As usual, the recipe is available online at Martha Stewart. I haven’t been to Brazil, so I don’t know how authentic the recipe is (anyone?), but it was quite delicious and reminded me of all the rice and beans I ate in Costa Rica! You start with dried black beans and beets and let them cook for about an hour, before taking the beets out and cooking the beans longer. So you end up with beans over rice with diced beets and cheese on top. This recipe is more of a weekend meal, since it takes a few hours for the beans to cook. Delicious!

What have you been cooking lately?

For starters, this recipe is no small task, it took a few hours, because there are so many steps and you’re essentially making two soups and a topping. It was totally worth it, though! I’m not usually a big soup fan during the summer, but with the serano pepper/sour cream topping it had a cooler feel to it. I could seriously  eat this soup everyday. If I was say, Jennifer Aniston, I would totally ask my two chefs to make me this soup every day for lunch. ;)

What’s your favorite soup?

What’s your favorite summer dessert?

I’ve been dying to make Pasta with Roasted Summer Vegetables and Basil — my favorite squash recipe three summers running!  To be honest, I wanted to plant summer squash just for this recipe! You roast summer squash, grape tomatoes, red onion, and garlic in the oven until they’re caramelized. Then you mix it with campanelle pasta, Parmesan cheese, and fresh basil. Yum!

It’s from the Martha Stewart Everyday Food magazine, but you can also get the recipe online.

What’s your favorite squash recipe?

I spotted an arugula pasta salad recipe in the June issue of Everyday Food magazine, and I thought it would be a great chance to try arugula a little differently: gemelli pasta, cannellini beans, fresh goat cheese, olive oil, red-wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, arugula, and red onion. Here’s the full recipe at Everyday Food.

What are you cooking with arugula?

Radish Avocado Salsa

• 1 avocado
• 6 large radishes
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
• 1 tablespoon chopped pickled jalapeno chile
• 2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lime juice
• 1 teaspoon olive oil

Directions
1. Half, pit, and peel the avocado, cutting into 1/2″ cubes. Trim the ends of the radishes, half, and thinly slice.

2. In a medium bowl,  stir together avocado, radishes, cilantro, jalapeno, lime juice, and oil; season with salt. Serve over black bean tacos.

Thinly sliced radishes are a really interesting twist to this recipe, and they look amazing with the avocado.

What’s your favorite radish recipe?

Here’s a simple pizza crust recipe from Martha Stewart: Whole-Wheat Pizza Dough recipe (Note: It does require an hour to rise).  After I make the dough, I freeze half of the recipe to use for pizza or stromboli (broccoli mozzarella is my current favorite) on another day. Then, roll out the other 1/2 into 2-4 mini pizzas.

Tomato Mozzarella Basil Pizza

Makes 4

Ingredients

Whole-wheat pizza dough (above)
2 medium tomatoes, sliced
8 oz  mozzarella cheese
1 cup fresh basil
1 cup tomato sauce

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Place pizza shells on baking sheet. Spread tomato sauce thinly over each shell; sprinkle with cheese, layer torn basil leaves over cheese, and then layer tomato slices over the basil.
2. Bake until crusts are golden, 15 to 20 minutes.

What’s your favorite way to use fresh basil?

First up, picking the rhubarb.  I’ve always just “picked” rhubarb up at the farmers’ market or the grocery store, so I assumed you would just grab some scissors and get chopping. Wrong. I found the following charming video on the proper way to harvest rhubarb.

If you couldn’t be bothered to watch the video, you simply pull the rhubarb stem off the plant. Although, I would recommend the video solely for the pronunciation of the word “rhubarb.”

Next up, what to make.  I looked at several recipes for fruit turnovers on Martha Stewart and Epicurious and finally just decided to make a combination filling and use the Trader Joes frozen puff pastry I had left over.  (FYI, puff pastry, which is made with butter is great for turnovers, while phyllo, the paper thin layered dough, is flakier and made with oil instead of butter and is best for baklava and other desserts)

Rhubarb Turnover Recipe

Makes 4

Ingredients
1 sheet of frozen puff pastry (1/2 package)
1 1/2 cups of rhubarb, chopped into 1/4″ pieces
1/2 cup sugar
2 TB cornstarch
2 tsp lemon juice
1 egg yolk
2 tsp water

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper (Parchment paper isn’t required, but helps the pastry not to stick to the pan and requires less cleanup!).
2. Roll out puff pastry and cut into 4 squares, placing onto parchment paper covered baking sheet.
3. In a medium bowl, mix together sugar, cornstarch, and lemon juice. Then, add the rhubarb and stir until combined.
4. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg yolk and 2 tsp water.
5. Scoop the filling onto the squares, leaving room to fold over into a triangle. Brush the borders with the egg wash, and then fold into triangle. Crimp the edges with a fork to seal, and then brush the tops of the turnovers with more egg wash.
6. Bake until golden brown, about 25-35 minutes.

Now brew up a massive cup of coffee and get eating!