morsels & sauces

In a last hurrah to summer and, perhaps, even to the fall, I present to you this lovely tomato tarte tatin. And I wistfully bid farewell to tomatoes, or at least good ones, until next July. In the meantime, let's just drink Pimms Cups with cucumbers (probably from the hothouse) with good friends, cook from fun cookbooks, and settle in for the winter. This little inspiration comes from my latest acquisition, The Cottage Kitchen cookbook from Marte Marie Forsberg . Forsberg is one hell of a photographer (seriously, if you didn't click on her link in the previous sentence, do so now.  I'll wait.)--her images are lush and abundant and inviting and casual and snug--something like a Dutch Renaissance painting. Oh, I want to visit her cottage in England. I want her to make me dinner. I want her to photograph said dinner. Sigh . Her cookbook is equally lush. And it gives the air of casualness, but I am not going to lie to you. It is extravagant. I want to eat Foie...

Do you really need a recipe for this salad? Not really. Do you sometimes need a nudge to eat better for yourself than you have been? Probably. Or at least I know I sometimes do. Consider this your nudge. This Cobb Salad from the fine folks at Food52  claims to be a rebellious kiss off to the more traditional Cobb Salad. And sure, perhaps it is. Normally a classic Cobb Salad would have tomatoes, chicken (or turkey), bacon, and iceberg lettuce. So, I suppose this is a nice riff on the Cobb Salad, wherein the beets stand in for all things meat based, olives make a briny appearance, and the dressing has eggs blended right into it, rather than just having your hard-boiled eggs scattered across the top of your shredded lettuce and cubed chicken.  Bonus:  The beets get their own vinegar infusion during the steaming process. So while they are not truly pickled beets (a favorite around these here parts), they have a little zing to them. Which I always appreciate. ...

For many of you out there, the thought of turning on the oven makes you almost swoon. In fact, some of you are already swooning because of the heat. If this is you, bookmark this recipe and come back to it this fall when the eggplants are beginning to shrivel on the plant but are still quite good and when the kale is a little wilty but still edible. Or better yet, defy the heat and make this tonight: but put it inside a Campfire Foil Pack  and toss this on the grill (or even better yet, a campfire). However, in the Bay Area, we are getting the August fog, that wall of cool, wet weather that makes me almost shiver, not from the cold, but in delight. In fact, tonight as we were driving (to Target for cat litter and Kleenex if you must know the boring details of my daily life), the wall of fog was firmly planted just on the edge of the Bay at the Oakland border. It will creep in, not on little cat's feet as Carl Sandburg suggested , but in puffs ...

I present to you: Potato Salad. That said, it's a pretty special potato salad with smoked trout and piquant arugula, but potato salad. I find that I have many disparate thoughts about this potato salad, and I lack the inclination (and talent) today to string together these thoughts into something coherent and clever.  Instead, I present to you a bullet-point list about a savory, peppery and smoky potato salad that I urge you to give a try should you have the inclination (and time). Deborah Madison (our cookbook's author) tells the story of finding smoked albacore at her local farmer's market. I had smoked trout, instead. Indeed, smoked trout is a boon. Not only is it caramelized and earthy-sweet-smokey, but it is one of those treats with lovely, pleasant memories associated with it. Earlier, I wrote an homage to a friend , who often served smoked trout before a massive Canadian thanksgiving feast. Before the meal, we would all crowd on his and his wife's litt...

In a move that should surprise exactly no one, I bought the latest in Ottolenghi cookbooks,  Plenty More . In fact, I pre-ordered it, and I have been cooking from it non-stop since its arrival two months ago. This cookbook has much going for it. Not only is it yet another in a slew of vegetarian cookbooks that I have come to love, but it is also the fourth in (what I hope to be a much longer) line of wonderful Ottolenghi cookbooks. It's true. I like the rest of the world am fully buckled onto the Ottolenghi bandwagon.  However, it is for good reason. His recipes are surprising in their flavor profiles, his meals are fresh and satisfying, and (let's face it), he's a darned good writer (not only of recipes but of headnotes). In fact, in the headnote of this very recipe, Ottolenghi reports that fennel is resplendent . Resplendent!   That's a lot of praise for a mere vegetable that grows on the side of the road 'round these here parts. And indeed, if you fin...

I am on a Deborah Madison kick. And for good reason. Next weekend, as part of the let's-make-my-birthday-last-a-full-month edict that I issued in the household, we're headed to Greens (the restaurant once under Madison's tutelage).  I have loved this cookbook well and for quite some time (almost 17 years), but these days I don't seem to cook from it often enough (in fact, I have only posted recipes here and here ). Certainly, I have turned to other delightful books by Madison, but it does feel nice to land back home here with one of my favorites. Much has changed in these past two decades since I acquired this book (I am no longer a vegetarian, I am not afraid to cook a recipe with a long list of ingredients or steps (although this one has neither), I know what a garlic clove looks like), but coming back to this book, with its dog-eared pages and its curving and stained cover, is lovely on this first day of fall.  So, here I am 40, turning the pages i...

I do love Deborah Madison's massively informative cookbook,  Vegetable Literacy ,  even though have posted about it only  once . It is chock full of inspiring information, and in this age of marrying informed gardening, thoughtful cooking with delightful eating, it's a rich cookbook to have on one's shelf.* *I guess I find this book very, um, informative, given that I have used the adjective, noun, and attributive verb form of "inform." In this section on the nightshade family, Madison writes a lovely essay on peppers and chiles (reminding us that "the word for the hot pepper is chile , and the name of the dish of meat seasoned with hot peppers is c hili"). In addition to detailing the Scoville scale wherein chiles and peppers are ranked according to heat units, Madison talks about the terroir of the pepper, much like one would for wine. Too little water, a little more sun, and your peppers from the same mother plant might act quite differe...