This ice cream flavor is an ode to sticking cloves in oranges around Christmastime. They turn out looking a little funny, and it feels a little bit voodoo doll-like doing it, but it’s one of those wholesome childhood traditions, and it makes the room smell good. Like orange and spice, and everything nice. This tastes good, too.
Good morning, turkey-filled, shop-till-you-dropped long weekenders! Wake up and smell the sizzling parsnips. (It’s a really good smell.) It’s a good week for simple, seasonal cooking. But that doesn’t mean the food has to be boring or predictable.
I’m back in the States just in time for the most American holiday of them all: Thanksgiving! Where’d I go? Please forgive the week-long break from blogging — I took off in a rush for Australia, to attend a very important friend (VIF) Jordan’s wedding in Melbourne. It was a blast. But now I’m ready to cook a grand Thanksgiving feast… another one, that is. Shortly beforehand, I got together with Rebecca and Max from Working Class Foodies for a … Read More
Few vegetables have come such a long way in public opinion in my lifetime as the Brussels sprout. As a kid, it was one of the most despised foods one could deign to eat, grown-up or not. Now, twenty years or so later, it accompanies chops and half-chickens on so many restaurant plates, and at a recent Thanksgiving-themed potluck dinner, it was the first vegetable side to be cleared up by the crowd (while the broccoli, another not-so-kid-approved food, was … Read More
If there was one thing you could eat every day, for the rest of the days of your life, it probably wouldn’t be arugula. If asked to name a potato preference, sweet ones would rarely take the cake. I’m going to wager that one’s favorite pasta or starch substance isn’t typically gnocchi. And when you feel like a nut, hazelnut isn’t the first type that springs to mind. Yet in this dish of culinary underdogs, there’s another unsung aspect about the ingredients: these … Read More
Forgive the excessively esoteric sound of this dish’s name. I had tried coming up with other things to call it: Roasted Cauliflower and Broccoli and Braised Broccoli and Cauliflower Greens with Navy Beans and Creamed Potatoes? Too long. White Cauliflower, Cheddar Cauliflower, Broccoli and Their Combined Greens Braised with Navy Beans and Roasted Red Pepper and Served on Creamy, Truffled, Mashed Fingerling Potatoes? Too specific. Stuff That I Got From My CSA This Week, Cooked and Piled Ceremoniously Together on a Plate? That … Read More
I do love a good fool. Not the kind that walks on two legs (or tries to), but a gag, a practical joke, and especially when it has to do with food. Like translucent off-white cubes of soft-cooked celeriac instead of tofu bobbing in an otherwise traditional miso soup. It’s a culinary deception, and I think it’s in good faith because the soup is still delicious, despite it all.
A stack of new cookbooks sits on my coffee table, and I can’t put them down. I’ve got pickling books, a bread book, an Italian book and a Japanese homestyle cookbook. It’s all very overwhelming, but I’m taking them one at a time. So after pickling some lotus root, gratineeing some cauliflower, and baking a savory loaf of bread, I closed them and looked at my leftover ingredients. A trip to the market for seafood, and a glance at a chicken and sake … Read More
Another soup, is it? Yes, indeed. Sometimes you just gotta do — and cook — what feels right. And spending this past gusty weekend sniffing and sneezing beneath scarves and wearing sweats around the apartment just spelled “soup’s on” to me. Not only is hot soup therapeutic to eat, but I wouldn’t be the first one to say that breathing in the fragrant steam of something gently simmering in the kitchen for an entire afternoon is a good way to … Read More
I once ordered a stack of “harvest pancakes” from the menu of a small diner. They came to my table beautifully browned, light and fluffy, and studded with dried, sweetened cranberries and kernels of canned corn. Well, it’s “harvest time” now, and instead of reaching for these preserved legacies of previous ones, I’ll make use of the fresh bounty, with tart cranberries just in season and sweet corn on its last ears of the year.