From the monthly archives:
Up until this summer, my experience with figs has primarily been in the form of the Fig Newton. Albeit a delicious treat, Fig Newtons really don’t give justice to the fresh Black Mission and Kadota figs that can be found at the local farmer’s market. After begrudgingly forking out $4 for a pint last weekend, [...]
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After Jillian and I attended an introductory canning class, we were ready to try it ourselves and take the canning world by storm. We settled on making a few different varieties of jam, knowing that if all went well the experiment could double as Christmas presents to our friends and family. First a few tips [...]
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Sometimes there’s nothing more frustrating than having to chop a bunch of vegetables for a recipe – especially when they are of the tear-inducing variety (ehem, onions). I love this technique because it makes chopping, dicing or mincing onions a lot less painless. It takes a bit of practice, but once you’ve got it down, [...]
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At the Marin farmer’s market on Sunday, I stopped dead in my tracks when I passed some beautiful, glossy, and almost enchanting globe eggplants sitting coyly in the shade. I still had a bad taste in mouth (literally and figuratively!) from having utterly failed at making baba ganoush the weekend past. But, at $1.50 a [...]
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With the plethora of cooking classes offered in the Bay Area, it is hard to decide which to attend. There are fancy French ones with menus and ingredients you can’t pronounce but surely would impress even the best cooks out there, baking and dessert classes where you go for a sugar overload and then the [...]
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There’s something downright sexy and mysterious about the deep purple sheen of a late-summer eggplant. Just as mysterious – how to cook the darn thing so it doesn’t taste like rubber, grease or kitchen sponge! A lot depends on what you want to make and what type of eggplant you use. I’ve mostly been using [...]
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Blanching, in my humble opinion, has a terrible name that conjures up anything but delicious tasting food. But fear not, it’s a quick and easy technique. It’s great for bringing the vibrant green color out of your green beans, releasing the bitter acids stored in broccoli, loosening tomato, peach or almond skins and killing bacteria [...]
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Up until my culinary awakening, BBQ sauce came bottled from the grocery store. But thanks to Michael Pollan I took a peak at the label of my go-to sauce and learned that the main ingredients included high fructose corn syrup and modified corn starch. Determined not to ban this staple from my kitchen, I [...]
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Inspired by Bon Appetit’s Cucumber Gimlets
Nothing says summer like these gimlets. They are refreshing, not too sweet and are bound to impress your guests. There is a bit of prep work involved for the cucumbers but the result is a sublime cocktail that is worth the effort.
5 cucumbers, peeled and coarsely chopped
4-6 limes, juiced
32 oz. [...]
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Don’t let the simple design of this trusty little lemon reamer fool you. Even though it looks like a something a 1950’s housewife would have stowed away in her kitchen, it does a pretty amazing job of draining every last bit of juice out of a lemon, lime or orange. To get the most out [...]
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