I tend to cook most nights and am fortunate to have one of the most supportive partners, in eating and life, one could hope for. She greets everything with wide eyes and an “Oh, baby!” before it even gets to the table, even the misfires like my ongoing trials with thai peanut sauce. It’s pretty rare that I get to genuinely surprise her, though, as was the case with this side dish of sugar snap peas with mint, which we now excitedly refer to as “minty peas”.

This is a side that was meant for spring, with the sweet peas lifted by fresh mint and a little lemon zest. You’ve probably been roasting gourds and root vegetables since October; it’s time to brighten up a bit.

There are two techniques, both quick and simple, to getting this right. The first is to chiffonade¹ the mint into fine strips. The easiest way to do this is to pick the mint leaves from the stem, stack 6-8 or so together, roll them tightly, and cut them across the rolled bundle. Pick out any of the center stems that stick out and you’ll have a nice nest of mint. This technique works well with most herbs and leafy things, like collards.

Blanching is the other, and it’s one of my favorites, especially this time of year. With fresh, green vegetables, I like to use the big-pot blanching technique championed by Thomas Keller in his wonderful Ad Hoc at Home — it keeps fresh vegetables crisp and forces a brilliant green color. The key is to use a big pot of very salty water (Keller recommends 1 cup of kosher salt to 1 gallon of water) at a rolling boil to cook the vegetable as quickly as possible. Using lots of water helps to keep the temperature of the water from dropping when you add the vegetables so that they cook quickly. Lastly, prep an ice bath to submerge the vegetables in once they’re done so that they don’t overcook.

I like to dress the peas, either in a flavorful oil like a fruity olive oil or something nutty like walnut or hazelnut, or mix a very simple vinaigrette.

• 1 pound of sugar snap peas
• 8-10 fresh mint leaves
• 1 tablespoon flavorful oil (fruity olive, walnut or hazelnut)
• pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon of fresh lemon juice (optional)
• lemon zest (optional)

1. Set a big pot of water, at least a gallon, on high heat.
2. While the water’s coming to temperature, snap the stem ends off the peas and pull the attached “string” down the full length of the pea.
3. Chiffonade the mint leaves by stacking them on top of one another, rolling them tight, and slicing them into thin ribbons. Discard any tough-looking stems.
4. If using the lemon juice, mix a vinaigrette by slowly adding the oil to the juice and constantly whisking with a fork to create an emulsion. Add a pinch of salt and whisk some more.
5. Prepare an ice bath of equal parts water and ice (a full ice cube tray is about right).
6. When the water is at full boil, add a cup of kosher salt per gallon of water and stir. Waiting until the water is fully boiling will keep the salt from pitting your cookware.
7. Add the sugar snap peas and watch carefully for them to turn bright green, about 1-2 minutes in. Fish one out and taste it - it should be crisp and sweet but not raw.
8. Drain the peas and quickly submerge in the ice bath until they’ve cooled, about five minutes, then drain and dry on a paper towel.
9. Toss in a large bowl with the oil or vinaigrette. Add the mint chiffonade, a pinch of salt and lemon zest (if using) and stir to combine.

1. The French chiffon refers to either a delicate silk or, more simply, to rags. Chiffonade means literally “made from rags”, a reference to the appearance of the herbs after they’ve been cut. Technically, it’s improper grammar to use chiffonade as a verb, though it’s common enough in the parlance of the kitchen. ↩

When you’re cooking to make an impression, as I suspect some of you may be this Valentine’s Day, it’s especially important that your dish look as good as it tastes. The expression “you eat first with your eyes” wouldn’t be cliche if there weren’t some truth to it.

This roasted beet and blood orange salad is certainly colorful but it also brings together a mix of winter flavors — sweet and earthy beets with just a little sharpness from blood oranges. Complete with a mix of spicy greens with a few herbs and some crunchy almond slivers.

I like to use golden beets here so that I have an excuse to use my favorite citrus, the blood orange, but you can certainly invert those colors with red or chioggia beets and a more traditional orange.

A little heads up: roasting then cooling the beets will take you about an hour to an hour and a half, mostly unattended, but it’s not like you can just whip this one up right before serving the main course. The beets and the dressing can be prepared well ahead of time, though.

Your ingredients:

• 3 medium golden beets (red or chioggia will work, or a mix)
• 2 blood oranges, sectioned, juices reserved
• A few handfuls of spicy greens, like a mix of arugula, spinach, frisée and baby lettuces
• A few fresh herbs like dill, cilantro or mint
• 1 tablespoon of good extra virgin olive oil
• 3 tablespoons of canola oil
• Juice of 1 meyer lemon
• 1 teaspoon of champagne vinegar
• 1/2 a clove of garlic or shallot, diced
• Slivered almonds

First things first, preheat the oven to 400. Place the beets in the middle of a sheet of foil big enough to wrap them and drizzle them with canola oil. If you’re using a mix of colors of beets, wrap each one separately to keep the colors distinct. Seal the beets in the foil packages and roast them in the oven for 50-60 minutes.

While the beets are roasting, section the oranges, saving as much of the juice as you can by scraping it from the cutting board into a glass and squeezing out the core of the orange. Chill the orange suprêmes in the fridge.

A word here about vinaigrette dressing. What you’re aiming for is an emulsion of an acid, in this case the juice of the meyer lemon and blood orange with a little champagne vinegar, in a fat, canola oil. Oil and vinegar don’t naturally like to combine but with careful attention and a slow hand, you can make it work beautifully.

Dice the garlic or shallot. Mix the garlic (or shallot) with a pinch of kosher salt, one teaspoon of meyer lemon juice, 1 teaspoon of blood orange juice and 1 teaspoon of champagne vinegar. You are more than welcome to adjust to your liking (if you don’t have champagne vinegar, for instance, feel free to go with 2 teaspoons blood orange juice, 1 teaspoon meyer lemon juice), just make sure you end up with 3 teaspoons at the end.

Measure out 3 tablespoons of canola oil, preferably into a container with a spout that will let you pour it slowly (I find that a glass Pyrex liquid measuring cup works brilliantly for this).

Slowly, starting with just a few drops at a time working to a thin drizzle, pour the canola oil into the juice/acid mixture, constantly whisking with a fork. You really can’t go too slowly here or whisk too much.

Back to the beets. Before you pull them out of the oven, prepare an ice bath that’s equal parts ice and water in a medium sized bowl. Check the beets for doneness — if a paring knife easily slides through them, they’re done. Let them cool until you can handle them (about 5-10 minutes) then peel them while they’re still warm. The easiest way is to slice the top then scrape the sides with the sharp edge of a knife, the peel should come right off, and then slice off the bottom. Cut the beets in half lengthwise, then each half in half again lengthwise, then each quarter across the middle for 8 cube-ish pieces. Cool them in the ice bath for at least 15 minutes, again, keeping them separate if using a mix of colors.

Coarsely shred the greens and herbs into bite-sized pieces then rinse and dry them. Put them in a dry bowl then drizzle the olive oil along the side of the bowl, not directly on the greens, then add a pinch of salt and use a pair of tongs or your hands to mix the greens with the oil. The oil will add a little complexity and mouth-feel to the greens without weighing them down too much.

Drain the beets and drizzle them in the vinaigrette and mix to combine. Start the plates with a bed of the greens (let any excess oil drip off before plating) then add the beets, then the blood orange sections, arranged to your liking. Roughly crumble the almonds over top and season with a pinch of kosher salt and a few grinds of black pepper.

This will be a beautiful, simple but elegant start to dinner.

There are two reasons to section¹ a citrus. The first is for presentation, an elegant way to use lemons, oranges and grapefruit pieces in all kinds of recipes, from salads to cakes. The second is to remove the tough, often bitter, pith and inner membrane so that the flavor of the fruit can shine.

As we’re at the height of citrus season, with exotic blood oranges and meyer lemons in the stores, it’s a good time to take advantage of these wonderful fruits.

The basic idea is to first peel the fruit, taking the white pith along with it, and then separate as much of the flesh fruit from the inner membranes. A sharp knife, as always, is important here, I like to use a small paring knife for most fruits because it’s thinner blade lets me extract more flesh. A good chef’s knife is fine, though, especially for bigger citrus like grapefruit.

First, cut off each end of the fruit so that it’s flat enough to stand up on its own. You want to cut just to the flesh of the fruit, but not too much. It’s ok to take a few shallow slices, you can always cut more.

With the fruit standing on one end, cut into the peel where it meets the flesh and use a sawing motion to work down the side of the fruit and remove the peel and the pith. Make sure to follow the shape of the fruit as you work down by adjusting the angle of your knife along the way. Try to avoid cutting into the flesh as much as possible but make sure to get the bitter pith.

Rotate and peel the fruit until all of the pith and peel are removed. You may have a few white pith pieces left, just trim those off on your own. What’s left is an orb of just the flesh of the fruit and the inner membranes that hold the sections together.

Now you want to cut each section of the fruit out and leave the membranes that separate each section behind. Cut as close to the membrane as possible, towards the center of the fruit, to get as much of the fruit out, but be careful to fully detach the flesh from the membrane. The first and last sections will probably be the hardest. Be sure to pick out any seeds that may be lingering.

You’ll be left with peel, the self contained core and your beautiful citrus sections. Be sure to squeeze the core over a bowl to save any juice you might want to save for salad dressing or to use in a recipe.

Editor’s note: We desperately wanted to get this up before New Year’s but an east coast blizzard, two airlines and four airports conspired against it. We think it’s still worth your time, even if you have to wait until January 2nd.

New Year’s is as good a time as any to add a little luck, whether you think you’ve got use for it or not. Where I’m from that usually comes, at least in part, in the form of a dinner of Hoppin’ John and often a side of collard greens for good fortune. I suspect that they make a great pair because of their similar and shared histories, both dishes brought to the United States by African slaves and now considered staples of Southern cooking.

The exact etymology of Hoppin’ John is lost to history and the variations appear to be endless, but the basics are these: black-eyed peas¹ cooked slowly with smoked pork and a few aromatics served over rice that’s been cooked in broth from the peas. A little heat from dried peppers, garlic or even hot sauce is nice, too. Nearly every culture has their take on rice and beans, this is America’s contribution.

Like collards, the traditional preparation calls for a ham hock, and if you’ve got one on hand, by all means, use it. But a few strips of thick, smokey bacon, sliced into batons will work just as well. The following should make enough for 4-6 servings, depending on whether you want them as the main course or an accompaniment to, say, country ham or a roast chicken.

Some recipes would have you add the rice directly to the cooked black-eyed peas but I prefer to cook them separately. It lets me make sure both the rice and the beans are cooked just right instead of ending up with a mushy, porridgy mix where neither is.

• 1 cup black-eyed peas
• ¼ pound of smokey bacon, cut into about ¼-inch thick lardon
• 2 cloves of garlic, cut lengthwise then smashed with the side of a knife
• ½ yellow onion, itself cut in half
• 1 carrot, peeled and quartered
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 dried chili, coarsely chopped or 2 tsp. red pepper flakes
• 1 sprig fresh thyme or 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 3-finger pinch of kosher salt
• 1 ½ - 2 cups of long grain white rice, such as basmati

Add the black-eyed peas, bacon, garlic, onion, carrot, bay leaf, peppers and thyme to a medium saucepan (at least 2 quarts) or enameled dutch oven. Cover completely with cold water, about 6 cups, and bring to a boil, then lower to a slow simmer. Stir it a few times then leave it alone for at least 45 minutes, when the beans will still be fairly al dente. Test for salt and add a healthy pinch, stir, and let continue to cook for at least half an hour more.

While the beans are cooking, dump the rice in a large bowl and fill it with water then stir to rinse it. You’ll notice the water is a milky color, pour it off, being careful not to lose too much rice, then repeat until the water starts to clear. This is the secret to good rice.

After about an hour and a half, the beans will probably be about the right consistency, still distinct, but not too starchy or toothy. Add a little more salt if you think it needs it but go slowly. Place a colander over a pot big enough to hold all of the liquid from the beans, line the colander with cheese cloth if you have it, and then pour the beans into the colander.

Pick out anything that’s bigger than bite-sized — the quartered onions and carrots, the bay leaf, distinct cloves of garlic — and dump it into your food waste bin. If there are bits of bacon that are more fat than meat, get rid of those, too, but keep some of the bacon. Pour the beans back into the saucepan you cooked them in and add half a cup or so of the broth to help keep them moist. Cover the beans.

Measure out enough of the bean broth so that you have about 1 ½ times as much broth as you do rice — for 2 cups of rice, this means 3 cups of broth. You can keep the rest of the broth, it should freeze great. In another saucepan or pot, bring the broth and rice to a boil, then cut the heat to about medium low and cover. Stir every five minutes or so to make sure it’s not sticking, it should be done in about 20 minutes. Set the beans on medium-low to reheat them when the rice has about seven minutes left.

You can stir the beans in with the rice if you like, I prefer to keep them separate, though I can’t tell you any good reason why. Serve them with mess o’ collards and good beer or even champagne if you’re feeling fancy.

There’s probably no greater pressure on a cook than Thanksgiving, and no more high-profile dish than the turkey. It gets a bad rep — “all turkey tastes the same”, the haters insist — but there are things you can do to make sure your turkey stands out. Here are few tips to help.

Start with the bird itself. Avoid the mass produced brands like Butterball if you can and definitely avoid anything that’s been “injected” or “basted” — these are mostly chemical and sodium-rich solutions that are meant to enhance flavor but can leave the meat with a spongy consistency. Look for fresh if you can find it; but, modern freezing methods tend to leave the bird in pretty good shape, so a frozen turkey won’t ruin the big day. If you do get a frozen one, make sure to give it plenty of time to defrost in the fridge, it may take a few days.

If you thought ahead and reserved a locally raised bird at your farmer’s market, good for you. If not, check places like Whole Foods or a local food co-op for the best bet on local, organically raised turkeys. If you’re lucky enough to find a heritage turkey, snap it up, but be ready to pay about twice what you would otherwise. I’ve gotten my heritage turkeys from Stokesberry Farms for the past few years now and I’ll never go back to the bland birds you find in most supermarkets.

Figure on about 1-1½ pounds per person, which should leave for plenty of leftovers. If you’ve got a lot of people coming to dinner, consider two smaller birds instead of one giant one, or one full turkey and one turkey breast instead.

Brining is a popular technique for adding flavors to the turkey and one that I used to use. It can be messy and somewhat unwieldy, though, when you’re trying to keep a 12 pound turkey submerged in salty water for two to three days.

Last year I tried a so-called “dry brining” technique, popularized by LA Times food writer Russ Parsons. The results were spectacular. The basic idea is to season the turkey with kosher salt — about a tablespoon for every five pounds, flavored with spices or aromatics if you want — a few days ahead of time. The salt penetrates the meat to the bone, similar to the way a brine will, without the hassle of gallons of water sloshing around. My plan is to dry brine my birds on Sunday night, rinse and pat them dry Wednesday night, and leave them uncovered in the fridge until they’re ready to cook on Thursday (to help dry out the skin so it’s nice and crispy after roasting.)

A turkey takes time to cook: on average about 3-4 hours if you’re dealing with a medium sized (12-15 pounds) bird. Plus, it needs to rest for at least half an hour, which lets the juices released by roasting reabsorb. So, if you’re planning on having guests arrive around 4, the bird should be in the oven by noon.

Cook according to temperature, not time. The best way to do this is with a probe thermometer that you insert into the thickest part of the thigh. Your turkey is done when the meat reaches at least 165° — make sure to check the breast, too. It’s ok if your dark meat (the thigh and legs) hits 170° or higher, but don’t let the breast get much above 165° or it will run the risk of drying out. The meat will probably continue to warm up a few degrees after it’s out of the oven.

When it comes time to carve the bird, forget the idyllic Norman Rockwell scenes of the full bird at the table. The best way to carve is to deconstruct the major groups and then assemble the sliced pieces on a platter.

Start by removing each leg and thigh as a whole piece, where the thigh meets the body. Remove the drumstick from the thigh, which gets to stand alone for the crazy uncle who eats them Henry-VII-style. Cut the thigh bone out, discard, then slice the dark thigh meat across the grain. Next, remove each wing at the joint where the wing meets the body. Now, feel for the center of the bird for the breastbone, cut along each side of the breast bone to remove the two halves of the turkey breast. Cut the breast across the grain in about ½ slices.

The New York Times has a great article on carving your turkey like a butcher. I like to assemble everything on the platter, with the legs and dark meat at one end and the slices of breast meat at the other, all ready to be served.

The most important thing to remember is not to panic. A turkey is just a big chicken and you’ve been roasting those all year, right? With a little bit of planning, everything’s going to be delicious.