Only a handful of cooking techniques are really foolproof. Roasting squash is one of them. To screw it up you have to throw the squash in the oven, drive away in your car, and never come back. Roasted Squash with Sage Pesto is only slightly more complicated. You add stuff to a blender, pulse a …
Rated Mature: Sautéed chicken livers with bacon, pine nuts, currants and chicory salad
Liver. Old skewl, as my daughter Roxanne would say, wrinkling her nose and shaking her head, very old skewl. Strange old people food. Writing about liver’s a challenge. No other common food pairs exquisite flavor with such dreadful PR. (I said common, so kidneys and brains don’t count.) Do you try to drag chicken liver’s …
Simple Sauce, Simple Eggplant Parmesan
This post had so many potential titles–Deep Purple, Heart of Darkness, Purple Monster–all inspired by this week’s recipe of Simple Eggplant Parmesan, and the challenge of photographing dark eggplants. My favorite was from the great American writer Annie Proulx, who once depicted a character’s nocturnal torment as a “descent into an aubergine nightmare.” An aubergine nightmare. …
Cast Irony: Salt-Seared Skirt Steak with Kitchen Sink Steak Sauce
When you’re young and stupid and starting out and you don’t have much money (all accurate descriptors of myself at 22) you generally have two choices in stove-top hardware – thin aluminum or cast iron. I made the wrong choice. I bought aluminum, and then could never figure out why my efforts to reproduce the sautéed …
Aqua Culture and Labor Day Grilled Clams
On a post about Labor Day weekend it seems appropriate to step back and give you a glimpse of the people behind the food. Herewith, a taste of our visit to the Woodbury Shellfish aquaculture grant in Wellfleet. Barbara and Patrick Woodbury are the sort of people you almost never hear about unless you’re in …
Salad Daze – Summer Tomatoes with Grilled Corn and Barley
Is there anyone on the planet who waits longer for their tomatoes than the nightshade gourmands of New England? I’m sure Scandinavians have to muster even greater patience than New Englanders, but are Scandinavians really into tomatoes? Evidence suggests they pine for beets and lingonberries and reindeer blood. National Geographic scientists billeted in the arctic …
The Great White Hope: Almond – Grape Gazpacho with Smoked Bluefish
Tomato gazpacho just doesn’t do it for me. Over the years I’ve tried to love it, and each time a little voice in my head says, You don’t need to do this again. I love the idea of tomato gazpacho–fresh tomatoes, red onion, celery, peppers, a splash of acid in the form of red-wine …
Back to Paris – Potted Peppers
Some weeks ago I wrote about a spring visit to Paris where our son Oliver and I had a great meal at Chez Janou. In iconic French fashion a nearby blackboard listed daily specials, including an hors d’oeuvre of Poivrons grillées au feta. Grilled peppers with feta. Sounded straightforward, simple. Okay, I could go with …
Drowning, Not Swimming – Striped Bass Poached in Olive Oil
Some years back Jody and I signed on to attend an Oldways conference in Crete. Before we left people kept taking us aside. “Greek food, you know about it, right?” Dramatic pause. “It’s terrible! Everything is SWIMMING in olive oil.” Cue pitying gaze. This is the point where I’m expected to observe that while Greek …
You say pistou, I say pestle
Okay, you were expecting a disquisition on Potted Peppers this week. I’m sorry, but for technical reasons we’ve had to postpone it. In the meantime, console yourself with these Mussels with Pistou instead. We’ll get the Potted Peppers out in a few weeks. All things come to those who wait. In April I met our …
The Garum Factory 