At the 2016 International Food Blogger Conference, a sample from the California Fig Advisory Board reminded me of an X File. Not the famous X-Files TV show, but something far less mysterious and far more delicious. The X file that I remembered is about an X-shaped cookie for which I have a file on my computer. […]
Twice-Baked Potatoes with North African Spices
A few months back, I read a post from the Nerds with Knives blog about Yotam Ottolenghi’s Chermoula Roasted Eggplant. The recipe looked great — roasted eggplant drenched with a piquant spice paste (the chermoula) — and since it was eggplant season, I tried it a few times. Finding the right eggplant proved challenging, but when I found […]
Vegetable and Chickpea Stew with Green Olives and Rosemary
A great stew is a balance between flavors and textures, and ideally the end result is greater than the sum of the parts. One of my favorites is a French-influenced vegetable stew that I have been tinkering with for a few months. It has sweet squash, mellow potatoes, piney rosemary, and sharp green olives, with a […]
Summery Pseudo Stew of Zucchini, Tomatillos and Corn
Summer produce won’t be around much longer, so I’ve been eating summer specialties as much as possible. Last Sunday, my focus was zucchini, tomatillos and sweet corn, which I combined in a “pseudo stew.” I’m calling it a “pseudo stew” because it was too liquid to eat on a plate, not thin enough to be […]
Recipe: Simple Macaroni and Cheese
Almost exactly one year ago, there was some commotion in my tiny corner of the Twitterverse about a New York Times recipe from Julia Moskin for macaroni and cheese. There are a zillion mac and cheese recipes, so what caused the commotion? Uncooked macaroni. The recipe calls for uncooked macaroni to be mixed with milk, […]
Recipe: Baked Tofu
One of my favorite things to cook is also one of the most unphotogenic dishes I know: the savory baked tofu from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant. Although it has a monotone and bland brown hue, its taste is much more exciting: tofu’s subtle flavor in the background, and a foreground of soy sauce, ginger, garlic, […]
Recipe: Seed and Oat Cakes
(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 […]
Recipe: Smoky-Spicy Glaze
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 […]
Oat Bread Revisited
I have been baking bread for a long time, but never with a great amount of intensity (though during one period in the 90s I was baking frequently and had a personal “bread museum” that chronicled my efforts). In the early years, general cookbooks like The New Laurel’s Kitchen were my teacher, but their basic […]
A War Bread in a Modern Cookbook: Oat Bread
As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been baking a “war bread” for quite a while. My long-time favorite one-day bread is the oat bread in Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. The original recipe is simple, delicious and nutritious, being a single-day bread that is enriched with rolled oats and oat bran. By […]