How to make Caesar Salad dressing, a quick and easy mix of mostly pantry ingredients plus anchovies! If you love Caesar salads out, it's super-easy to get "good" at making them at home. Skip Straight to the Recipe For cooks, the possibilities for virgin culinary experiences are endless. The first roast chicken, the handmade pasta, the first pizza at home, the first pie crust — and now for me, the first Caesar salad. For all the times I've raved about vegetables with anchovies — asparagus with anchovies ? cauliflower with anchovies ? roasted peppers with anchovies ? slow-roasted tomato and lamb stew with anchovies ? — it's thus no surprise that my first-time experience with Homemade Caesar Salad Dressing left me half speechless, with strength only to beg, "Will you pass the salad, please?" All that goodness in 15 minutes flat. Call me Caesar's bride. I kinda sorta almost followed a recipe or two — well, except that those recipes called for up

... of Lemon Curd and Topped with Candied Raspberries and Toffee-Tossed Pecans and a Venetian Honey Hazelnut Butter Sauce! And Happy April Fools Day! And Happy Second Birthday, A Veggie Venture! On this oh-so-unlikely occasion, will you forgive a trip down memory lane? A Veggie Venture's very first post , on a whim, on April 1st so that "my blog about vegetables" could all be dropped as April 1 Tom Foolery The first comment, on Day Four . The second comment, on Day 89 . (Yes, new bloggers, it is possible to blog on, and on, completely without notice. And yes, dear readers, your messages and comments mean so much .) My first Paper Chef entry. (I miss Paper Chef!) Thinking about why food blogging is so special . Cooking fennel in February and broccoli rabe in March . And then finally, Day 365 at last, the end of cooking a vegetable in a new way every single day for an entire year. After a long and may-I-say well-deserved break, the beginning of Year Tw

Tis still another season of food traditions. On Good Friday, I'll bake hot cross buns , with any luck, my sister will too. (And you, you too?) But funny enough, Christmas dinner was so perfect, I may just repeat it for Easter dinner. A fresh Miller ham (for St. Louisans, from Ladue Market, absolutely gorgeous meat) which goes just perfectly with a creamy carrot puree and Nupur's vegetable biryani . And dessert, hmmm, something new, perhaps. No, I know, lemon pots de creme, what I call lemon pots . Or who knows, maybe I'll do an asparagus custard tart for brunch. With a winter fruit salad . And a sweet ending . Isn't it lovely that food fantasies have zero points? Looking for still more ideas for Easter morning, Easter brunch or Easter dinner? Check out all the special recipes for Easter from Kitchen Parade's archives. One Easter basket idea that's not to be missed, these glorious ruby-colored eggs , stained with beet juice. Aren't they ever so pre

Time for lunch? If you've got five minutes, a can of chickpeas, a lemon and a little cheese, well, lunch is on its way. Yes, it's "that" simple. Real Food, Fast & Filling. Just Three Ingredients! Year-Round Kitchen Staple. Budget Friendly. Little Effort, Big Taste. Low Fat. High Protein. Weight Watchers Friendly. Vegetarian & Easily Made Vegan. Naturally Gluten Free.

Love this side dish for its color and taste -- but try it for its technique, one that will work just as well for other vegetables. It starts off with thin-sliced carrots in nothing more than water, salt and pepper beneath a cover of oil- or butter-coated parchment. Parchment! Of course -- it's the same principle as a covered skillet but really concentrates the heat and the moisture right there . I couldn't believe how quickly the carrots cooked! Don't start cooking, however, til the vegetables are prepped. The carrots and pepper slice up in no time but the sugar snap peas take a bit. These weren't stringy so I didn't bother to remove the 'string', just trimmed the ends and cut into pieces. NEXT TIME The inspiring recipe said to "halve the peas lengthwise diagonally". Hmm. What does this mean? I decided that it meant to just cut the peas into bite-size pieces on the diagonal. But they were pretty fat so next time I think I'd cook the carrots fir

When Chocolate in Context announced the theme for this month's Sugar High Friday (the sweet lovin' food blogging event that attracts dozens of participants from around the world) as ' naked chocolate ' (okay, okay, they really called it 'raw chocolate'), I looked at the just-peeled raw cocoa beans on the counter and thought, How lucky is that? Say hello to Chocolate Sauerkraut Cupcakes, made with my very own cocoa powder. The whole cacao beans came from Global Foods, my very own neighborhood international grocery , for a couple of bucks. The beans came from El Salvador and the instructions were minimal. "To prepare home made chocolate: Toast and peel the seeds. [oh! toast! I missed that until just now]. Add cinnamon and sugar to taste. Ground [sic] all ingredients." It took forever to peel the beans -- but then again, it was perfect for dual-tasking in front of the TV. And when I ground the beans in the food processor, the result was more like grainy

I fell in love with broccoli rabe (aka broccoli raab and aka rapini) a year ago . So it's no surprise to A Veggie Venture readers -- though it will be to Kitchen Parade's print readers -- that this week's column features two recipes using the fresh, light green, a meatball soup on the table in 45 minutes and my new favorite sandwich, the rapini panini. (Get it?!) Where's that column? Here at Kitchen Parade ! And speaking of sandwiches stuffed with rapini, last week I shared a lovely late-night supper with the brand-new bloggers from Food Blogga , Susan and husband Jeff. Susan's picture is on Food Blogga's homepage and she writes the sweet stories about everyday life and people but Food Blogga is a team effort. Jeff handles many of the technical details and has good reason to make things work. Eyes big, he mentioned a recent post about broccoli rabe, "You know who got to EAT that sandwich after the photos were done, don't you? Talk about fringe benef