Patatas Bravas
Long ago, when your hostess was a baby cook with a very skinny boyfriend, she tore this patatas bravas recipe from a magazine. I made patatas bravas a few times, and we enjoyed them, but the instructions call for a food processor. Lacking one, I instead used a mini-chopper,…
Velvet Pork Pie
As the new year begins with its resolutions to diet, go vegan, or otherwise engage in punishing cleanses, the IK brings you meatloaf, Chinese style. Meatloaf, aka velvet pork pie, isn’t very exciting, but sometimes not very exciting is good. I mean, I don’t know about you, but around here,…
Sauteed Chicken Livers
Chicken livers were standard fare during my childhood. Nobody was freaked by their being offal. Nor were they cooed over as nose-to-tail eating, because the concept didn’t exist yet. Back then, people just ate. We also walked miles in the snow. Back then there was snow to walk in. But…
Spinach with cheese and garlic
A few nights ago your hostess was paging through Ruth Reichl’s Comfort Me With Apples when she happened across a recipe entitled “Dottie’s Spinach.” The original recipe fed six people and calls for a head of garlic, an amount some may find overwhelming, especially during the holidays, generally considered a…
Surviving the Holidays
One day my kindergarten teacher put some clay out for us to play with. I was thrilled until some boys started flinging it at each other. I crept outside to hide by the milk machine. The milk machine stood just outside the classroom door. It was tall and cool and…
Lemon Cake with Almond Flour
As I write, California is experiencing terrible fires. Here are some ways to help: The United Way is helping people affected by the Camp Fire. The American Red Cross is also accepting donations. The North Valley Community Foundation is accepting donations. To help animals impacted by the fires, the Conscious Cat…
Stir-fried Rice Cakes with Pork
As lunatics in the wider world wielded guns and mailed pipe bombs, your hostess was busy dealing with crooks and idiots. It’s been that kind of few weeks. Or maybe that kind of two years. (Not indicative of above.) — Stir-Fried Rice Cakes with Pork comes, in part, from Georgia…
Pasta with chickpeas and spinach
Pasta with chickpeas and spinach came about because I could barely walk. Not the most felicitous of culinary circumstances, but there you are. One never knows where a good dish will come from. Your hostess has a bursitic knee, long treated with cortisone shots. Last week the doctor decided further…
Mu-Shu Pork
When I was a child, I knew a woman who collected penguin figurines. When the local fish place went out of business, she acquired their namesake, a ten-foot tall penguin, and had it installed in her yard. The interior of her home was equally penguin (penguinic? penguinesque?): the garbage…
Marble Pound Cake
The past week saw your hostess dealing with rodents in kitchen (that screaming you heard? it was me), and a near automobile accident. The other driver–who was at fault–attempted to confront me. (That screaming you heard? It was me.) This driver, who was backing out of a parking lot…
