Seitan at home
Prior to encountering seitan in How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, on page 668–when Bittman says everything, he means it–I’d met it once before, in a Chinese restaurant on University Avenue in Berkeley, California. (The name of this place eludes me. Nor could I find it on the net.) Technically it…
Roast Peppers Preserved Under Oil
I began writing this post two weeks ago. The world was a completely different place then. Here is a link to agencies assisting Afghan refugees, from the New York Times. Here is a link to help those impacted by the earthquake in Haiti, from National Public Radio. — It’s late…
Elegant Egg Salad Sandwich Savoury
Savouries, like the Foot Guard Uniform and cream teas, are a uniquely British institution. Modern eaters will recognize these salty, spicy, small bites as appetizers, commonly appearing before the meal with drinks. Famous savouries include angels on horseback–that’s a bacon wrapped prune–and Fergus Henderson’s bone marrow and parsley salad. Not…
Zucchini with Tomato and Ricotta Salata
Note: Four years later: I realized the original post had an error concerning the tomatoes. I changed the recipe. It now calls for halved cherry tomatoes. The photographs do not reflect this. The recipe does, and while the earlier recipe worked, the updated one is an improvement. This is a…
Pickled Onions
Once again your hostess would like to apologize for being such a laggardly poster. It’s not lack of interest in the blog, or in you, my readers. The truth is the same dull reason it’s always been: my health. More precisely, my back. Last week I had yet another cortisone…
Corn, Bacon, and Shallot Salad
Corn, Bacon, and Shallot Salad started as a riff on a Pepper Teigen recipe, but fridge contents forced some detours. Besides, as Laurie Colwin so presciently noted in More Home Cooking, all plans go to hell during the summer. Then again, Colwin had no way of knowing that all plans,…
The Fried Chicken Wrap
The ethics of blogging–and yes, such things do exist–contend that three changes to a recipe make it one’s own. So while it would be “ethical” for me to claim I invented the fried chicken wrap, I did not. The original recipe comes from Nigella Lawson’s Cook, Eat, Repeat, where…
Uighur Lamb Kebabs
It is our misfortune to inhabit what is politely termed a “mixed” area. Meaning there are lots of apartment buildings mixed in with single family homes. AT&T has terrible difficulty with this. Every time somebody moves out of an apartment, a tech comes out to the nearby box and instead…
Thai-Style Mushroom Salad (Yam het)
Fortunately for us, mushrooms aren’t endangered, bad for the environment, or likely to provoke the righteous wrath of the well-intentioned. Before they do, let’s get to the recipe: Yam or yum het–Thai mushroom salad. Yam het comes to us from Thailand. Yam or yum is Thai for salad, het…
Still Here…
Apologies for my miserable posting history this year. Real life has been challenging, to say the least. There’s a term for this kind of excuse (irritating?) but I’ve forgotten it. Anyway, here we are, for the moment. Two things, while we wait for the next post. The first concerns The…
