California

Retro recipe: chocolate almond torte with chocolate honey frosting

18 May 2012

The first time I flipped open The California Heritage Cookbook, by the Junior League of Pasadena (Doubleday, 1976), it took me by surprise. Instead of the usual whimsy one tends to encounter in community cookbooks, I came across essays about California history, region by region. Chapters were divided among different parts of the state, with [...]

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I read it for the recipes

29 March 2012

Remember when cookbooks were collections of recipes? Today, as writers, cooks, and publishers march to the drumbeat of digital books, apps, video demonstrations, and narrative, it can feel quaint to pick up a book that tries to be nothing more than a collection of ideas about what to cook. I am guilty of adding to [...]

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Au revoir to all that, Chicago

8 February 2012

I remember my first winter in Chicago clearly. You see, I moved here one day in late December several years ago. Coming from California, I didn’t have the cold-weather jacket-gloves-scarf-hat routine down. I didn’t own appropriate footwear.  And yet I wanted to be sure I could walk to wherever I needed to go. My flimsy, [...]

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Pasta Postcards from San Francisco

22 August 2011

Anyone who’s tried to get in touch with me this year knows that it’s been a precarious task. What city am I in? What country am I in?  Where am I going next? There have been a few times that I’ve woken up and had to ask myself these questions. Being nomadic has its advantages. [...]

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Brain Food: Grilled Sardines

19 July 2011

When I was in preschool, I ate fish for breakfast. It’s not as strange as it sounds. At the time, my family lived in Davao, the main city on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. The fish in question were small, no bigger than an index finger. They were fried crisp, and you could eat [...]

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Ramp Spaghetti: adventures in recipe testing

16 May 2011

Fresh pasta recipes are not easy to write. In cookbooks, they demand a lot of real estate. There needs to be explanation on how to mix the dough, how to roll the dough into silky sheets, how to cut the sheets into fettuccine or shape them into agnolotti. Even with all of that information spelled [...]

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Q&A: Anne Zimmerman Discusses MFK Fisher and Food Writing

26 April 2011

I always have a few books on my nightstand. Many have been picked up and put down a few times but have yet to receive any real commitment from me. Part of the problem is that books like Anne’s arrive and get put on the top of the heap. And so those other books must [...]

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I Can Do Bread all By Myself

28 February 2011

Before I fell hard for cooking—and fall I did, for everything from coulis to fish fumet (both made regular appearances on my favorite show, Great Chefs, Great Cities)—I was into baking. Particularly bread baking. Ask my sister—I made her babysit my sourdough starter once. “Feed it with flour and water twice a day,” I instructed. [...]

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Italian Refried Beans

21 February 2011

Beige beans have never been flashy. A few years back, I would have called them healthy and left the topic alone. That is, until I sampled beans glossed with olive oil. These beans, one of the first things I ate at A16, forever changed my appreciation for—and expectation of—beige legumes. The beans, first cooked in [...]

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It’s Raining Lemons

28 December 2010

January and February are usually California’s dampest months. But this year, rain came early, flooding streets in San Diego and threatening mudslides in Marin before the first of the year. And yet, the local Meyer lemon crop seems to be doing fine. My mom’s small potted tree, which typically bears fewer than a dozen lime-sized [...]

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