White Chocolate Raspberry Truffles
After years of loathing white chocolate, I realized the trouble lay not with the ingredient itself, but with the disconnect between expectation and reality. Once I stopped expected white chocolate to taste like the stuff that with geographical pedigrees and percentage points, I stopped loathing it. A parable for hard-won…
Candied Citrus Peel
Some people excel at marketing themselves. They read self-help manuals filled with buzzwords; they engage in tactical online behaviors; they practice affirmations before mirrors. Me, I’m terrible at all that. This is a long-winded way of saying I keep forgetting to tell you my photography is now available at Shutterstock.com. You…
Chicken with Marsala, Mushrooms, and Olives
I am not somebody who spends her time wondering whether beets might snuggle up to pomegranates, creating a novel salad. Or tasty new ways with quinoa. Instead, I do lots of wheelchair jenga. (Not wheelchair jenga.) Saturdays mean soccer practice. I rise early and head out to the garage, where…
Pork Rib Curry
I apologize for the quiet around here. We live about thirty miles south of Santa Rosa, California. As I write, firefighters are slowly gaining control over the fires. People are returning to their homes, or what’s left of them. Berkeley Fire Engine Six was called to help fight the fires…
Dried Shrimp and Pickled Lettuce Salad
Occasionally you pick up a cookbook at random. You park it on your “to read” shelf with every intention of getting around to it. Meanwhile, various disasters transpire: dental work, feline illness, neighbor drama, spousal sickness, inept national leadership, world mayhem. Finally you open the cookbook. There, glimmering, is the…
Bitter Melon Curry
Note: The full impact of Hurricane Harvey was reaching the news after I posted. To help those affected in Texas, from the New York Times: Donations to the Red Cross for those affected by Harvey can be made online, or text HARVEY to 90999. Donations to the Salvation Army can be made online. Catholic Charities is accepting donations online,…
Kitchen Note: Rage, Despair, and Baking
Recent events have left me careering between rage and despair. Occasionally there’s a comparatively calm moment of depression, a lull in the mental action, before some tidbit of horrible news sends me bouncing off the walls again. Writing is nearly impossible. How do you sit down and write: “Today I…
Mandelhornchen (chocolate-dipped almond crecscents)
Apologies for the silence around here. The IK hasn’t been idle. If anything, she’s been cooking far too much food as NPR blares in the background. Just a few days ago, she bought far too much fruit. Before it could rot, she baked it into a cake adapted from a…
Stir-Fried Spinach with Fermented Red Tofu
Now, some of you read fermented tofu and freaked out. Don’t lie. Perhaps you’re thinking of that famously stinky stuff considered a Chinese delicacy, tofu that evokes Vincent Price, in another context, intoning about the funk of 40,000 thousand years. Am I right? The IK, she’s here to ease your…
Good Son-In-Law Eggs
According to the internet, Good Son-In-Law eggs translates to either Khai Luk Khoei or Kai Loog Keuy. If you happen to be Thai and I’ve gotten this wrong, forgive me–I speak no Thai. Whatever the correct name, my recipe for Good Son-In-Law Eggs doesn’t even come from a Thai cookbook….