Cheese-Topped Baked Polenta

On December 18, 2025December 18, 2025 By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Column, grainsLeave a comment

My husband George will happily eat a bowl of noodles or a baked potato seasoned with just butter and cheese. Give me a simple, starchy base like pasta, rice, potatoes, or cornmeal, and I will bury it in a deeply flavored sauce every time. With the polenta recipe I share this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon, I can satisfy both of us.

Homemade stock and dried herbs give polenta just enough flavor to stand on its own, especially when baked or grilled and smothered in cheese. Yet it remains neutral enough to take any of my favorite sauces. I’ve served polenta as a bruschetta-like appetizer, a holiday side dish, and the base layer for a weeknight meal—and then snacked on the leftovers like cornbread. I often make a double batch of polenta and serve half straight off the stove in its soft, porridge-like form. I spread the rest in a baking pan and refrigerate it until the next day to bake and serve as an entirely different meal.
Learn to make Cheese-Topped Baked Polenta

Quick Tomato Juice Soup

On November 21, 2025November 21, 2025 By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Column, soupsLeave a comment

Soup season has just begun, and my freezer is packed to the brim with ingredients I plan to turn into steaming bowls of homemade soups. Having vegetables on hand that have already been chopped, pureed, and sometimes even grilled or otherwise precooked speeds up weeknight soup prep. As I share this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon, one of my quickest soups starts with tomato juice.

If you buy all of your tomatoes, choose both bottled tomato juice and cans of whole or diced tomatoes outside of the growing season; they’ll have better flavor than fresh tomatoes that were forced in a winter hothouse or traveled long distances. Fire-roasted tomatoes have become popular in recent years for their bonus smokiness. I grow enough tomatoes to grill in batches throughout the growing season, and I freeze or can the solids and juice to use throughout the winter.
Learn to make Quick Tomato Juice Soup

Squash and Goat Cheese Ravioli with Nutty Butter Sauce

On November 7, 2025November 6, 2025 By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Column, grainsLeave a comment

There’s no way to make homemade pasta look quick and easy when the alternative is to boil a pot of water and dump in a box of dried noodles. But homemade pasta shortcuts do exist, and this week, I share one of my favorites in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon: wonton wrapper ravioli.

Like hand-rolled Homemade Pumpkin Gnocchi, filling store-bought wonton wrappers with squash and goat cheese still creates impressive pasta with a made-from-scratch delicacy. But whereas both squash gnocchi and Homemade Pan-Fried Potato Gnocchi showcase the pasta, the ravioli filling plays a huge flavor role. Its nutty butter sauce and my recommended base of torn arugula or kale enhance the filling—and work equally well as a gnocchi presentation.

Learn to make Squash and Goat Cheese Ravioli with Nutty Butter Sauce

Meatless Taco Salad

On September 25, 2025September 25, 2025 By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Column, salads2 Comments

Sometimes you want salads to be simple and light, especially when served alongside an entree. But when the salad is the meal, it’s time to pile on the layers and hit as many food groups as possible. That’s the idea behind the hearty, filling, plant-based taco salad I share this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon.

I’ve long loved this salad because it has so many delicious ingredients that it doesn’t need the ground beef often found in such a one-bowl meal. Kidney beans and cheese provide plenty of protein, and the crisp tortilla chips and other fresh layers supply contrasting textures. The vegetables become the salad’s stars, and I pile on as many as my garden is producing—roasted garlic, corn, cherry tomatoes, greens, onion tops, and cilantro—with avocado, lime and green olives that I can’t grow in Montana for bonus fun. With so many fresh ingredient options and a homemade salad dressing built around my favorite salsa, I could eat this salad every day and never tire of it.
Learn to make Meatless Taco Salad

Goat Cheese and Smoked-Beet Sandwiches

On September 11, 2025September 11, 2025 By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Column, fresh eatingLeave a comment

I was introduced to smoked beets as a sandwich filling, and it’s still one of my favorite ways to enjoy them. As I’ve been explaining in my most recent Twice as Tasty columns for the Flathead Beacon, beets need to be cooked—preferably roasted—and peeled before you smoke them, so it is an extra step. But smoking makes them twice as tasty.

The flavor and texture of smoked beets make them a natural fit for a Vegetarian Smoked-Beet Reuben, but you can slide them in with any sandwich fixings you have at hand. They hold up well against robust ingredients, so the recipe in this week’s column suggests mustard, roasted garlic, goat cheese, and arugula and other spicy greens. Mellower layers include aioli, egg salad, and sliced avocado. Create an even more filling sandwich by spreading on hummus or another bean dip.
Learn to make Goat Cheese and Smoked-Beet Sandwiches

Grilled Tomatillo Margarita

On August 21, 2025August 21, 2025 By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn beverages, ColumnLeave a comment

The margarita recipe I share this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon is one of my favorite summer beverages—and one I mix up throughout the year when I need a homegrown hint of summer in my day. I grow and grill the tomatillos in summer and then freeze the strained juice in cubes. They’re easy to thaw and combine with agave, lime juice, tequila, and Homemade Triple Sec for a fresh homemade margarita.

To grow tomatillos, you need at least two plants so that they can cross-pollinate. That produces a big enough harvest to create plenty of grilled tomatillo juice cubes and turn the solids into Grilled Tomatillo Salsa—and still have tomatillos to use. I include recipes for quick fresh salsa and hot sauce that use tomatillos in The Complete Guide to Pickling. I’m increasingly using one or two at a time in nightly meals too, like salads and stir-fries.
Learn to make a Grilled Tomatillo Margarita

Chickpea Vegetable Skillet with Couscous and Feta

On July 11, 2025July 11, 2025 By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Column, grainsLeave a comment

My garden is bountiful so far this year, and many of my home-cooked meals begin with me spreading out my harvest on the counter and chopping up a little of everything for an impromptu, no-recipe vegetable sauté, salad, or pasta meal. But when I’m not making dinner at home these days, I’m usually making it aboard our sailboat, the Blue Mule, where my range of options becomes more limited. One of the beauties of the recipe I share this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon is that you can approach it as garden-to-table meal or as a pantry-focused one that fits neatly in a cooler and kitchen box on the water or in a campground.

As I teach in my Fine Dining: Front Country workshop, the key to making such a veggie-heavy meal in the galley or at the campsite is to choose vegetables that travel well. Whole carrots, onions, and garlic can tumble around as the boat surfs waves or the car bounces down gravel roads, and they’ll still look and taste great at dinnertime. I pack small zucchini, so I don’t have a partial one left with an exposed cut edge that’s more susceptible to damage. I also tuck zukes and other tender vegetables into a plastic storage box that fits inside my ice chest and minimizes their bumping and bruising—and their direct exposure to melting ice.
Learn to make Chickpea Vegetable Skillet with Couscous and Feta

Raspberry Shrub Mocktail or Cocktail

On June 26, 2025July 25, 2025 By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn beverages, ColumnLeave a comment

Iced tea and fresh-squeezed juice are nice, but I like a little tang in my cooling, refreshing summer beverages—probably no surprise given that I’m the author of a pickling cookbook. When you open my fridge this time of year, you’re more likely to find several bottles of drinking shrubs and kombucha than jugs of iced tea. As I explain this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon, I enjoy drinking shrubs as nonalcoholic daytime drinks and use them as cocktail mixers.

Think of drinking shrubs as homemade replacements for today’s highly popular flavored sparkling waters and hard seltzers. Shrubs combine fruit, sugar, and vinegar into a concentrate that you dilute to taste with soda water. This lets you make homemade sparkling water as strongly flavored, tangy, or sweet as you like. But the concentrate has many more uses. Pour a splash into iced tea or lemonade for bonus flavor, or mix it with alcohol for a craft cocktail.
Learn to make Raspberry Shrub Mocktail or Cocktail

Pea Shoot Pesto

On June 5, 2025June 5, 2025 By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Column, saucesLeave a comment

I started making a springtime pesto with pea shoots in my first years of growing peas, when I heavily overplanted the beds and needed to thin them. It turned out to be so delicious that, as I explain this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon, I now intentionally plant peas too thickly and pinch off extras; I also snip upper shoots as the plants grow. This not only lets me make fresh pesto long before I can harvest basil but also helps the plants grow bushier and produce more peapods.

I think tender pea shoots are the sweetest and harvest them from both edible pod and shelling peas. Some people consider sugar snap shoots to be the sweetest. Whichever you’re growing, give them a taste while they’re young and delicate.

If you’re not growing peas, look for edible shoots at a farmers’ market. I found the ones in the photo that accompanies this week’s column while visiting the Bellingham Farmers Market. The large bundle of shoots and flowers were more developed than I usually harvest them, so I blended just the leaves and top tendrils from the thickest stalks into pesto.
Learn to make Pea Shoot Pesto

Herb and Spinach Frittata

On May 30, 2025May 30, 2025 By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Column, fresh eatingLeave a comment

The first harvests of the season may not be as colorful as summer’s tomatoes and peppers and fall’s beets and carrots, but I always smile and sigh with pleasure as I dig my fork into a mound of spring greens. Salads suddenly become a daily presence. I pile the tender leaves deeply on sandwiches, sourdough pizza and fried eggs. My bean burritos and fish tacos become so stuffed that I can’t fold them closed.

The latest recipes in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon gently cook spring greens. Unlike the soggy, slimy effect that often comes from overcooking spinach and arugula, the greens barely wilt into egg and pasta dishes, remaining light and fresh.

This week’s frittata recipe expands my year-round Golden Onion and Potato Frittata to include fresh spinach and herbs. It could be called a crustless quiche or a big, open-faced omelet and tastes equally delicious for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Learn to make Herb and Spinach Frittata