Lukas Volger's Blog, page 4

Salad Treat: Wilted Spinach with Kimchi, Sharp Cheddar, and Fried Egg

Today I spent too many hours running around. I bought supplies for the Fancy Food Show (Made by Lukas will be at booth# 3954! Come say hello if you’ll be there) and took care of long neglected tedious matters, such as those that require visits to the bank and to the DMV. And over the course of the day, as my backpack got heavier and my limbs more loaded with shopping bags, and as the mugginess revealed itself via back sweat, pit stains, and periodic whiffs of B.O., and my scowl threatened to...

Scallion and Watercress Kimchi + Feast by Lukas: Building Blocks

Last time we did kimchi, 2 years ago (every day, week, month, andquarter—it’s been a quarter of a year since I wrote anything here—just picks up more and more speed, snowball style), it was a quasi-traditional, vegetarian, napa cabbage one, and I live-tweeted the whole process. This one is similar, but a little quicker and therefore arguably a little easier.Scallions areone of the easier-to-get-your-hands-on spring vegetables, available in abundance, so I thought it’d be a good thing to highl...

Feast by Lukas: Weeknights

I just released the 2nd issue of Feast by Lukas, the iOS quarterly I launched last Fall. What a thrill to be doing this! The theme for this issue is “weeknights,” which, as I explain in the introduction, is less about tricks and shortcuts for when time and energy are short, and more about using the purposeful act of cooking, with the attention and care it requires to do well, as a way to recalibrate after a day that just didn’t go right.

That’s only one way to approach weeknight cooking. I lik...

New Year’s Day Dal

It’s almost over. 2013 has been good to me, withexciting developments and lots of change, but with all the fluster and the bluster, with all the new types of stress and the unrelenting, unfamiliar feeling (for me) of not quite being able to maintain the grip on things in the way that I would like to, I know that I’ll be just fine when 2013 is a speck in the rearview mirror. Maybe it always feels this way, with the rush that November and December always are. And maybe the fluster and bluster i...

Introducing Feast by Lukas + Filo with Swiss Chard, Ricotta, and Mushrooms

Here’s another project that’s been brewing for a little while, one that I’m very excited and proud to share with you: I’ve partnered with29th Street Publishingto launch my own new digital quarterly magazine for iOS devices, Feast by Lukas! The magazine’s first issue, Holiday, is now available in the iTunes app store. It’s free to download, and full access to the full first issue is just $3.99. An annual subscription, which includes four issues timed to coincide with seasonal feasts, is $13.99...

Introducing Made by Lukas Fresh Veggie Burgers

For the past year and a half or so, I’ve been working to develop a prepared veggie burger (which is one reason I hope you’ll excuse my poor maintenance of this blog), and at long last, I’m pleased to announce that it is here. May I please introduce you to Made by Lukas Fresh Veggie Burgers!

These are a little different from most other prepared veggie burgers out there. First off, each package contains a pound of the veggie burger mix, so they’re “ready-to-shape”—you form them into patties, kid...

Beach Linguini with Tomato, Zucchini, Mint, and Pecornio

In weather like this—here in New York we had a scorcher of a Forth of July weekend—I’ll find my way to the beach the way birds migrate south, the way flowers turn towards the sun, the way sleepeaters get to the fridge. The body knows it needs the sea breeze and saltwater plunge before the mind does.

Food is usually an afterthought. I’ll toss odds and ends—carrots and radishes, a bunch of grapes, leftover salads, bread, cheese, crackers, whatever—into the cooler with a few ice packs and/or froz...

Between-Season Sweet Potato and Kale Curry

The other night I found myself sitting at my computer thinking about ghee. Several years ago I had a habit of regularly making it, and I’d use it in all manner of curries and sautés—it was fun to keep on hand, and it would last for forever. It’d been a while since I’d made a batch. As I was sitting there, I had the realization that ghee is nothing more than—get this—strained browned butter. It’s not that I ever thought ghee was a complicated thing to wrap your head around—surely others have c...

Miso Mushroom Sliders + My Ingredient-Themed Dinner Club

At some point last year, my friend and 61 Local colleague Laura and I were at work, whiling away a slow shift by discussing dinner clubs. We came up with the idea for one that focuses on a curated selection of ingredients, where each 6-course dinner would have an ingredient spotlight, and then each course would have to use it in some interesting way. As we explored the possibilities, we decided that we needed to see this dinner club realized. Laura and I picked the ingredients—olive oil, hone...

A Simple Green Salad

A green salad seems so easy, so boring, but it’s one of those essential dishes like pasta, scrambled eggs, or a pot of beans, where the magic is in the details. I make one with pretty much every dinner I serve, and it ranks high in my list of favorite foods—salad with dinner is how I grew up, though I’ve come a ways from the Thousand Island dressing-ed and bagged Caesar salad-ed days of my youth. Nothing is quite as reliably refreshing. A pile of perfectly dressed greens, speckled with few or...