I like a wintry beef stew as much as the next gal, but bright? That’s not a word I’d ordinarily associate with beef and veggies cooked all day in the slow cooker. Then I discovered a secret weapon — lemon.

C’mon, you say.

But think about it. Lemon is the ultimate acid, which you need in a good beef stew to counter the fat and let flavor in. Vinegar, tomato paste, and wine — my go-to acids for stew — are just fine, but sometimes change is good.

I must confess I stole the lemon idea from the lovely Melissa Clark, who I met last week when she toured D.C. A recipe for Lemon Pot Roast is in Clark’s new cookbook, Cook This Now, a seasonal, family-friendly approach to cooking. And she admits that she stole the recipe from her mother, who made it when she was a child.

“Apparently it’s a traditional Italian-Jewish thing,” Clark says.

Indeed, the dish has a powerful past. Flavors of Tuscany cookbook author Nancy Harmon Jenkins also ascribes the lemon-beef combo to Jewish origin.

And, in her historical cookbook,  The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews, author Edda Servi Machlan writes that Jews in the region just incorporated local ingredients — like lemon and pine nuts — into their traditional recipes. Tomatoes, which we now associate with all things Italian, were used primarily in Southern Italy, where they were grown. Servi Machlan is a descendant of Pitigliano, a small town in Tuscany, which was the center of Italian Jewish life for hundreds of years between the Inquisition and Hitler’s march across Italy.

For my lemon pot roast, I adapted Clark’s recipe to suit what I had on hand. I used Kosher stew meat, pre-cut into 2-inch chunks. I added veggies like parsnips, onion and carrots, and a hunk of ginger for a little kick. Give it a try.

Lemon-Ginger Pot Roast

Serves 6

2 lbs. beef stew chunks

1 onion, roughly chopped

1 lemon, zested and juiced

4 parsnips, peeled and roughly chopped

2 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped

1 stalk celery, roughly chopped

2 garlic cloves, smashed

1 knob of peeled garlic, about 1-inch around

1 cup water or more to taste

S&P

Chop all vegetables and place in the bottom of a slow cooker with the garlic and ginger.

Salt and pepper the beef chunks to taste, brown them on all sides in a large pan. Don’t overcrowd, or they’ll steam.

Add meat to vegetables, pour lemon juice and zest over the whole thing.

Cook about 8 hours on low or 4 hours on high, or according to manufacturers’ directions.

I know canning and preserving have been around for zillions of years, but I’ve recently taken it up with some kind of zeal. Call it nesting, call it my personal 9-11 counterattack, or just call it the end of summer, no produce is safe from getting a boiling bath in my trusty stockpot.

I’ve come to find out that there’s nothing more satisfying than hearing that little canning jar lid “pop” into its proper concave position when it comes out of the water.

From left, Lord Grey's Peach Preserves, Coriander Pickles, Tomato Marmalade

Now, I don’t have all the fancy canning equipment, just jars, tongs, dish towels, a big pot, and dishwashing and tasting assistance from The Face. But I make a manageable 3 or 4 jars at a time. Still, it’s a lot of peeling and pitting and boiling, but to me, it’s fun and a worthy investment. I know when December rolls around and I’m dying for peaches, I’ll have some, preserved in a light ginger syrup with just the right amount of sugar, waiting for me in the basement.

Some of my efforts are really just riffs and or improvs on  various recipes I’ve been absorbing lately. For example, the Zucchini Dill Pickles became Cucumber Coriander Pickles for lack of dill and zucchini. They’re a must on sandwiches.

And the Lord Grey’s Peach Preserves weren’t supposed to have quite so many loose tea bits floating around in it but a few of the bags exploded deliciously.

But I followed Domenica Marchetti‘s Tomato Marmalade recipe to the letter this weekend, and it it came out perfectly. It balances sweet and tart and spicy and I can’t get enough of it on spread toast or spooned over sausages hot off the grill.

Don’t be scared, give your own flavors a try. Just be sure to use a recent recipe with instructions on how to sterilize your jars and how long to boil the finished product.

When a colleague came to me recently with a question about what to do with a cucumber that stayed too long on the vine, I immediately said, “pickles!”

When cukes get too big, their seeds get a bit too bitter for eating raw, so a bit of tenderizing and seasoning seemed to be in order.

The next day he handed the monstrous thing to me.

I took it as a challenge, but I didn’t want to devote my entire weekend to slaving over a hot stove of boiling vinegar.

Mark Bittman‘s “Kosher Pickles The Right Way” to the rescue. No endless boiling, no vinegar, just cucumbers sitting on the counter in a salt brine with garlic and dill.

With about 15 minutes of actual work, most of it involving stirring kosher salt into boiling water, I had the basis for my pickles.

I let the mixture sit on the counter a couple of days to develop flavor, then poured it into Mason jars.

Of course, you could do this with baby cucumbers, too, and they would be even quicker to develop a pickle-y flavor, but you won’t get the rewarding meatiness of thick slices you can slap on burgers.

But let’s face it. I’ll be eating these out of the jar.

Here’s the recipe, with my notes in parenthesis.

Kosher Pickles, the Right Way

Makes: About 60 pickle quarters or 30 halves

Time: 1 to 2 days

From Mark’s headnote: “No vinegar here, so these don’t keep for very long (about a week), but they’ll be eaten quickly enough that you’ll never see one go bad. These are my favorite pickles and those of everyone for whom I’ve made them too.” All true of course, but if you miss your vinegar, you can always add it to the brine after curing or sprinkle a few drops on the pickles directly right before eating. That gives you better control over the acidity anyway.

1/3 cup kosher salt

1 cup boiling water

2 pounds Kirby cucumbers, washed (scrub if spiny) and halved or quartered lengthwise (or one or two giant cucumbers)

At least 5 cloves garlic, crushed

1 large bunch fresh dill, preferably with flowers, or 2 tablespoons dried dill and 1 teaspoon dill seeds, or 1 tablespoon coriander seeds

1. Combine the salt and boiling water in a large bowl; stir to dissolve the salt. (This takes about 10 minutes — very salty.) Add a handful of ice cubes to cool the mixture, then add all the remaining ingredients.

2. Add cold water to cover. Use a plate slightly smaller than the diameter of the bowl and a small weight to keep the cucumbers immersed. Set aside at room temperature.

3. Begin sampling the cucumbers after 4 hours if you’ve quartered them, 8 hours if you’ve halved them. In either case, it will probably take from 12 to 24 or even 48 hours for them to taste pickly enough to suit your taste.

4. When they are ready, refrigerate them, still in the brine. The pickles will continue to ferment as they sit, more quickly at room temperature, more slowly in the refrigerator. They will keep well for up to a week.

Sometimes I can’t wait for the zucchini – I gotta have the blossom.

Sometimes I can’t even wait to painstakingly stuff the blossoms with cheese and deep fry them, and make a luscious sauce, which I love.

Tonight I was hungry, and the blossoms were starting to wilt, so I improvised. I washed and dried the little beauties carefully, dipped them lightly in a well beaten egg, and quickly rolled them in a 50/50 combo of flour and fine ground cornmeal, plus a little salt, pepper and cumin mixed in for flavor.

Then I gently pan fried them in just a film of peanut oil in a medium hot skillet — about 1-2 minutes a side, depending on their size.

Now THAT’S summer.

So,  in case you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to lately, it’s been a massive, crazy, 2-part sound-rich project for NPR.

The pieces are about Chef Bryon Brown (pictured above) and his creation of a memorable feast involving food, lighting, acting and sound, and the advice of memory expert Ed Cooke, on how to make the memories stick.

Along the way, I’ve learned about the importance of sound, the importance of finding my own voice, and a deeper appreciation for the talents of my amazing producer Rebecca Davis (hiding behind Brown in the photo) and our video guru Maggie Starbard.

Check it out here and let me know what you think.

There’s nothing like turning a crooked corner in the heart of central Madrid and finding a cafe that serves nothing but chocolate and churros.
Well, one thing’s better. Eating them.

When we nipped in for a bite at Yekta Kabobi, a Persian kabob place in Rockville, MD this Saturday, I got a bit of a jolt.

What I’d remembered fondly as a hole in the wall joint connected to a dingy but interesting Middle Eastern market off the busy Rockville Pike got a major facelift in the last year.

Egads- I thought – it’s gone fancy! They’ve turned it into a Lebanese Taverna!

Gone was the scratched glass take out counter, replaced by a sweeping warm wood bar, a jaw dropping crystal and blue glass chandelier and, most shocking of all, table service.

Luckily, the food was just as good as I remembered. Chicken kabobs and veggie kabobs done to perfection.

My fave find at the revamped market next door? These addictive little chick pea cookies. They have the texture of the finest sand and crumble like it, too. But they bloom with the perfume of   cardamom and rosewater if you can get them to your mouth real quick.

My pal Nancy asked if I could imagine cutting the cookies out and getting them onto a cookie sheet.

Bah! These were totally worth the $10 I did NOT have to labor for hours over them, as this recipe would have you do.

One of the reasons we’re going to Spain later this month is to explore the famous cheese caves of Cabrales.

Or, at least, that’s why I’m going.

Chef Jose Andres waxes poetic about the distinctive and stinky blue cheese, made and aged in caves only in the region where he grew up –  in Asturias on the north coast of the country.

The cheese is mostly made from raw cow’s milk, although some sheep and goat milks are mixed in at different times of the year.  The secret recipe is guarded jealously.

It’s crumbly and rich, and pairs nicely with wine and something sweet – like apples or grapes.

And apparently, you can even get it in the Senate cafeteria on special. The Face snapped this photo today.

I thought by now I could put away my puffy coat and scarf, but NOOooo. Mother Nature has other plans for Washington in March. It was clearly time for a little citrus dessert pick-me-up.

So I consoled myself and my office mates recently by making this delicious sweet and sour orange and almond tart. I simply swapped in Seville bitter oranges for the tangerines in the winning winter tart recipe featured on Food52.

The orange zest in the crust provides the tang, the toffee topping, the sweet.

I know, I know. sliced almonds out of a bag taste mealy, and who can cut the whole ones thin enough? Especially for this recipe, which calls for three cups of those darn things.

The trick? Toast them in a pan or on a baking sheet just until they start browning, then dump them on a plate to cool.

Then once you eat the whole tart, hide your body under that puffy coat for a few more weeks. No one will ever notice.

Who needs one of those fancy copper firepit bowls, anyway?

Apparently if your grass sucks in a particular spot, you can  just dig up the lawn and make your own firepit.

That’s what The Face did Sunday. So naturally, I ran out for some hot dogs, chicken sausage and marshmallows and we made dinner outdoors.

Here, Caleb is getting a lecture on the finer points of holding a stick near the fire but not actually in the flames.

Boy Scouts, here we come.