Chicken with Marsala, Mushrooms, and Olives
I am not somebody who spends her time wondering whether beets might snuggle up to pomegranates, creating a novel salad. Or tasty new ways with quinoa. Instead, I do lots of wheelchair jenga. (Not wheelchair jenga.) Saturdays mean soccer practice. I rise early and head out to the garage, where…
Beef Rendang
Rendang daging sapi, or beef rendang, is a specialty of West Sumatra. Rendangs are dry curries, not loose affairs you pour over noodles or rice. While beef rendang begins as wet curries do, with copious amounts of coconut milk, it diverges in cooking method. Prepared in a wide, shallow pan instead of a…
David Lebovitz’s Cocoa-Marzipan Pound Cake
Long before David Lebovitz became David Lebovitz, he wrote a little book–literally, it’s not even 8 x11–entitled The Great Book Of Chocolate. Within The Great Book Of Chocolate resides a recipe for Cocoa Marzipan Pound Cake. Cocoa-Marzipan Pound Cake is full of ingredients that make it a resoundly unphotogenic brown:…
Pork Belly with Mustard and Potatoes
A more organized blogger would follow her pork rib curry recipe with something other than a pork belly roast. You know, somebody who is not me. A more organized blogger would also be on top of the weather report, realizing temperatures would soar into the high eighties this final week…
Pork Rib Curry
I apologize for the quiet around here. We live about thirty miles south of Santa Rosa, California. As I write, firefighters are slowly gaining control over the fires. People are returning to their homes, or what’s left of them. Berkeley Fire Engine Six was called to help fight the fires…
Stir-fried Beef with Shrimp Paste
This post was written last week, before events in Las Vegas or Tom Petty’s untimely death. Much as I’d like to add some sensitively worded writing about either event, words fail me. Thank you for reading. — Last week found me at the used bookstore, where I found the companion…
Thai Beef with Rice Noodles
Poke around the internet and you’ll find guay teow neua sab interpreted any number of ways. The noodles are invariably rice, but the meat can range from braising cuts to ground beef. Some dishes are wet enough to qualify as soups. Others are dry enough to be eaten with forks. However you…
Steak Salad
It’s impossible to post without thinking of everyone Mexico, Florida, Texas, and the Caribbean Islands. If you can help any of these folks, in however small a way, please do. To donate to victims of Hurricane Harvey, here is a list of charities from the New York Times. To help people…
Dried Shrimp and Pickled Lettuce Salad
Occasionally you pick up a cookbook at random. You park it on your “to read” shelf with every intention of getting around to it. Meanwhile, various disasters transpire: dental work, feline illness, neighbor drama, spousal sickness, inept national leadership, world mayhem. Finally you open the cookbook. There, glimmering, is the…
Bitter Melon Curry
— Bitter melon, like okra, is a polarizing vegetable, capable of evoking extreme responses. Those who enjoy its bitter flavor don’t just like it, they crave it. Recipe headers invariably use the word “addictive” to describe the intensely bitter flavor note that sounds on the tongue long after you’ve…
