Month: June 2011

June 8, 2011

So in anticipation of today’s big stuff-a-thon, yesterday I ground a couple kinds of sausage meant to hang and cure into salami. But of course all of that pungent meat, fragrant with garlic and spices and the like, was impossible to resist once it came time to shake the magic dinner 8-ball.

June 7, 2011

Making the rounds in the garden, lately I’ve been thinning little heads of things like frisée, escarole, pan di zucchero, and radicchio so their brethren can expand to full size. I like to manage my thinning as attentively as I can; keeping track of the progress of various greens allows for using them at all the points of their growth cycle, from tiny sprouts to big fat heads and everything in between. Left too long, they get too crowded, but done right means more food from each bed. The work of the last few days has been to remove the last of the too-close small heads so the rest can grow up unimpeded. And since it was escarole’s turn, that led inevitably to this soup.

June 6, 2011

It’s funny how sometimes we randomly reach the critical mass needed to push us headlong into a new endeavor. Recently I was talking to some friends about their homemade bagels, and then I saw this post on a reader’s blog and it suddenly hit me that making bagels is just making rolls with some toroidal geometry and boiling thrown in. And the presence in the fridge of homemade lox and cream cheese provided all the impetus I could possibly have asked for to shove me face-first into the wonderful world of bagel making.

June 6, 2011

Last week I read about peony jelly, and coming as it did on the heels of my lilac ice cream, I was excited to give peonies a shot. Our peony grows right next to one of the lilacs that I ravaged to make the ice cream, so given the lamentably short period of lilacular splendor it’s nice to know that other flowers can be used for similarly elegant culinary purposes. I’m not quite mentally ready to make jelly, though–it’s more of a mid/late summer thing in my mind–and since the lilacs all crapped out before I got to make crème brûlée with them I figured that peonies would work pretty nicely in their place.

June 5, 2011

When I was in the Bay Area last weekend, I had one free evening that wasn’t taken up hanging out with my cousin and his lovely family and their friends (one of whom is a famous metal drummer with a movie star wife). I spent that evening with Derrick and his lovely wife Melissa, which included a special cameo from Sean without his no doubt lovely husband. I knew the eating was going to be good not only because they quite obviously know their food but because they both separately suggested that we meet at the same place: Contigo, an excellent tapas place in Noe valley.

June 3, 2011
June 3, 2011
June 2, 2011

My culinary spring fling of 2011 was with spruce. Last year I determined that this year would be the one in which I tackled edible conifers, and my initial nibblings have determined that spruce is by far the most interesting to me. They have a distinctly limey quality that piqued my desire to find persuasive local replacements for citrus (which is part of what fuels my continuing vinegar obsession). So I picked a ton of tender tips from a spot I pass frequently and set about converting them into various useful forms.

June 1, 2011

My most recent article is out today, and it offers a brief look at various low-tech and affordable alternatives to the fancy cooking gadgets that many restaurants use these days. Most of these techniques require very little special skill, and can greatly increase the number of delicacies that you no longer need to buy in stores. Check it out, and be inspired. Photo by Jennifer May; immersion circulator built by David Shaw from a design…

June 1, 2011

I just got back from California–LA and then San Fran–and because I took the redeye I am pretty knackered. But this is the one thousandth post I’ve written here, which I guess makes for a sort of anniversary.