Every so often I step out on this site and develop a recipe for Food52.com instead. (There are contests! It’s fun!) But I’m thinking about my main site, this one, the whole time… really, I am. Don’t be like that. Anyhow, I came up with this cake for Food52 last month. Now that the whole [...]
I love a good pancake/flapjack for Sunday morning breakfast as much as the next girl, but unless I want to lose a whole weekend day to lethargy, napping, and regret, I tend to avoid them. Simple carbs soaked in maple syrup are no way to start a productive day. Yesterday, I was at the [...]
The next time you bite into some quintessentially American food– peach pie, mac ‘n cheese, a fried artichoke heart– you probably have Thomas Jefferson to thank. I’d had an inkling that he was responsible for bringing a lot of culinary concepts back over from France, (and thanks to a visit to Monticello, I’d known he [...]
Fresh Cranberries Are Ready for Their Close-Up This week I found myself with a beautiful basket full of Meyer lemons, cayenne peppers, and other delights, courtesy of our landlords/neighbors/friends, who grow a veritable Garden (and orchard) of Eden. Meyer lemons are less acidic than standard lemons, (in fact, they’re thought to be a botanical [...]
Salsa is my go-to project whenever tomatoes are so abundant I’m not sure what to do with them all. (Which isn’t to say you must be navigating an overabundance of tomatoes in order to make it– it’s delicious even when not strictly necessary.) I’ve made Roasted Heirloom Tomato Salsa twice recently, due to a [...]
Quick breads are a category of baked goods which walk a line between bread and cake; they’re called “quick” because the use of chemical leaveners (baking powder, baking soda) negates any need to add yeast, or undergo the kneading, rising, and waiting that go along with it. Holiday favorites such as pumpkin bread and zucchini bread [...]
Habanero Apricot-Peach Salsa Ingredients9 apricots6 peaches8 cloves garlic4 habanero chiles4 tsp apple cider vinegar5 tsp salt, or to taste sugar, to tasteCooking DirectionsBring a large pot of water to a boil. Cook apricots and peaches, whole, for about 5 minutes (if apricots begin breaking apart, pull them out sooner.) In same pot of water, blanch [...]
Dragon Fruit, or Pitaya, looks like everyone’s idea of 80′s teen fashion. It’s a swirl of hot pink and florescent green, curvy and spiky and egg-shaped. Cut it open and the fruit, speckled thoroughout with small black seeds, resembles nothing so much as a Dalmatian. Dice the flesh, and suddenly you have dominoes. Native to Central America, [...]
Blood oranges, (in my opinion, the most decadent of the citrus fruits), are in season. “You have to try this,” said some friends last night over snacks and martinis in their San Francisco kitchen, handing over a particularly crimson fruit. “It’s like candy.” I already had two blood oranges at home, and tossed another [...]
Last week I attended the National Heirloom Exposition, held at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa, CA. The expo is a celebration of all things traditional, heirloom, and heritage in the realm of fruits and vegetables. I was there on Wednesday the 14th, when Alice Waters was the keynote speaker. She was delightful– her [...]