A blog about food, history, data visualization, and more
(Updated 10/15/16 with new photo, 10/23/16 with new archival art) Back in February, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Food+Home section had a feature article about using seeds in the kitchen. Written by Amanda Gold, the article recommends looking at seeds as a healthy and tasty addition to your diet, in savory and sweet applications. Always looking […]
Bowl of peppers from Thomas Campone Photography (via Flickr). CC BY-NC 2.0. When a bowl of beans or a bowl of soup needs some zing, or if I’m making a quesadilla in the middle of winter and don’t have any decent salsa, I open my freezer and reach for a jar labeled “Spicy Toltec BBQ […]
In late summer, when eggplant, tomatoes and basil are in season, one of my favorite quick dishes is something I have been calling “Basil Ghanouj.” That name, of course, is a play on the Middle Eastern classic baba ghanouj (also spelled “baba ganoush”). In the classic preparation, eggplant is roasted in a bed of coals […]
(Updated 11/9/16: new image, fixed broken links) Would you believe that someone has written a serious academic book about the history of ketchup? Andrew F. Smith’s “Pure Ketchup” tells the story of ketchup’s evolution from a wide variety of sauces to the sweet, tangy tomato condiment that we know today. Smith, a professor of culinary […]
The first zucchini have started to appear in Berkeley’s farmers market, though not in the diversity shown in the photo above (which I took last summer). One of my favorite ways to eat zucchini is as a herb-laced, cheese-studded fritter. The zucchini is grated, salted, rested, and then the moisture is squeezed. There are endless […]
Inspired by A Few Reservations‘ description of a spicy cauliflower dish that was part of a dinner at Delfina Pizzeria, I have been experimenting with roasted cauliflower salads over the last few weeks. I forgot to take pictures, but managed to remember how I made the best of the experiments. The cauliflower becomes sweeter and […]