Lasagna: Revamped for Summer

One normally thinks of lasagna as a warm, hearty winter meal. Usually made with a tomato sauce, loaded with meat, cheese, a good lasagna can warm you even on the coldest nights. I decided to throw this common expectation of lasagna on its head, and make a fresh summer lasagna, featuring veggies and herbs associated with the warm summertime.

Veal Chops and Purple Potatoes

If you are ever looking for a rich, impressive meal that's a little off the normal menu, you should pick up some veal chops and purple potatoes. Veal is a very tender beef, that, while a controversial subject in the animal rights circles, is always delicious. The most common cuts of veal are thin cutlets used in scallopine or parmesan, but the cut I enjoy most is a thick veal chop. A veal chop lies somewhere between a pork chop and a steak on the flavor and tenderness scale. It's also a very lean meat, so it's healthier than having a heavy steak. When cooked well, the veal has a softer taste than a rich steak, and is much more tender and juicy than most pork chops. For this dish, I paired 2 thick cut veal chops with a red wine braised mushroom and celery sauce and some mashed purple potatoes. Purple potatoes are a beautiful heirloom variety of potato that is much healthier than normal white fleshed potatoes because of their high level of antioxidants. They are also visually striking and make for a very unexpected side to a dish.

A Healthy and Inspired Breakfast

Inspiration for a good meal can come from anywhere. I will often look at recipes or menus to get ideas for the things I cook. Sometimes I will just come up with something out of the blue or figure out a meal from a conversation with someone about cooking. One of my favorite sources of inspiration for meals is when I eat something at a restaurant that I enjoy and then try to recreate it in my kitchen. In the East Village, there is a restaurant called Northern Spy Food Co. It's a small rustic space with a fresh and imaginative American menu. I've eaten there a number of times, and I'm particularly partial to their brunch. They have one dish that is a kale salad with squash, cheddar, and eggs. I love kale, and this salad always catches my eye. I decided to do a take on a kale salad with eggs for breakfast, inspired by the dish at Northern Spy.

Crispy Thai Fish with Vegetables over Noodles

Asian flavors are beautiful to cook with. They mix a balance of sweet and spicy, tangy and tart. With this dish, I was trying to capture the interesting blends of Asian style cooking and use a lot of vegetables for a healthy dish that is out of the ordinary. The dish had four components, crispy tilefish (a mild whitefish that is similar to snapper), stir fried eggplant and mixed mushrooms, cabbage and carrot udon noodles, and fried shishito peppers. While this sounds like a lot to prepare, the dish didn't take too long, and the result was a tasty dish with a lot of personality.

Soup and Sandwich? Make it yourself!

Sometimes a simple soup and sandwich is all you want on a Sunday night. While the easy solution would be ordering in or picking the meal up from the store, there is a really easy way to make this meal for yourself so you'll have leftovers for the week and feel like you've actually done something productive with your Sunday. This is an extremely healthy and tasty meal that won't take more than 30 minutes to prep and cook. The soup I decided to make was a potato, carrot, and leek soup, and the sandwich was mushroom, spinach, pepper, and onion with boursin cheese.

Crispy Chicken, Creamy Kale, Melty Mushrooms

Mixing and matching textures in a dish can bring the quality and experience of eating up to a new level. Chicken is a really great meat to play around with textures. The skin lends itself to crisping so well, and when done right, the skin can be a crispy compliment to the textures around it, both the sides of a dish and the meat itself.