Arugula is spicy! It's one of my favorite lettuces to make salads with. I like adding toasted nuts, cheeses and sometimes fruits and berries to arugula for great salads.
I prefer an emulsified vinaigrette with honey, olive oil, mustard, lemon & herbs... these days I use a little mayonnaise instead of raw egg yolk for the emulsion.
Arrugula Salad with Pine Nuts
Spring is my favorite time to garden. After a long winter, it’s incredibly satisfying to watch spring lettuces flourish in my cold frames and greenhouse. This is when I direct-sow arugula, spinach, chard, peas, and other cool-season crops into the soil. Once spring truly arrives, dandelion and purslane begin popping up wild—welcome reminders that the garden is waking up.
Arugula is a nutrient-dense leafy green known for its peppery flavor and impressive health benefits. It’s rich in vitamins A, C, and K, and provides antioxidants.
I grow a wide range of lettuces and have started documenting how their flavors shift with temperature and terroir—whether grown directly in the ground, in raised beds, or under solar panels.
Prep Time: 20 min
Cooking Time: 0 min
Yield: 4 portions
Ingredients Dressing
1 Tbsp Mayonnaise
1 Tbsp. Honey
1/2 Tbsp Grain Mustard
6 Tbsp Olive oil
2 Tbsp Lemon Juice or Cider Vinegar
t.t. Kosher Salt
t.t. Black Pepper, freshly ground
4 Cups. Arugula rinsed and spun dry
t.t. Kosher Salt
t.t. Black Pepper, freshly ground
2 Tbsp Pine nuts, toasted
tt Cheese, grated (Pecorino, Romano, Parmigiano etc.._
How to Prepare the Salad
Step 1
Wash the arugula in cold water several times, being sure to pick out yellow or old leaves, strain.
Step 2
Put the mayonnaise, honey and mustard in a bowl, slowly whisk the oil into the honey- mustard, creating an emulsion. Add the lemon and seasonings while continuing to whisk.
Step 3
Toss the arugula in the dressing, add half of the toasted pine nuts and cheese and toss-season with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Place onto a plate and garnish with the remaining pine nuts and cheese.
Chef Tom's Cooking Class Minute: Week 3 Cooking Pork Spare Ribs
Years ago I traveled around the south for a few weeks researching some of the amazing foods of each region. In Charleston, I was introduced to a local pig farmer, Tank Jackson who manages Holy City Hogs. Tank and his wife raise heritage breed pigs and distribute the pigs around the country. He offers on-site cooking whole pig roasts, primal cuts and sausages, and I believe he produces the best pork in the country.
Years ago, while working as a chef in a busy continental restaurant, we featured grilled, fresh swordfish on the menu—finished with a generous spoonful of herbed compound butter and capers. It was popular and delicious. One afternoon, a seafood purveyor stopped by with a sample of frozen swordfish steaks, fully thawed and ready for evaluation. Curious, we grilled it side by side with the “fresh” swordfish we had been serving—fish we believed to be of high quality. The result was surprising. The frozen swordfish was superior—firmer, cleaner in flavor, and more consistent in texture. In contrast, our “fresh” fish, likely several days out of the water, lacked the same integrity. It was a defining moment and an important reminder: in many cases, properly handled and quickly frozen seafood can offer better quality than fish labeled as fresh. For chefs, understanding sourcing and handling is just as critical as technique—especially with a product as prized as swordfish.
Chef Tom's Cooking Class Minute: Week 2 Cooking Rice: creating socarrat—
Chef Tom's Cooking Class Minute: Week 1 The Biggest Mistake People Make When Cooking Scallops
The name "caponata" itself has a fascinating origin story. One popular theory suggests it derives from capone, the Sicilian word for mahi-mahi. Historically, wealthy Sicilian aristocrats enjoyed a sweet-and-sour fish dish. Because seafood was too expensive for the working class, local home cooks substituted fish with affordable, meaty eggplant. Over time, this creative peasant food evolved into the beloved antipasto we celebrate today, often rounded out with celery, olives, and capers.
From Talk to Action: A Chef’s Challenge for School Lunches
The legendary New York-style cheesecake was famously popularized by Lindy’s Restaurant , an iconic Theater District deli opened in 1921 by German-immigrant Leo "Lindy" Lindemann and his wife Clara . A NY-style cheesecake has a dense but velvety cream cheese base, citrus zest, and a distinct cookie-dough pastry crus t. For years, I took the bus into NYC to work in amazing restaurant kitchens. On one bus ride I met and became friends with a manager at the legendary Lindy’s Restaurant. One day, he did the ultimate honor: he shared the closely guarded, original cheesecake recipe with me. This new recipe is directly inspired by that legendary Lindy’s classic, capturing its iconic velvety richness and signature flavor profile, but re-engineered for a modern, protein-packed lifestyle. Why This Recipe Delivers High-protein swap : Cottage cheese provides a clean, protein-packed base that replaces heavy fats without sacrificing richness. Silky texture : Blending the batter thoroughly ensures a velvety smooth consistency that rivals any NY-style cake. Savory-approved : Simple, foolproof assembly that requires no pastry-chef precision to get a perfect bake every time.
One of the great pleasures of my career is spending time each year working as a Culinary Educator aboard a cruise ship alongside my wife. She teaches baking & pastry while I focus on savory cooking and culinary techniques. Our travels take us to fascinating ports around the world, providing opportunities to explore local markets and study regional cuisines. I have a particular affection for the Mediterranean and always make it a point to seek out local variations of pesto, one of the world's great culinary treasures. One evening aboard ship, the pasta station served rigatoni with a choice of pesto, marinara, or Alfredo sauce. The cook prepared each order by reheating the pasta in hot water and then finishing it briefly in a sauté pan with the selected sauce. I watched in disbelief as he prepared to heat the pesto exactly the same way. "Horror!" flashed through my mind. Pesto is not a cooked sauce. Heating it aggressively dulls the fresh basil aroma, darkens its vibrant color, and diminishes the delicate flavors of basil, garlic, pine nuts, and extra virgin olive oil that make pesto so special. I may have startled the cook when I quickly called out, "Please don't cook my pesto!" Instead, I asked him to simply toss the hot rigatoni with the pesto off the heat, allowing the warmth of the pasta to gently release the fragrance and flavor of the basil. The result was exactly as pesto was intended to be enjoyed—fresh, vibrant, aromatic, and unmistakably Mediterranean.
As chefs, we spend years mastering sauté work. I remember my early days working the sauté station for lunch in a French restaurant in NYC. We served over one hundred guests in an hour-and the food was excellent — a dozen hot pans on the flat top, stocks simmering, mise en place of freshly chopped herbs, minced shallots, butter for mounting into sauces à la minute. There is rhythm to good sauté cooking. You learn quickly that great sauté work is not about rushing — it is about organization and control .