out some hearts of palm. “I took a bite, and thought it had the texture and even a little bit of the taste of crab meat,” Ramirez said. She filed it away.

When I was young, pasta salad fell into two categories: A creamy concoction in which mayonnaise held together elbow macaroni, vegetables and ham; or a vinaigrette-style salad with tri-color fusilli tossed with cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers.

Though you might not associate Iran with ice cream, it’s a wildly popular summertime treat there. Bastani sonnati, a traditional Persian ice cream, is typically made from milk, eggs, sugar, rose water, pistachios and saffron. For those of us who grew up in Iran, bastani’s saturated yellow hu…

Caviar-like black lentils (also known as beluga lentils for that reason) add drama to juicy grape tomatoes, shallot and herbs. Kohlrabi bulbs or broccoli stems cut into matchsticks deliver pale, crisp contrast, and the resulting salad is dressed in a rich, mustard vinaigrette.

The other day, I was so excited that it was under 80 degrees for my morning walk with my dog — he’s gotten short shrift as the days have gone from hot to hellish — that I didn’t mind the light rain. Neither did he.

I will admit I am going a little squash crazy right now. Summer squash are abundant, with readers reporting that they are getting a bounty in their CSA boxes. I cannot help grabbing a few each week at the grocery.

There are few foods I can think of in my life that have gone from complete unknown to outright obsession faster than kaiserschmarrn.

In the height of summer, my appetite often settles into a no-man’s land where I’m genuinely hungry but find myself stuck in a lackadaisical funk in which I just don’t feel like eating. It’s as if the act of consuming food generates more heat than it’s worth. Luckily, there are recipes like t…

You know what it feels like when you bite into really good corn on the cob. Sweet, flavorful pops. Juices flying as if you bit into an apple. Maybe a little smoky char from the grill. Maybe you’ve got to squint — either from bursts of kernels or the nearby summer sun.

In the pantheon of using-up-leftovers dishes, hash is at or near the top, alongside fried rice and the frittata. Do I need to even state the obvious, that you shouldn’t limit hash to breakfast or brunch? I didn’t think so.

Chocolate-dipped frozen bananas have long been on my list of ideal snacks. They have it all: a frosty treat that’s also healthful; a built-in, food-on-a-stick fun factor; and they are a breeze to make.

Salt is everywhere. It serves an important function in keeping our bodies operating, but with modern convenience food and dining habits, it can be easy to overdo it. Limiting sodium intake is a real dietary concern for many people.

Zucchini seem to be one of the most stuff-able vegetables. They can be halved lengthwise and scooped into little boats, then filled and baked; or hollowed out into tubes, stuffed and simmered in sauce.

Eggplant takes to grilling like perhaps no other vegetable I know. The spongy flesh soaks up smoke flavor from a charcoal or wood fire and turns buttery without the use of much oil, which eggplant usually devours.

The concept of simple syrup is, well, simple. Take equal amounts of sugar and water, cook and use as a sweetener. It is indeed quite simple to make, but the name almost obscures the many directions this ingredient can go.

The name mimosa may immediately conjure a champagne cocktail, but here it refers to the fluffy, sunny-yellow egg garnish which, like the drink, is named for its resemblance to the flowers of the mimosa tree.

One of the things I miss these days is getting my hands on cookbooks.

The cartoonish idea of a stacked-high sandwich is so ingrained in our culture it has a name: a Dagwood, referring to the “Blondie” comic-strip character known for entering a sort of fever dream as he dreams of, assembles and consumes them.