Harry Morgan as Col. Sherman Potter on 'M*A*S*H'. (AP)

By JEN CHANEY

Harry Morgan — the Emmy Award-winning actor best known for playing the no-nonsense but kind Colonel Sherman T. Potter on TV’s beloved “M*A*S*H” — died today at the age of 96, according to the Archive of American Television and other media outlets.

Morgan actively worked in Hollywood for an impressive six decades. For much of his career, he worked primarily in film, appearing opposite luminaries like Henry Fonda (“The Ox-Bow Incident”), Robert Mitchum (“Holiday Affair”), Jimmy Stewart (“The Glenn Miller Story”), Gary Cooper (“High Noon”) and Marlon Brando (“Teahouse of the August Moon.”) As the New York Times notes in its obituary, he ultimately co-starred in more than 100 movies.

But it was on television that audiences ultimately knew him best, first as Officer Bill Gannon on “Dragnet,” then as a different, more fatherly authority figure on CBS’s “*M*A*S*H,” a show he joined after McLean Stevenson, who played Lt. Col. Henry Blake, exited the program.

In an interview conducted back in 2004 with the Archive of American Television, Morgan said simply of playing Potter: “It was the best part I ever had.”
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By SARAH ANNE HUGHES

Lindsay Lohan may bare all in the pages of Playboy, according to TMZ.

The gossip site is reporting that a deal between the legally embattled actress and the magazine has been in the “works for months.” Lohan reportedly asked for $1 million for the pictorial, but accepted less than that.

A rep for the actress said in an e-mail to Celebritology that he cannot confirm the rumors “at this time.” A Playboy rep also declined to comment on the rumors to E!.

If this news turns out to be true, it wouldn’t be the first time Lohan has shown a lot of skin in front of a camera. In 2008, she posed topless for New York Magazine to recreate Marilyn Monroe’s final photo shoot. She’s did the same in the pages of German GQ.

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In All My Children‘s final weeks on ABC, Angie has struggled to regain her eyesight, Bianca and Marissa learned that J.R. is not going to put their sex tape on the Internet, and Kendall, bathed in candlelight, succeeded in seducing Zach, newly back from the dead, which apparently makes it really hard to focus on making love.

Life, and love, after death (sometimes known as protracted contract negotiations) is a theme with characters such as Erica Kane – who had her debut as Pine Valley’s femme fatale in 1970 and went on to become the most famous name in daytime television – flying off recently in search of her formerly shot-dead ex-lover Mike Roy. Erica has been played the whole time by actress Susan Lucci, who had the television-watching nation cheering her in 1999 when she won the Daytime Emmy Award for lead actress after 18 unsuccessful nominations.

Leslie Streeter live-blogs the finale

And resurrection is an overarching theme for All My Children, airing for the final time on Friday after a 41-year run on network television but slated to return online and possibly via Internet-enabled television, along with long-running ABC soap One Life to Live.

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There’s something bright-tasting about this meatless one-pot meal.

If time’s not a big issue, use fresh tomatoes.

Serve with baked tortilla chips.

Summer Chili

Makes about 12 cups (6 servings)

1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons olive oil

2 poblano peppers, on the smaller side (may substitute 4 1/2 ounces canned chopped green chili peppers, drained)

1 medium yellow or sweet onion

2 to 3 medium cloves garlic

1 medium zucchini

3 ears fresh corn

14 ounces extra-firm tofu

15 ounces canned no-salt-added black beans

15 ounces canned no-salt-added pinto beans

28 ounces canned low-sodium crushed tomatoes, with juices

14 1/2 ounces canned no-salt-added diced tomatoes, with juices

3 tablespoons chili powder

1/2 to 1 tablespoon ground cumin

1/2 to 1 teaspoon fine sea salt

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat.

As you prep the following 3 ingredients, toss them into the pot: Stem and seed the poblanos, then coarsely chop (to yield about 2 cups). Cut the onion into small dice (about 1 cup). Mince the garlic cloves to yield 1 tablespoon. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring, until the vegetables have softened. Adjust the heat as needed to keep the garlic from browning.

Trim off the zucchini ends and cut the remaining vegetable into 1/2-inch dice (to yield about 1 3/4 cups). Shuck the corn and discard any silk, then cut the kernels from the ears to yield at least 3 cups.

Drain the tofu or pat it dry with paper towels, then cut it into 1/2-inch cubes. Drain and rinse the black beans and pinto beans.

Add the zucchini, tofu, corn, black beans, pinto beans, the crushed and diced tomatoes (with their juices), chili powder and cumin (to taste); stir gently to mix well. Once the mixture starts to bubble at the edges (increase the heat as needed if you had reduced it because of the garlic), then reduce the heat to medium-low and cook for 20 minutes. Taste, then stir in the salt to taste.

Divide among individual bowls; serve hot.

Per serving: 360 calories, 20 g protein, 47 g carbohydrates, 11 g fat, 2 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 690 mg sodium, 13 g dietary fiber, 9 g sugar

Recipe adapted from "The Woman’s Day Everyday Cookbook," by the editors of Woman’s Day magazine (Filipacchi, 2011).

Mike Isabella’s plate of pork-shank ragu with potato gnocchi and whipped burrata had transformed the Top Chef All-Stars judges, those made-for-TV snarks, into sycophants.

The "Ellis Island" challenge had asked the contestants to cook dishes inspired by their ancestry, and as he reflected on that ragu, head judge Tom Colicchio, a New Jersey native like Isabella, beamed like a first-time father, lost in his own nostalgia of red-sauce gravy.

"The last dish I want to eat on Earth is my mother’s gravy before I die," Colicchio told him. "It’s just a very simple dish, but yours was so soulful "

That’s when Isabella – a brash, tattoo-covered Jersey boy – lost it. He put his right hand to his brow, as if to hide his emotions. He looked up, swallowed a time or two and sighed audibly. He then shrugged and cocked his head to the right, a street hustler’s move to try to regain his composure.

"What’s going through your head right now?" host Padma Lakshmi asked.

"I was really close to my grandmother when she passed away. I was younger, so I didn’t understand it," responded Isabella, who learned to cook by her side. "I didn’t cook (Italian food) for pretty much my whole career… because I didn’t want to remind me of that."

Redefining moment

Not to put too fine a point on this, but that moment helped redefine Mike Isabella – not only to viewers who had once seen him as a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal who disrespected women, but also to some of the chefs who competed against him.

It also confirmed that Graffiato, Isabella’s new restaurant here, was headed in the right direction. It would channel not only Isabella’s experiences in chef-driven kitchens such as Alma de Cuba in Philadelphia and Zaytinya in Washington, but also his New Jersey red-sauce past.

For Isabella himself, the moment was a flash of personal acceptance. Isabella wasn’t an aimless teenager anymore, prone to drinking, drugging and petty vandalism. He had become what his maternal grandmother, Antoinette Antonacci, always wanted him to be: respectable.

Joanne Isabella remembers her son as an average student with no interest in college once he graduated from high school. Mike did have, she recalls, a precocious taste for foods that most Jersey preteens would never touch: Korean, Japanese and Greek cuisines, even the pig’s feet that his grandmother used in her slow-simmered red gravy.

Isabella didn’t aspire to become the next Jacques Pepin. "I wanted to travel. I wanted to get a job anywhere in the world," he says. "I knew that (cooking) was one of the outlets that would help me do that."

He put himself through the New York Restaurant School (now the Art Institute of New York City). He worked six nights a week at a restaurant in New Brunswick, N.J. and took the early-morning train to Manhattan five days a week for school. After graduating from restaurant school and kicking around New York kitchens, Isabella joined the staff at Alma de Cuba in Philly, then moved to El Vez (where he worked for future Iron Chef Jose Garces) and to Washington Square.

In 2007, Isabella took the chef job at Jose Andres’ Zaytinya and two years later was tapped to compete on Top Chef: Las Vegas.

Gnocchi: A tribute

Graffiato opened its doors last month. Isabella refuses to call it an Italian restaurant. He has created a hybrid beast, a menu that pulls together his Italian-American past with his experiences in Mediterranean cooking.

But then there’s a dish in the pasta section. It’s roasted potato gnocchi with braised pork-shank ragu and burrata. It’s his ode to Grandma, the very dish that made the bulletproof Colicchio suddenly seem as vulnerable as a child.

"A lot of people had asked me to do that dish," says Isabella, 36. He produced a batch before he opened the restaurant, and came away with one distinct impression: It tasted like Grandma’s red gravy.

Olive-Oil-Poached Cherry Tomato Sauce

Chef Mike Isabella serves this sauce with hand-cut spaghetti and fresh basil.

A glance at the ingredients might cause you to think: That’s a lot of garlic and shallots.

He says they flavor the sauce, which ends up being rich-tasting and almost sweet. But the garlic can be reduced to 1/2 cup.

Makes 5 cups

1 cup olive oil
4 ounces shallots, shaved or cut into very thin slices (1 cup)
Cloves from 1 or 2 heads garlic, shaved or cut into very thin slices (1 cup; see headnote)
4 cups (17 ounces) whole stemmed cherry tomatoes (do not use grape tomatoes; they might not be juicy enough)
2 cups canned plum tomatoes, crushed
8 stems basil
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Crushed red pepper flakes

Combine the oil and shallots in a large sauté pan over low heat.

Cook 10 to 12 minutes, until the shallots are translucent and soft, then stir in the garlic until evenly coated. Cook for about 15 minutes or until the garlic has softened, then stir in the cherry tomatoes and the crushed plum tomatoes. Cook for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, then add the basil.

Partially cover and cook for 1 hour; most or all of the cherry tomatoes should be deflated, and the mixture should be somewhat blended in a rich sauce. Discard the basil.

Season with salt, pepper and crushed red pepper flakes to taste. Serve right away; or cool, cover and refrigerate or freeze.

Make ahead: The sauce can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 3 months.

Recipe from chef Mike Isabella of Graffiato, Washington, D.C.

In many shrimp dishes, peas are a minor ingredient. Here, the vegetable stars and the shrimp is an accent.

The marriage of flavors makes it all work. Pancetta adds depth. Sweet onions complement the sweetness of the peas and shrimp.

To make it all look right, the shrimp are cooked whole to preserve their flavor and moisture, then cut into smaller pieces so everyone gets their fair share.

Pre-diced pancetta is available in many supermarkets; sliced pancetta works just as well.

Serve over rice for a complete meal.

Sweet Pea and Shrimp Saute

Serves: 4

2 teaspoons olive oil

2 ounces pancetta, cut into small dice

6 ounces medium-large shrimp (31 to 40 per pound), peeled and deveined

1 medium (4 ounces) sweet onion, cut into small dice (1 cup)

2 cups frozen sweet peas, cooked just until tender, then drained

Freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup dry white wine

1/4 cup no-salt-added chicken broth

1 teaspoon cornstarch

Salt

Heat the oil in a large, shallow skillet or saute pan over medium-high heat, until the oil shimmers.

Add the pancetta; cook for 3 to 4 minutes, until the pancetta loses its raw look. Push the pancetta to the edges of the skillet or pan. Add the shrimp in batches, taking care not to crowd them. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes, turning them once, until the shrimp turn pink and opaque. They do not have to be cooked through at this point. Transfer to a plate as the batches of shrimp are done.

Add the onion to the pancetta still in the skillet or pan; reduce the heat to medium. Cook for 4 to 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onion has softened but not browned.

Meanwhile, cut each shrimp in half down the back seam, and then in half crosswise to form bite-size pieces.

Stir the peas and pepper (to taste) into the onions and pancetta. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes to warm the vegetables through. Return the shrimp to the skillet or pan, then add the white wine. When it starts to bubble at the edges, whisk together the broth and cornstarch in a liquid measuring cup, then add to the skillet or pan. Cook for 1 to 2 minutes, stirring, until the pan juices thicken. Taste, and add salt and pepper if needed.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

Per serving: 210 calories, 16 g protein, 14 g carbohydrates, 8 g fat, 2 g saturated fat, 75 mg cholesterol, 380 mg sodium, 3 g dietary fiber, 4 g sugar

By Stephanie Witt Sedgwick

I’ve lost my taste for fatty cuts of lamb, which are out of step with how I cook and eat today.

Luckily, it’s easy to buy lean portions of boneless leg of lamb that can be cut into strips for stir-frying or grilling, cubed for kebabs or diced for a soup. The last is what I’ve done here.

Leeks and potatoes are the main ingredients, with a parsnip thrown in for sweetness and cumin for a little background flavor. Pearl barley brings substance and a slight thickening to the broth.

Lamb, Leek and Potato Soup

Makes about 9 cups (8 to 10 servings)

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 pound boneless leg of lamb, trimmed of all fat, cut into 1/2-inch dice

1 1/4 pounds leeks (see note)

Salt

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin, or to taste

Freshly ground black pepper

4 cups low-sodium or homemade chicken broth

2 cups water

1/4 cup pearl barley

1/2 pound all-purpose potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch dice

1 large parsnip, peeled and woody core removed, the remaining flesh cut into 1/4-inch dice

1 or 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a 4-quart soup pot. Add the lamb in batches, taking care not to crowd the pieces. Sear for a few minutes, stirring a few times, until the lamb loses its raw look. Use a slotted spoon to transfer to a clean plate or bowl. Repeat to sear all of the lamb.

Add the leeks and salt (to taste) to the pot; reduce the heat to medium. Cook for 4 to 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the leeks are soft. Add the cumin and pepper to taste; cook for 1 minute. Add the broth, water, barley and cooked lamb; cover and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium or as needed to maintain a low boil. Cook for about 1 hour, until the barley is tender.

Add the potatoes and parsnip; cook covered for 15 to 20 minutes, maintaining a slow boil, until the vegetables are tender. Taste, and adjust the seasoning as needed.

Divide among individual bowls. Garnish with chopped parsley, if desired.

Note: To clean the leeks thoroughly, first trim away the dark green parts and root end. Cut the leeks lengthwise in half and rinse in cold water. Cut the leeks crosswise into thin slices and submerge in a large bowl of cold water to soak for 20 minutes. Use a strainer to remove the leeks from the water; pat dry.

Make ahead: This soup can be made a day in advance.