Appetizers

Let me tell you about blogging during a pandemic. It’s very challenging. There’s the question of tone. When people are dying left and right, one doesn’t want to appear flip. Then again, gloom isn’t good, either. People visiting your site want to be entertained. Then there’s the food question. Thank…

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Pistachio Garlic Sauce

April 13, 2020

I’ve been racking my brains to for a recipe that isn’t pasta. That this took the better part of two weeks bespeaks a profound lack of creativity on my part. A pandemic will do that to a person. The news changes hourly; now we’re told we should wear masks. My…

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Potato Knishes

March 25, 2020

So, hi. Here we are on day whatever, depending on where you live. I haven’t kept count, myself. I’ve been out exactly once in the past ten days. I tried shopping at the local market–a corner shop that stocks vegetables, wine, and some dry goods. The shelves were literally bare….

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Social media is awash in titles like the above. They’re decidedly grim, but no sense messing around, is there? Unrelated pretty picture. I’m sorry if you’re sick of these kinds of posts. Who could blame you? By now you’re probably sick of just about everything. You long to go outside….

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Stir-fried chicken livers

August 28, 2019

It is a sad fact that many people dislike chicken livers. One of those people is my husband, leaving me to consume these morsels alone. There is no photo of me doing this. Instead, here’s downtown Berkeley, taken last week. Granted, unrelated to chicken livers, but much nicer looking. On…

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Cooking ahead

June 9, 2019

Last month, while waiting to get a corticosteroid shot in my spine, I went on a major cooking/baking/freezing jag, much of it between three and six am. Cooking was a way of maintaining some control, however tenuous. The recipes below offered succor both before the injection and afterward, when your…

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Seafood Rillettes

May 27, 2019

Sometimes a recipe comes to you numerous times before you think to make it. Such was the case with seafood rillettes. As a nervous fish cook and somebody whose relationship to canned fish began and ended with tuna, seafood rillettes weren’t on my radar. Aiming for the casual indoor picnic…

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Squash Fritters

April 8, 2019

In reviewing the IK’s vegetable posts, I realized: 1. there aren’t many, and 2. what few there are skew fritterwards. We of the IK consume a varied vegetable diet. Yet here we are, about discuss squash fritters. Were that not enough, today’s variant recipe is….a red pepper fritter. In all…

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leftover rice

March 12, 2019

Apologies for the quiet. My computer decided to stop working properly, and the people I hired to repair it made it worse. My photos are safe, but I can’t upload all of them right now. So we’ll limp through together, okay? — Every rice-eating culture in the world has devised…

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Fast Flatbread

February 21, 2019

I can’t tell you how often I’ve searched my cookbooks for the ideal flatbread recipe. By ideal, I mean a recipe you can mix, roll, bake, and eat in under an hour. Further, this recipe must use pantry ingredients and have a low yield. Why a low yield? We are…

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