Lukas Volger's Blog, page 2

Reset: Spinach Soup

I avoid making resolutions, but the new year is a always good time to “reset.” After the holidays, and all the excess of excess, it feels right to return to a healthy baseline normal. This is a roundabout way of advocating “manageable expectations” if you’re the goal setting-type. Find the healthy habits that work for you and bump them up a notch: eat the foods that taste best and make you feel best, look for the kinds of exercise that you actually enjoy. For example, as much as I’d love to...

Celery Salad with Pears and Hazelnuts

My friend Lesley and I drove up to Narrowsburg, NY, a few weekends ago and had dinner at the culinary draw there, a restaurant called The Heron. We ate rich, decadent, dare I say “Brooklyney” fare that hit the spot on that first bracingly cold night of theseason.

The celery salad was the highlight for me. It’s rare to see celery treaded so simply yet elegantly, and as a refreshing winter salad it struck me as just perfect. Rather than burying it in cream and cheese, celery’stexture and flav...

S.L.S.C. Almond Cake

“I brought you a cake!” Is there ever a time when that isn’t a nice thing to hear? This cake is that offering, for yourfriends and loved ones and hosts and hostesses. It’s something of a “little black dress” (LBD) cake, but in my case more of a “slick littlesport coat” (SLSC) cake: perfect for any occasion, quick to throw together, and effortlessly flattering. Think Amanda Hesser’s mother-in-law’s almond cake, which I love as much as the rest of the internet—but quicker, and without ingredien...

Friendsgiving Greens Galette

Now is the time to put your Friendsgiving on the calendar. I suppose Thanksgiving is coming up, too, but Friendsgiving is so much fun. If you,like me, enjoy cooking and also control (over the menu, and every other detail), you may have found that fora holiday so devoted to food, Thanksgiving can fail to satisfy. That’s where Friendsgiving steps in. No need to travel, no mandate forsticking to traditions . . . risks are encouraged. I treat it as a food-lovers co-opting of Thanksgiving.

Today’...

Introducing Jarry + Tomato-Watermelon Gazpacho

Two things, and I’ll try make themquick. First off, that, above, is a magazine that I’m incredibly excited to share. Ever since I read Jessica Pressler’s hilarious send-up of the (straight) male foodie, which she calls a “doodie,” I wondered about what might make gaymen’s approach to food unique. It seemed like a good idea for a magazine, and I left it on the back burner of my brainuntil I met Alex Kristofcak, and then Steve Viksjo, and we decided to go ahead and make it happen. Whatwould it...

Saraghina-Style Watermelon Salad

Here’s a salad for these final dog days of summer, one that’s juicy and refreshing and not too much work. It’s not very different from other watermelon salads out there except for the addition of cornichons, those little French pickled gherkins. They add a crunchy, vinegary zing that I never knew was missing from watermelon salads. I first tried it this wayat Saraghina, an Italian restaurant in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Saraghina does things like that—adding quartered cornichons to their watermelo...

Pumpkin Seed Salsa (Sikil Pak)

I love entertaining, even if I’m not as goodat it as I’d like to be. I’m always a little too ambitious, where my guests find me sweatingover a fewsimmering pots and an open oven when they arrive; too adventurous, excited to try out a brainy, untested dish over a failsafestandby; andI hate this but I sometimes I justchoke in those crucial last minutes, sending rookie mistakes like under-seasoned or cold dishes out to the table. One reason I like to entertain is that it’s a muscle, and you can...

A Chopped Salad of Sorts

Someone once told methat the intended glory of a chopped salad is that you can eat it with a spoon. This sounds silly and I wasn’t able to verify it it, but I did glean thata “chopped salad” is derivative of classic, component-based salads like the Cobb or Nicoise. In the past several years, it’s evolved into a bastard child of those, something no longer tied to lineage or ingredients but to method: hacking up a bowl of lettuce and toppingswith a mezzaluna, assembly-line style, at one of its...

A Basic Grain Bowl

Here’sa quick recipe for a style of meal I’ve been eating a lot lately. It’s oneof those “component” bowls, a cousin of a Korean bibimbap, that I make so often that I rarely think it merits a recipe. If I were to post a photo like theone above on Instagram and someone asked me forthe recipe, it would seem sufficient to just say: Fried egg + soy-glazed tofu + sautéed greens + hot sauce, over mixed grains.

But there are a few tricks and details that elevate a rice bowl from a patchy mishmash t...

My Made by Lukas Barnraiser Campaign

Last weekend Iattendeda three-day program called the Food + Enterprise summit. It’s an annual event in Brooklyn that serves to connect farmers, producers, and entrepreneurs with experts in the (figurative or literal) field who want to help fuse big-picture sustainability into food businesses.Itculminatedwith a pitch competition—think Shark Tank, but more friendly—in which I presented my company Made by Lukas along with six other small business. I won! I probably blubbered on a little too exci...