The Small Town Chef

Every gardener eventually reaches that point in the season when abundance starts to feel a little less like a blessing and a little more like a storage problem. That’s where I am with jalapeños. I’ve been harvesting them like crazy. I’ve cooked with them, grilled them, stuffed them, frozen them, given them away, and somehow every time I walk back outside there are more hanging on the plants. At some point you stop asking, “What can I make with jalapeños?” and start asking, “How many jalapeños can one household reasonably possess?” The answer, apparently, is fewer than I currently have. So it’s time to pickle. And honestly, that’s one of the best things you can do with the end-of-season haul. Jump to Recipe ↓ Pickling Is Basically the Garden’s Escape Hatch Quick refrigerator pickles are one of those kitchen techniques that give you a ridiculous amount of return for very littl...

This smoky, moderately spicy blend was inspired by the first blackened dish I tasted in the 1980s. This homemade blackening seasoning combines sweet and smoked paprika, garlic, herbs, and three kinds of pepper. It takes five minutes to make and works beautifully with fish, shrimp, chicken, vegetables, and potatoes. Jump to Recipe ↓ The first time I encountered blackening seasoning was in the 1980s at a restaurant in upstate New York. I was working as a crew member on a video shoot for a producer who created a lot of food-focused content for Campbell’s. This was several years before the Food Network captured America’s attention and we all started casually throwing around words like reduction and mise en place . I was mesmerized by the process: a screaming-hot cast-iron pan, a quick sear—and all that smoke. Especially the smoke. Today, a smoke alarm might be the first indicat...

A good pantry isn’t about having everything. It’s about having the right things. A pantry should grow out of the way you cook—not the way somebody on the internet tells you you’re supposed to cook. That sounds obvious, but take a look at most lists of “essential pantry staples” and you’ll find everything from canned coconut milk to twelve kinds of flour, specialty vinegars, dried beans you may never cook and spices that will sit untouched until you finally throw them away five years from now. That’s not a pantry. That’s inventory. I look at a pantry differently. The ingredients I keep around are the ones that repeatedly earn their space. They’re things I know I can reach for on a Tuesday afternoon, pair with whatever meat, fish or vegetables I have in the refrigerator, and turn into dinner without making another trip to the store. That’s really the purpose of a well-stocked pantry. It gives you options. And once you start thinking about a pantry...