Monthly Archives: February 2012

Pistachio and Blood Orange Torte

by


I first came across a version of the cake that evolved into Pistachio and Blood Orange Torte in Nigella Lawson’s HOW TO EAT. Three things grabbed me about the recipe–how simple it seemed, even for a pastry klutz like me, that it called for cooking oranges for two hours, and that it had no flour.

Two hours! Would the oranges be mush? Inquiring minds needed to know, but inquiring minds didn’t have two hours to spend watching oranges break down. Enter my friend, the pressure cooker.

<a href="”> Read More…

Simple Whole Roasted Fish – Part Deux

by

I learned to clean fish when I was nine-years old, taught by my father, practicing on the sunnies, perch and bass my brothers and I caught in rural Michigan.  Cleaning fish is a tripartite affair–scraping the scales off while grasping a slippery tail, gutting and removing the viscera, and cutting out the gills and fins, …

Spicy Chickpea Cakes with Romesco Sauce

by

After reading Robert Harris’s entertaining novel IMPERIUM about the Roman orator, essayist and politician Cicero, and his parlous ascendency to the position of consul in ancient Rome I assumed I’d gotten most of the salient details of his life.  I was wrong.  Pull up a plate of Spicy Chickpea Cakes with Romesco Sauce–it’s an interesting …