This picture is one of my favorites from this month's escapade in Paris. It was taken at one of the top pastry/confection shops in Paris, Jacques Genin, which I was very happy to find to be just a matter of blocks from the apartment I rented in the Marais. And it was taken at a Sunday lunch I enjoyed with my sister. Not dessert after lunch. But FOR lunch. We each got our own from among the few millefeuille ...
I went a little nuts at the market today. It's Sunday, a prime market day in many neighborhoods around Paris. The closest/best to where I'm staying in the Marais is the Bastille market that spreads north of Place de la Bastille on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. I went to the market last Sunday too (it's on Thursdays as well, I'll hit it one more time this coming week), but that was a more casual ...
It's been the case at every party in recent memory that I've been at when deviled eggs are on hand. They're simply a magnet. There may be tons of other great food on hand, but folks spring into action around those eggs...and the plate's usually the first one to be emptied. I'll admit to having a bit of an eagle-eye for them. When someone new arrives at the door and I see ...
I’m not a big dessert person. I won’t pretend that I never order it when out for dinner. Key words like “caramel” or “ice cream” or “coconut” will often at least pique my attention. But more often than not I’ll just nibble a bit of cheese with my husband after dinner, or simply linger over the last of my wine and skip that final course. That being said, at the close of a recent dinner at the charming and delightful ...
It's kind of funny to me that this month I've been talking up game-day snacks as much as I have. A few years ago my cookbook Gourmet Game Night was released and I spent a lot of time explaining that the "game" I had in mind was Scrabble or dominoes, rather than venison or football. Though in truth, the latter was a least a close approximation. Whether our attention is directed at watching a football game or playing a poker game, the ultimate ...
It was a simple enough question, but it caught me off guard. "Can you recommend a cookbook for the basics, for someone starting out in the kitchen?" Paraphrased, that's what was posed to me by someone a few weeks ago at one of my book signings. Um. Well. Gee. I told her about Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, but ...
Having just completed a few months of heavy-duty (and fun) promotion of my latest book, it's probably no surprise I've been deeply engrossed in salty snacks lately. When demonstrating or sampling a recipe from the book , the key is to represent the books recipes exactly as written to give folks an authentic taste of results they can expect. Which can take a bit of discipline on my part -- when I'm off the cookbook-author clock, I rarely cook a ...
You know, me and my kitchen -- we're pretty close. I've been with this one for over a dozen years and we've been through a lot together. Lots of laughs and fun times, some long cooking marathons, writing a bunch of cookbooks (10 maybe?), a few challenges working to get recipes just right (or, coming to terms with a recipe that just won't ever get to "quite right"), many explorations of new techniques/ingredients/preparations. The physical presentation of the room ...
Based on Twitter feeds and Facebook chats, it sounds like many of us around the country were feeling a sort of solidarity with all those on the eastern seaboard being ravaged by frenetic megastorm Sandy. Honestly, the blustery weather we're having in Seattle would have been enough on its own. But hearing of those girding themselves against the extreme winds and rain, facing the dark and chill of the storm's effects...I guess our mutual instinct was to cocoon a bit ...
It's funny how sometimes there's an odd confluence of input on one topic coming at you from seemingly disparate directions. For me this week, it's been canning: a subject chatted about at a dinner party Saturday, something Facebook friends gave me lots of guidance about after posting a quick question, and sometime I did by myself for the very first time yesterday. Then, today, I come across this column by Melissa Clark in the New York Times. Not so much about canning ...
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