Welcome to To Vegetables, With Love, a celebration of a vegetable life, less ordinary. ‘ Find archived recipes on my recipe index.
Get information about my books and recipes over at my website.
It is all happening this weekend: a New York heatwave, power shortages, the 4th of July, World Cup soccer, summer vegetables at the market. Along with the city, I’m in summer mode.
Me, I’m inside as much as possible, watching Wimbledon or The World Cup. And the British Formula One. I’m enjoying it all from the cool climes of my apartment, trying to avoid the blistering weather as much as I can.
Last night, my daughter and I did venture out, to see St Vincent with The New York Philharmonic. The music was intoxicating, the orchestral arrangements that accompanied St Vincent’s visceral rock and soaring vocals could be felt deep inside. Every musician on the stage was electric. When we left David Geffen Hall, we wandered down Broadway at 11pm, gulping in the sultry night air, in disbelief about the performance we had just seen. St Vincent is performing with other orchestras around the country and if you’re lucky enough to be in one of these places, do yourself a favor. You can get a taste of the show on her recently released album ‘Live in London!’, a performance with BBC Proms.
Beat the heat with spice! Did you know that eating spicy food when it’s hot is meant to help your body cool down? Capsaicin—the active compound in chili peppers—tricks your heat receptors, which causes you to sweat. As that sweat evaporates, it naturally lowers your core temperature. Read about it here.
In line with this, I have a hot new recipe this week on NYT Cooking. This Chile oil dumplings and noodles dish keeps weeknight cooking fun and interesting:
NEW YORK EVENT WITH KITCHEN, ARTS & LETTERS:
Thursday, July 16 , 111 Broadway in the Financial District
Doors open 6:00 | Talk 6:30-7:30 | Book Signing 7:30-8:00 pm
I’ll be speaking on a panel with Dan Pelosi and Katherine Lewin, moderated by Gail Simmons, about how food can foster friendship, chosen family, comfort, and connection. Come say hi. Tickets are available now.
© Recipe copyright Hetty Lui McKinnon for To Vegetables, With Love, 2026
This week’s recipe is one from deep in my archives. I wrote it about a decade ago, after a visit to Argentina as a brand ambassador with an olive oil company. During the visit, we met olive growers and experienced an olive harvest. We also ate a lot of Argentine BBQ. There was a lot of meat (fellow travelers suffered what they described as ‘meat sweats’ lol), but they also served gorgeous platters of barbecued vegetables with chimichurri sauce. Argentine chimichurri is unique - it is heavily accented with herbs, with tomato for savouriness and spiced generously with paprika. I’ve made many different versions of it over the years (there’s a carrot top one in Linger).
I adore this way of serving grilled vegetables, charred aggressively so there are blackened spots. You can use whatever vegetables that are in season. I like mixing it up with some root vegetables - sweet potato, potatoes - with some more tender ones - broccoli, asparagus, corn, peppers/capsicum. The recipe was written when I lived in an apartment with a yard and an outdoor barbecue. I no longer have that, so now I have to char vegetables on my stovetop or under a grill. It’s not as flavorsome, but it’s still a high reward dish. The chimichurri can be used on roasted veg or stirred into cream cheese and used as a dip!
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.