One of the most exciting cookbooks I’ve come across this year is Asha Gomez’s My Two Souths. Gomez spent her childhood in Kerala, at the southern tip of India. She learned to cook with her family there, and was often called upon to hand-grind spice mixes, reveling in the scents of classic South Indian spices like black…
Smoked Trout and Strawberry Salad with Sweet Cream Dressing
The strawberries have been a surprise of the most delightful kind. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I am a deeply lazy gardener. I never remember to water, so we set up an automatic system. I’m terrible about deadheading (as you can see in the photo below, with all that sprouted mustard in the top…
Fried Apples with Cinnamon
There’s nothing in the world like waking up to a beautiful, elaborate breakfast. I assume. Occasionally my sweetie brings me a Frontier breakfast burrito and orange juice in bed on special occasions, and I’ve had room service breakfast a few times. But for the most part, if I want an elaborate breakfast, there’s no button…
Almond-Crusted Fig and Raspberry Tart
I don’t really consider myself a baker. Dessert is not my forte; I feel more comfortable cooking savory food. The divide between “baker” and “cook” is a commonly understood one, so much so that Top Chef: Just Desserts contestant Rebecca confessed on a recent episode, “I can’t cook.” It sounded funny, but the judges knew…
Fig Plate
Sometimes it’s all about simplicity. Sometimes, the best cooking isn’t cooking at all. There are times when the best hing you can do is step back and let the food speak for itself. It’s fig season. Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, the Co-op – all have baskets of beautiful figs begging to come home with me….
Sour Cherries in Caramel Sauce
Yes. This is as delicious as it sounds. It came about simply enough: I got a sack of precious, rare sour cherries from the CSA. I wanted to use them in something simple but glorious, something that would show off their brilliance and not cover it up. Something, since it was midsummer hot, that did…
Any-Berry Summer Pudding
Once in a while, you find you have too much of a good thing. That happened to me a couple weeks ago, with berries. The CSA gave me beautiful strawberries, Sunflower Market had blackberries and raspberries on sale and blueberries REALLY on sale, and my favorite purveyor of unusual items at the Growers’ Market was selling black…
Spiced Plum Jam
Plums are not my favorite fruit. Even the best ones, eaten out of hand, don’t do much for me; to my taste, the skin is sour and the flesh insipid. However – as I learned years ago from a recipe for plum sorbet – a little home processing brings about a marvelous change. There is…
Quick Eats: Melon and Feta Salad
Apparently it’s not so uncommon nowadays, but I first heard of melon and feta together in Nigella Lawson’s book Forever Summer – recently re-released as Nigella Fresh. (A hardback copy of the original Forever Summer is listed on Amazon.com for the unlikely price of $7,607.21.) Nigella’s version is much more complex than mine – and,…
Nigella’s Coconut and Cherry Banana Muffins
Perhaps my most exciting holiday present this year was The Flavor Bible, a cookbook with no recipes. It’s more of a reference guide. The book is an alphabetical list of various ingredients (bananas, cardamom) and flavor profiles or cooking styles (Spanish cuisine, grilled dishes). Under each ingredient or style is a list of flavors that…