The IK Basic Burger
Restaurant menus offering hamburgers with overly fancy toppings or exotic fillings make me extremely nervous. No, I don’t want artisanal French cheese, hand-foraged field mushrooms, or Iberian ham atop my burger. Tapenade doesn’t belong inside a burger, though I once followed a misguided recipe calling for just such a combination. …
Japanese Rice Bowl
When I moved to California in 1985, it was rather like being dropped on Mars. Everything–the landscape, the weather, even the English people spoke–was different. I wandered around in a state of perpetual culture shock. The food was different, too. I’d never seen, much less tasted, authentic Chinese, Mexican, or Vietnamese…
Orzo Lunch for those who Labor
Spend the briefest amount of time amongst wheelchair users and listen as the conversation rapidly turns toward bathroom use. How, when, and where are all lively topics when you cannot walk into a restroom and use the facilities as architecturally intended. A close second to bathroom use is personal cleanliness…
Hot Pepper Sauce: A Ghost Recipe
All cooks save recipes. It can be a peculiar pastime. For every two dozen recipes stuffed into a folder or box or computerized whatnot, one might slide into regular rotation. And that recipe often ends up so altered over time–the onions becoming scallions, the tomato sauce morphing into paste, the…
Unbarbecued Pork Tenderloin
Originally this recipe was titled “Pork Tenderloin a la clueless Juive”–that is, pork tenderloin a la clueless Jew–but I worried about offending people, even if the clueless Jew in question is yours truly. When John and I took up housekeeping together, nay these many years ago, he humbly asked if…
A little Fall eye candy…
Short post today….fall, courtesy of flowers and fruits. Food, as in unbarbecued pork, to within the next couple days. Thank you for being here.
Sourdough Scones
The IK not a news site. Nor am I a pundit. That said, blithely nattering on about sourdough scones after a week like the one we’re concluding feels heartless indeed. So, let us acknowledge what a hell of a week we’ve had, as a world, as a nation, as individuals. In…
Sourdough Starter
Last week, while researching an as-yet-unwritten book review, I consulted Sandor Katz’s Wild Fermentation for information on miso. Within moments I’d veered off topic, reading instead about sourdough starters. Cultivating sourdough is much easier than making homemade miso. So easy, in fact, that I felt moved to begin one immediately. This wasn’t…
Pyrex And The Pity Of Things
Wednesday I dropped some clothing off at our local Goodwill. Before leaving, I checked out the kitchen section. It’s rare for me to find anything there. But Wednesday was different. Working my way through the crammed kitchen section, I spied a pile of clear glass Pyrex wedged on a bottom shelf….
Chicken Without A Recipe
People with chronic health problems spend a lot of time at doctor’s offices. There is a misconception that we of the poor health enjoy this. We do not. Countless hours are forever lost at doctor’s offices, tumbled deep into a pit called “waiting.” In the case of incurable disease, one rarely emerges from…
