morsels & sauces

In this  Cook Your Books  series, I had chosen 15 books to read in 2018 based on somewhat arbitrarily chosen categories; I failed. I failed not to read (I read a ton), but I failed to blog.  So I reignited the quest in 2019. My theory (bogus it might turn out to be) is that all 15 of these books will somehow connect to food.  And I plan to write about that food.   It turns out that these entries are a sort of long-form blog-post. So settle in.  This  first for 2019  installment is  a novel about anxiety. About a year ago, I sat around the dinner table with part of my family and I asked for four recommendations for book categories, and this (a book about anxiety) was one of them. And I have to tell you, outside of non-fiction, this was a tough one. A lot of fiction may include anxious characters, but not many where the anxiety rides front and center, but John Green's young adult novel, Turtles all the Way Down , does just tha...

This cookbook is not for the faint of heart.  In Maricel Presilla 's new cookbook,  Peppers of the Americas , one must be a serious connoisseur of peppers, either as a gardener or a cook. One does not dabble with this cookbook. Instead, one must commit. Do you want the history of this capsicum? Do you ache for a breakdown of pepper anatomy and heat? Do you long for pretty little naturalist drawings of calyx, flower, and seed, and then hope for well-shot, full-color photographs of hundreds of peppers? Do you need the Latin name, the approximate lengths, and a thoughtful catalogue of the growing season of each of those hundreds of peppers? Again, I ask of you, are you a serious connoisseur of peppers?  If you answered yes to even just one of those questions, then this just might be your new cookbook.  In fact, I think this is the perfect book for my friend at   Bat Barn Farm . He's a food geek, and this book is for geeks. Period. Presilla is the fi...

Can we talk about the moment that cherry tomatoes are having?  Be prepared to see a few more tomato recipes before the summer is through. Because, sweet jesus (or super sweet 100 , if you prefer), this has been a banner year for tomatoes in California, particularly for those of the minuscule kind. What about for you? Are your cherry tomatoes to die for? What is not always to die for in California is the corn. Being a Midwesterner by upbringing, I have certain standards when it comes to corn, and California corn does not always live up to these sweet-but-not-starchy, full-of-creamy-goodness expectations.  However, if you can buy the corn in the morning, shuck it in the afternoon, and have it grilled by evening, usually you can do alright, no matter what part of the country you find yourself in. This salad is one in a long line of recent salads I have been making (prepare to see more), in part because I have been bringing lunch to work. And I need to ensure t...

Black bean soup doesn't get the accolades it deserves. This unassuming little soup does what it needs to do--warm the bones on a fall afternoon--and then you go about your business. Little fanfare. Lots of flavor. Black bean soup can take as long as you would like: with dried black beans, this is a two-day affair. However, with canned black beans, you can have a quick cook. Further, black bean soup is naturally vegan (although, I wouldn't blame you if you threw some bacon in with the sofrito; truly I wouldn't!). Finally, you can spice it up any way you like it (did someone say fire-roasted tomatoes, ancho chile powder). Yet, for this particular recipe, I went with simple, traditional, and Cuban. No chiles beyond the requisite jalapeno. No fire-roasted tomatoes. Just beans, sofrito, stock, oregano, and lime crema. Recently, I received  ¡Cuba!: Recipes and Stories from the Cuban Kitchen   in the mail, and what a gorgeous little cookbook...

We are in May: the month of exhaustion for teachers and students alike. And in the midst of said exhaustion, a simple, beautiful, and flavorful salad seems just the ticket. Because I don't have energy for much else. Seriously. Do not expect a lot from an educator in May. I snapped up this bright and peppy cookbook a few months ago at my local used bookstore. Marked down to a mere fraction of the cost of a new cookbook (and without a spot, scratch, or dallop of sauce on it!), this book basically begged to be mine. What, with it's beautiful photographs, Middle Eastern recipes, and association with Ottolenghi, how could I deny it? Honey & Co. is the brain- and love-child of Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich, acclaimed chefs who opened a small restaurant in London in 2012 after having done their time with the famed Yotam Ottolenghi  (among others in their storied culinary upbringing). Srulovich writes that they wanted their restaurant to be "a noisy, cr...