Here at the Fine Arts Center’s Soul Food blog,you’ll find recipes and stories from local chefs, FAC staff, and community members, so check back often and eat your heart out! If you try a recipe, please let us know how it went, or post a photo of the finished product on our Facebook page. Have a recipe you’d like to share?… Read more →
“Dancing requires the right fuel, and I perform my very best when I eat properly.” That’s Alvin Ailey dancer Megan Jakel talking about what she likes to eat in a post on the company’s blog. Not surprisingly, she eats lots of healthy vegetables and fruits and stays away from sugar, but “I always sneak in a little chocolate,” she says. “Whenever… Read more →
There’s no shortage of reasons why crème brûlée shows up on the menu of so many elegant restaurants. It’s both simple and complex: a rich, sweet custard with a silky texture that serves as the perfect foil to the crisp-crackly topping. It’s even more of a show-stopping dessert if you use a small propane torch to carmelize the sugar, as does the contributor of this recipe, the FAC’s technology… Read more →
These recipes come to us from our friend Yocheved Adelman of the Chabad House of Amherst. Chabad House hosts seders for students and community members each Passover and serves Kosher meals for students throughout the holiday. All are welcome.* The first is for charoses, one of the foods served at the Passover Seder, a meal replete with meaning and ritual, a remembrance and celebration… Read more →
Edible Pioneer Valley is the source of these terrific recipes. Published quarterly, it is, in its own words, “a culinary magazine dedicated to the Pioneer Valley’s local food and the people who grow, raise, and prepare it.” Temaki sushi (hand roll) isn’t hard to assemble, and even if your first attempts don’t look perfect, they will still taste delicious. The nontraditional rice-cooking method (adapted from… Read more →
Les 7 Doigts de la Main, the Montreal-based ensemble who dazzled the FAC audience with their performance of Cuisine & Confessions in March, is known for their unique productions, featuring mind-blowing acrobatics, rapid-fire choreography, and sometimes…cooking onstage! They whip up this pasta dish, along with banana bread and an omelet, during the show. Note: Canada is on the metric system, so they have given the measures in… Read more →
This recipe is from a book in progress, Making Love While Farming: A Field Guide to a Life of Passion and Purpose, being written by Ricky Baruc of the Seeds of Solidarity Farm and Education Center in Orange, Massachusetts. He, Deb Habib, and their teenage son, Levi Baruch are the family behind the farm, and their show, “Seeking the Sacred on the Farm,” was at… Read more →
It was obvious, once we thought of it. We posted this recipe when Aaron Diehl, Cécile McLorin Salvant, and Adam Birnbaum, backed by a five-piece jazz ensemble, came to the FAC to perform Gershwin and Jelly Roll Morton tunes. This one comes from a vintage Better Homes and Gardens cookbook (the iconic one with the red-checked cover that has been through umpteen editions). Although… Read more →
The origin of this recipe is the combination cookbook–art catalog If You Make a Mistake, Put a Rose on It, by UMass art professor emerita Pat Lasch and her dad Fred Lasch, a master pastry maker. Pat’s art is in such major museums as the Metropolitan (below, her “Bound in the Bardo” sculpture, and yes, that is a bat skeleton). Over the years, we’ve… Read more →
This recipe comes to us from Joy Howard, a professional recipe developer, food stylist, writer, and wonderful cook who lives in Northampton. She began cooking it when her 20-something daughter was a tween; It’s still a fast-weeknight-meal favorite with her two younger girls. Why so big with little ones? They’re easy to eat, and kids love to dip their food in the yogurt… Read more →
These recipes for a couple of classic cocktails come courtesy of one of the Fine Arts Center’s sponsors, WGBY Channel 57, which airs Ming Tsai’s cooking show Simply Ming, produced by sister station WGBH. Ming wears several hats besides “award-winning chef.” He’s an author, a TV/new media host and producer and, of course, the proprietor of the well-known restaurants Blue Ginger in Wellesley and Blue Dragon… Read more →
