Cream of Cauliflower Casserole with Cured Salmon

So I entered the Casserole Party this year. It was a bit of a last-minute decision: the same afternoon, I chatted with the annual cookoff's hostess Emily Farris on Let's Eat In. It was enough to persuade me to run home and rummage through the kitchen to come up with something fast. After all, that's what a casserole is best for, to combine whatever delicious things you have on hand in one dish. A casserole dish, to be exact. Well, I had a crisp head of orange cauliflower, and some home-cured salmon from my CSA stash. It seemed like a pretty good start.

Flatbread with Ramps, Coconut Milk & Green Curry

Make no mistake: food is trend-oriented. Each region has its own fixations; we recycle them once they're in season each year, and other times, toss them out to make way for newer trends. It's a monkey-see, monkey-eat philosophy, and one thing that's been made abundantly clear to me these past few years is that an unassuming, often-wild allium called ramps is definitely in, around here.

The Week Of Eating In Day One: Starting Off Slow

It's the first day of the Week of Eating In challenge, and I'm taking it easy like Sunday morning. Only it's Monday. You don't start skiing by tackling the super giant slalom, no, you keep to the bunny hill for a while (or in my case, never progress from that point, because you find that you don't like skiing much and have planted your face in the snow while getting on or off the ski left one too many times). So for a possibly frenzied week of cooking, in the midst of my book's release no less, I wanted to start off real simple.

Kimchee, Spinach and Goat Cheese Frittata

What is this, la-dee-da? It's a frittata. La-dee-da. No, it's really not la-dee-da, it's eggs, with pickled cabbage and spinach in it. Okay, well maybe the goat cheese is a little la-dee-dah, but it's used pretty sparingly. So the whole dish is most certainly not a fancy one. It's just what you call an omelet if it had never been flipped, so you don't have to master the art of French cooking like Julia Child and have that euphoric moment once you get the hang of flipping it right -- but it's euphoria eating it, all the same.

What’s Hotter: Spicy or Sweet? (call in to chat!)

The perfect date meal, you name it, go! This has been one of my favorite questions of 2009 (happy New Year, by the way!). Until recently, I may have asked the same friends to describe their dream dinners way too many times, but now on nearly every episode of Let's Eat In, I get the chance to put it to a great new pair of guests each week. From food writers, sex writers, musicians, and overall food fanatics, each awesome expert has had something equally inspiring to say. It's a bit of a research project, for no good reason but fun. Two of the most commonly voiced food choices I've heard overall on this have been devilishly spicy, or deliciously sweet. So now, I wonder, what is the most romance-worthy flavor profile: spicy or sweet?

Ginger Sesame Truffles

Is there something slightly devilish about making a great batch of sugary-sweet treats, for the sole purpose of bestowing upon others as "gifts"? Do you get that Grinch-like smirk, stirring a bowl of melting chocolate and butter, thinking, this is not all going in my belly, 'cept for one teeny bite? And then, does it dissolve just as quickly as those last slicks of butterfat when your first "sneak" lick from the spatula turns into two, then three, then five? Concluding with a sigh, that we're all in it together. 'Tis the season for overeating. Yours, mine and their ultra-rich holiday foods.