morsels & sauces

In this  Cook Your Books  series, I have chosen 15 books to read in 2017 based on somewhat arbitrarily chosen categories. 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.  And it turns out that these entries are a sort of long-form blog-post. So settle in. This sixth installment is a book published this year . No doubt, I feel a kinship to Mark Twain. The summer of 1984, I went to  Hannibal, Missouri , with my family. One hundred miles north of St. Louis, Hannibal boasts being the boyhood home to Mark Twain and the inspiration for Tom Sawyer's spelunking adventures and picket fence white washing and for Huck Finn's hogshead barrel sleeping. It was also the site of numerous family and school trips. But one trip stands out in particular. Instructed to buy one souvenir, I lingered over plastic trinkets and snow globes and novelty spoons, I am sure. But something in me wa...

Fifteen years ago, I came to the Bay Area for the first time. The husband and I lived in two different states (Utah and Colorado, respectively), and he invited me to California for what would be my first of many Thanksgiving dinners with his family. Of course, at the time, I didn't know that. I was a bundle of nerves, wanting to impress his family. I spoke little, was so polite I did not ask to eat any breakfast or lunch on Thanksgiving day. I minded all of my manners. I even sent a thank you note to his parents for their hospitality. And for years, his parents were concerned that I was "too nice." Nope.  Just terrified. During that first trip (ever!) to San Francisco and the East Bay, the then boyfriend and I did many of the requisite tourist activities, including but not limited to the Golden Gate Bridge, Baker Beach, and the Cliff House. It also included cat-sitting a 21 year-old-feline, driving around in a borrowed black Volkswagen beetle, attending a con...

Okay, people.  This salad hardly needs a recipe. The title of the salad pretty much says it all. But I am still handing this one over to you because of what  Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich (chefs and cookbook writers extraordinaire) do to the goat cheese. They mix it with heavy cream.   Yes,  more  dairy. And in doing so, they get to create these little clouds of cheesiness goodness that when added to the sweet figs, the acidic lemon, the crisp lettuce, the crunchy pistachios, and the thick honey--well, this salad becomes much, much more than the sum of its parts.  My mouth is watering now as I type this. Perfect for a crisp autumn day, this salad makes a satisfying lunch or a sweet starter to a great meal. These figs are part of the plethora of fruit that one of the parents at my school has been bringing to the faculty lounge. From pears to plums, from apples to figs, we are luxuriating in the plenty of the orchards...

I have always had a sweet tooth. I don't remember a time when I didn't want cake before  dinner. But we now know that sugar could well be killing us . What's an avowed sweets craver to do? Enter Samantha Seneviratne.  The New Sugar and Spice , her first cookbook, is no low-sugar desserts invective. Instead, it's a cookbook that outright celebrates dessert in all its sugary glory. However, she balances all that sweet with an affection for cinnamon, black pepper, ginger, cloves, and herbs. She argues that we should have our cake, no doubt eat it too, but also ensure that we're not overwhelmed with sugar blandness. Desserts should be returned to a nuanced complexity wherein sugar plays a superb supporting role. Her blog Love, Cake  is a joy, for her photographs are high contrast, high beauty and her writing is delightful. Such expectations carry over into this cookbook, including her introduction where she marries memories of her deceased brother to an ov...

Last night, the husband, his mom, one of his dads, and I sat in the backyard talking of television shows and books and cell phone plans (hey, not all of it was inspiring), sipping a ros é, and munching on an over-abundant crudit é  platter. (I have issues--most of which involve my great fear that there will not be enough food for our guests. Not once have we ever run out of food, so I know that this is an unfounded fear.) This morning, the husband shuttled his mother to the airport so she could fly back to New York, pack her belongings, and move next week to Florida.  However, last night was about settling in and diving deeper into our conversations (and beyond the benefits of Sprint vs. AT&T vs. T-Mobile). As darkness fell and it got much cooler outside, we moved indoors to the couch and the floor, where I listened as the husband and his family reminisced over the batty woman who owned the food co-op distribution space, a cross-state move with a truck that could g...