The Three Opportunities: You can dictate the character of your soup by how you decide to start cooking it.
These generous sized wedges of red onion roast with wine, tomatoes, olive oil and herbs to become almost a meal unto themselves. I always make enough for leftovers because the onions are such a good lunch the next day with bread and cheese.
Eaten blindfolded, the mushrooms taste like chicken.
What a surprise it was to taste tomatoes this sugary, a vivid reminder that they are in fact berries, not vegetables.
A perfect summer combination making a light salad from fresh melon and tarragon.
You will adore this easy-to-make, light and fragrant pilaf - as long as you follow the instructions very carefully (it's a recipe of precision).
You can use just one of the vegetables or any combination
This is a specialty from Surat in northwestern India. I am always drawn to the scent of a green papaya enhanced by nutty mustard seed popped in hot oil.
Seaweed is a wonderful side dish in a Japanese meal - slight, delicate, usually with the subtlest taste of the sea. But there are many kinds of seaweed out there. For this salad, I strongly urge you to acquire one remarkably springy, frilly, fresh-tasting green seaweed imported from Japan.
A real caper is the flower bud of a caper plant, Capparis spinosa, and its large seedpod is called a caper berry. The seedpods of nasturtiums look just like the caper plant's buds, and when pickled they taste remarkably similar. Nasturtiums usually don't start forming seedpods until late in the summer and you have to search for them. You'll find them attached to the stems underneath the foliage, where they develop in clusters of three. Pick only young pods that are still green and soft. When they mature, they turn yellowish and the seed inside the pod is very hard and unpalatable.