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Women.com presents

Food Editor of Redbook magazine, Tamara Holt
Cooking ideas

May 30, 2000

Tamara Holt, cookbook author, teacher and food editor at Redbook magazine, will answer your questions and talk with you about your cooking ideas and needs.

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Women.com: Hello and welcome to our chat with Redbook's food editor, Tamara Holt! This is your chance to get your all your food-related questions and concerns answered. Whether you're looking for the perfect recipe for tonight's dinner, or a great menu for a weekend brunch for eight, she's the woman with all the answers! Welcome, Tamara!

Tamara Holt: Hi and welcome to my chat! It's great moving the summer months. It's just beginning to get warm here in New York, and I'm having a great time. I'm enjoying the strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus, and sugar snap peas that this time of year brings to my local farmer's market. It's great to start thinking about what the summer has to bring. I'm looking forward to berry season, peach season, and ultimately, tomatoes. To me, summer is about enjoying each day and each meal.

CookandEat: I need a new and exciting pasta dish. My husband is Italian, and I think I've gone through all the basic pasta dishes, and I need something new so meals get less boring?

Tamara Holt: CookandEat, there are so many different things that you can do with pasta. It's hard to know even what to tell you. You can cook pasta in so many different ways, and it doesn't even have to be Italian. Think Lo Mein or Pad Thai. Those are Chinese and Thai pasta dishes. So check out some of your favorite Asian cookbooks. One book that I love--it's a classic now--is "365 Ways to Cook Pasta." It's got some of the best pasta dishes around. The July issue of Redbook features a fabulous pasta dish in our 30-minute meals story. For the summer, and it's perfect for summer, you just toss halved cherry tomatoes with some chopped sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, vinegar garlic, salt and pepper with pasta and shredded arugula. If your husband is a fan of Italian flavors, but you want something fresher and new, this recipe will be perfect. The July issue will be on the stands any day now, so check it out.

JudeandNoelle: I like fruit, but often find it, by itself, rather boring sometimes. What can I do to make some dishes with fruit where it might be a bit more tasty and interesting?

Tamara Holt: JudeandNoelle, you've come to the right place! That's one of my favorite questions to answer. I love tossing fresh cut fruit into salads for a mixture of sweet and savory flavors. I love dicing fruit and tossing it with hot peppers and onions or herbs for a quick salsa to serve with fish or chicken. I love blending it with yogurt to make a fresh fruit smoothie. There are some great recipes in the June issue of Redbook, on the newsstand now, that you might like. In our instant expert salad story, we've got a great Chickory and fruit salad with blue cheese. It's amazing! We've also got a great dessert that's perfect for the summer berries soon to come. Just toss two cups of sliced strawberries with one cup of blue berries, raspberries, pitted cherries, or a combo with a half-cup of sugar and two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar and a pinch of pepper. Chill it for at least a half an hour. I know it sounds strange, but this is a classic Italian dessert. The balsamic vinegar and the pepper are an amazing complement to the flavor of the berries, and it turns a bowl of plain fruit into a sophisticated, grown-up dessert.

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