Sourdough Scones
The IK not a news site. Nor am I a pundit. That said, blithely nattering on about sourdough scones after a week like the one we’re concluding feels heartless indeed. So, let us acknowledge what a hell of a week we’ve had, as a world, as a nation, as individuals. In…
Sourdough Starter
Last week, while researching an as-yet-unwritten book review, I consulted Sandor Katz’s Wild Fermentation for information on miso. Within moments I’d veered off topic, reading instead about sourdough starters. Cultivating sourdough is much easier than making homemade miso. So easy, in fact, that I felt moved to begin one immediately. This wasn’t…
Pyrex And The Pity Of Things
Wednesday I dropped some clothing off at our local Goodwill. Before leaving, I checked out the kitchen section. It’s rare for me to find anything there. But Wednesday was different. Working my way through the crammed kitchen section, I spied a pile of clear glass Pyrex wedged on a bottom shelf….
Notes on Canning Tomatoes
The literature of canning abounds in talk of capturing time. Terms like “peak freshness”, “seasonality”, and “ripeness” are certain to appear whenever people begin musing over the meaning of canning. It’s all true. To can tomatoes in August is to hope you’ll be opening the jars in February. To gaze upon…
Paranoia and Fava Beans
In preparing to debut this blog, I cooked a clutch of ingredient-laden, spicy dishes. I made extensive notes, readied each recipe, took lots of photographs. The food was okay, even good: an Indian-influenced chicken dish, flatbread with tomato and scallion, a fiery yogurt marinade. But as I served and ate…
Zucchini Preserved in Olive Oil
Being a non-gardener means never experiencing the zucchini cycle: rapture over the first zuke gradually morphing into insomnia over what Barbara Kingsolver, in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, calls “the pyramid of excess vegetable biomass that was taking over our lives.” In fact, having to come to summer squash rather recently (more on…