Cafe Liz

This salad almost killed me. It’s a lovely mix of two spring vegetables — fennel and carrot. It gets its zest from fresh lemon juice, and a bite from hot pepper. It’s somewhere between a salad and a pickle — it sits long enough to absorb the flavors, but unlike most of the fennel salads often served with mezzes around here, it’s still incredibly crisp. I whipped up this salad in the mid-afternoon, intending to have it with dinner. After [...]

They say that people either love licorice or hate it, and the licorice battleground happens to fall right through the middle of our household. Since fennel has what I would describe as a licorice flavor, I’ve never been a big fan. But this recipe, which I’m blatantly, um, borrowing from renowned Israeli chef Rafael Cohen, made me love fennel — at least, so long as its caramelized in butter and sugar. The preparation is quite easy — basically, you’re steaming [...]

This mild-flavored dish plays with colors — white asparagus, purple potatoes. OK, maybe for some of you white asparagus isn’t such an oddity, but around here it is. In fact, it’s just beginning to make its presence felt in the market, as I described in a newspaper article.