Brined 
Canned 
Confit 
fermented 
Infused 
Pickled Pasta with Dandelion Greens and Oven-Dried Tomatoes
From Wikipedia: Zebra is the American medical slang for arriving at an exotic medical diagnosis when a more commonplace explanation is more likely.[1] It is shorthand for the aphorism coined in the late 1940s by Dr. Theodore Woodward, professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who instructed his medical interns: “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras”.[2] Since horses…
Moroccan Greens Salad with Preserved Lemon
So your hostess began this week by spending many, many hours with her new special friends at AT&T, arranging for special faster internet. Unrelated photographs. Anyone who has had the pleasure of interacting with tech support at AT&T comes to realize it is offshore. Meaning English fluency is at a premium….
In Search of Marinated Tofu
Apologies for the quiet Chez IK. About two weeks ago, whilst photographing for a post, I bent to retrieve my camera and dislocated my left knee, which refused to slip back into place. This caused a whopping case of bursitis. It got a little difficult to locomote. Also mildly painful. The above…
Caregiver’s Noodles
You’re wondering what these are. These thigmajigs, scmetchiks, whaddayacallits, are a crucial part of a wheelchair user’s day–that is, if the wheelchair user has a “swing-away” style footrest on his chair. The above objects are called endcaps. Their job is to hold wheelchair footrests in place while allowing them to…
Three-Cup Chicken
A few weeks ago the IK attended a literary event sponsored by the San Francisco Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier. There numerous Bay Area authors–and a few non-Bay Area folk–gathered to meet, greet, and share nibbles the authors had prepared from their cookbooks, conveniently for sale on nearby tables. Said event…
Kitchen Note: Pickled Lemons. Picked Garlic. Migraines.
So, if you’re American, on American soil, chances are good you’ve come through Thanksgiving. Congratulations. So, this migraine. There are migraines, and migraines. If you are a migraineur, you’re like, if she’s typing, it cannot be that bad. And you’re right: some migraines, it’s puke your way to the ER,…
Paula Wolfert’s Lamb Tagine
Wait a minute! Weren’t we here already? Indeed we were, just about a year ago to the day. But the recipes are different–Lamb Tagine With Preserved Lemon hails from Claudia Roden’s marvelous Book Of Middle Eastern Food. Today’s tagine comes from another seminal cookbook, Paula Wolfert’s Couscous And Other Good Food From Morocco. Fifty…
Tomato Conserve
Why tomato conserve and not paste? Excellent question. This comes fromThe Art Of Simple Food II, where Alice Waters explains it is conserve because the result is more jammy than paste-like–at least, I think that’s what she means by “The tomatoes are concentrated into a paste that is more like…
Kitchen Note: Social Media, Plum Liqueur
Some time ago Shauna James Ahern wrote a long post about negative commenters, including some of the most vicious and/or irrational remarks she’d received. These were startling in their ugliness. Yet the piece was remarkably level-headed, even kind. Ahern wasn’t seeking revenge or attempting to expose certain commenters. She wanted to shine…
Kitchen Note: 7/13. Cortisone Shot
“Your x-rays look fine,” the physician assistant said. “No arthritis.” Saying an x-ray of my knee looks good is akin to saying the surface of the ocean appears calm. Then National G or some other science show, narrated by a fellow with a plummy Oxford accent, sends a pile of…