My first stab at making tarte tatin came back in high school and was a terrible flop. I'd never had tarte tatin before, and even without an existing point of reference I knew something wasn't right. Having just pulled that recipe out of my decades-old collection of recipe cards, clippings and other early recipe notes (a collection more nostalgic than anything), I now see it was doomed on so many points. A ...
I've had this rice pudding recipe on my brain since a September trip to France, during which dinner one night in Paris included a dessert of riz au lait with a salted caramel sauce. Egad, it was amazingly delicious and reminded me of a recipe from many cookbooks ago: Jim Drohman's Gâteau de Riz from his beloved French bistro Le Pichet, which was included in the Best Places Seattle Cookbook I worked on. Seriously, every few days I was ...
I looked down at the memo app on my phone, where I was jotting notes while reading Brunch is Hell on a flight recently. Right along side it was another note titled 'brunch,' essentially menu planning for the one day a year on which I fully embrace that mash-up meal: Christmas Day. The two camps, summed up: Brunch, woo-hoo!! and Brunch, go away!! While I wouldn't go so far as to refer to brunch as 'hell,' the rest of the ...
Lemon Verbena Inspirations
My lemon verbena is blooming like mad right now, so I clipped some yesterday to bring inside to accentuate the kitchen. As usual, I stripped spare leaves from lower part of the stems before popping them into the vase. So I stared at that pile of gorgeously aromatic herb leaves...hard to just toss in the compost when it offers so many possibilities. A syrup to use in cocktail? (One of ...
Like my close-up shot here giving you detail of this salad down to every grain of farro? It's not me trying to be arty or stylish. It was the simple matter of the fact that I'd gotten down to the last few bites left in the bowl before I realized I might want to capture it before all was gone. After my first bite a bit earlier I'd thought to myself, hmmmm, this is pretty good. (Particularly since it was leftovers ...
A couple weeks ago I had one of those better-than-average work days, which had me hanging out with other food writers at Tom Douglas' cool cooking school Hot Stove Society. Our host was the Washington Beef Commission, and our task to get some hands-on time with various preparation techniques for beef: trussing larger roasts, trimming tenderloin, marinating and grinding. My time at that latter station brought to mind the last time ...
A friend and fellow food writer/cookbook author posted this a day or two ago: "For the next 2 weeks, I'm going to cook whatever I want and I'm not going to write it down, save the receipts, or set a timer. So there!" Which, to the average reader, might not make much sense. Or if it does, might not seem like that big a deal. Pfft, such a thing to complain about. Writing things down? Setting a timer? Oh, but I shook ...
Yeah, it's not the most appetizing adornment. Hard to miss against salmon's rosy-orange flesh, the white gooey stuff that sometimes appears during cooking is certainly a visual distraction. And might leave you feeling like you've messed up somehow. Possibly ruined that glorious piece of salmon even. First off, not ruined. Maybe a bit overcooked (more on that shortly), but not a calamity. And you’ll be happy to know there are a couple simple things you can do ...
It's no surprise that I've been talking A LOT about oysters in the past few months, since the release of Oysters: Recipe that Bring Home a Taste of the Sea. And no, I haven't gotten tired of the topic, I'm not sick of them yet! In the course of interviews I've been doing and classes I'm teaching, a frequent question I get asked is about my favorite way to cook oysters. I ...
The Kitchen Reno: Before and After
Even though the dust has settled and the workmen gone, I keep a comic strip stuck to the wall that really struck a chord a few months ago. In that timeless setting of the therapist's office, the therapist prattles on about how there are no quick fixes in therapy, it's a frustrating often traumatic process, it can be lengthy -- to which the patient replies "much like having your kitchen remodeled." Heavens. Could I relate. And we ...
