Cabbage Soup
Pity the poor cabbage. It gets a bad rap. Too many people are scarred by bad cabbage experiences: boiled beyond recognition….or the cabbage soup diet. Lacking illustrative photos of overboiled cabbage or the soup diet, I give you San Francisco’s Union Square. More accurately, a street near Union Square. Handled…
Eating European Tomatoes with The Tomato Sisters
Disclaimer: I’ve recently partnered with The Greatest Tomatoes from Europe, working to publicize their canned tomato products. I am not being paid for my participation, aside from some wonderful canned tomato products from Europe–and some Italian pasta. Any views posted are strictly my own. It’s 8:41 am. I am…
Espresso Chocolate Truffles
Elizabeth David, writing her magisterially grumpy Elizabeth David’s Christmas, tackles edible gifting with her usual verve, writing: Those bottles of indeterminate sherry and port, Christmas puddings and tins of tea and fancy biscuits are survivals from the days when such things were distributed by Ladies Bountiful to old retainers, retired nannies…
Plum Galette
From Dictionary.com Goat Rodeo: a slang term for something going totally, unbelievably, disastrously wrong, and there’s nothing left to do but to sit back and watch the trainwreck. — Plum galette came about the way most of my recipes do: by accident. I had a glut of pluots…
Pork Chops with Italian Butter Beans
It’s October. The season of pumpkin spice is upon us. Everywhere you go, pumpkin spice: pies, cakes, cookies. Pumpkin spice candles, therapeutic oils, scented sprays. Okay, maybe not everywhere. My local office supply store has no pumpkin spice in sight. They’re closing October 18th to make way for a high-rise…
Bagels
[Editor’s note, 11/24/21: This post was written before Boichik Bagels came to town. It is now possible to procure a decent bagel in Northern California. Corned beef? Not so much. But we no longer need to make bagels at home.] I know what you’re thinking. Bagels? At home? What for?…
Brown Sugar Chicken Thighs with Herbed Pasta
According to my kitchen notebook, I recently prepared a version of Diana Henry’s Israeli Chicken with Mograbieh, Harissa-Grilled peaches, and Mint. I write “recently” because the entry is undated. There is a helpful note: “winner! adding lemon after cooking a yes!” The lemon was added afterward because, um, I’d forgotten…
Stir-fried chicken livers
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…
Flank Steak with tamarind, honey, garlic and red wine
Well, there’s a mouthful of a recipe title after a silent summer. And what a summer it’s been. Your hostess has spent her summer–nay, all year–contending with crippling back pain. Said pain makes standing for long peroids challenging. Meaning blogging–recipe testing, photographing, cooking–is also challenging. Many were the false starts,…
Cooking ahead
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…
