morsels & sauces

A colleague of mine recommended this cookbook, and as I have attested , I love soup. How could I pass up another cookbook devoted to soup? Especially a vegetarian cookbook devoted to soup? Yet the irony is that while I bought the book for the soup, the first recipe I made was for non-soup. I had eggs. I had potatoes. I needed to use both. So Spanish tortilla became a siren sound, and here we are. You might recognize the name Anna Thomas, as she also wrote Vegetarian Epicure   (the bible for vegetarians in the 70s written while Thomas herself was in college)   and The New Vegetarian Epicure. Back in my working in the bookstore days, I shelved both of those books many a times--even in Salt Lake City in the 90s, these vegetarian tomes were hard to keep on the shelf. What's even more fun about Thomas is that in addition to being an accomplished cookbook author, she is also an Oscar-nominated screenwriter and acclaimed film producer--her most famous film being,...

Recently, I became indebted to some wonderful people, and I needed to pass on a small token of my appreciation. What's a better bit of thanks than a loaf of bread? A loaf of bread with cream cheese. How about a loaf of pumpkin bread with cream cheese? And so here we are, relishing the glory of bread, glorious bread, with pumpkin and cream cheese. Greg Patent, our book's author, won second place in the junior division of the Pilsbury Bake-Off, and ever since, he has been baking up a storm. As an adult he became a contributing editor to Cooking Light magazine; in 2002 Patent published this gem of a cookbook where he pored over nearly two centuries worth of American recipes in order to document America's relationship with the baked good. Admittedly, this cookbook has been one of hit and miss for me. I suspect that because this cookbook is a bit on the more traditional side (and I attest that I am not much of a baker (what, with the measuring and all)) that ...

And so it goes as it has gone the past four years: Some Thanksgiving Day Gratitude . In no particular order, this is what I have to be grateful for this year-- (In delightful news, many of these are repeats from last year.) 1.  Good friends: While I have no idea who these fine people are in the picture, this is from a trip to the Parkway Theater to watch World Cup soccer with two friends in the Bay Area (who were seated beside us, not in front of us). This past weekend, I was with my mom, and we were talking about friends. I admitted, happily, that my friendships here in my home in California are as wonderful as those I have had in Illinois, Ohio, Utah, and Colorado. I am so grateful to have these friends in my life--and some I have not seen in years, as evidenced by a trip to Utah, where immediately I felt known by and felt like I knew my dear friends. Yes, marriages and children and jobs that pay more than minimum wage and houses have happened. But the friendship ...

So, the husband turned a prime number in age. We have been meaning to go out for prime rib* in celebration, but life seems to have other plans for us. As in many, big other plans. Those plans include an impromptu trip back to Salt Lake City (a story for another day) and the preparation for a trip to Illinois to see the family. However, to celebrate the husband's entrance into the prime of his life (or at least a year of it), I made him a birthday breakfast, which featured these lovely biscuits. * I am not a huge fan of prime rib, but I am willing to at least go to a steakhouse in honor of entering a prime number year and order a hell of a salad.  These are the sacrifices one makes for marriage. Last month, I happened upon this cookbook while wandering the lovely Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino,  and I snapped it up. While Karen Mordechai and (what seems like delightful) company present a whole host of lovely menus in honor of the spur-of-the-moment gathering of s...

Darn.  This picture is a little blurrier than I would like.  Ah, but isn't the quince a gorgeous color? I love quinces. Pretty much, I love everything about them. Their name (that beautiful q ), their color, their smell, and their taste. I love their history--some even say that they were the "golden apple" of Paris-Aphrodite fame or the ever-tempting apple of garden of paradise lore. I love that they can keep for a while, so if you buy a bunch, you can leave them to sit in a bowl on the kitchen table and they make the whole house smell rosy and sweet and autumnal. Yep, I love quinces. This little dessert is a simple one, and one you (apparently, as I did) can forget about. I guess I need to chalk its forgiving nature up to that catalogue of quince attributes to love. The quince, which I plan to feature again soon in the form of lamb and quince tagine , can generally be found from October to February. And when you find them, snap them up. Because March is ou...

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine recommended this book,  The Everlasting Meal . It has since become one of my favorite works of food writing*, and I am not alone; in fact, The New Yorker  loved it as much as I do and conducted a lovely interview with Tamar Adler once her book was presented in paperback. The book combines poetic meditations with long form recipes (those that become intertwined with the stories she tells) with a sprinkling of some separated "how to" recipes. *If you're looking for a great gift for the foodie in your life, I recommend this book wholeheartedly. Recently, in the CSA box we were presented with a giant bunch of turnips, a bundle of chard, and one of arugula. We also had a bag of dried cannellini beans. Using Chez Panisse (where Adler once cooked) and Adler 's book, I turned to the process of making wilted greens and cannellini beans, a simple supper that extended into a week of lunches and eventually into a Friday night s...

It's the season of the squash; as such, I have been trying to stay atop the weekly arrival of a squash in the CSA box.  Admittedly, I am behind.  I won't tell you how behind, but let's just say there is only so much squash that two people can eat in a week.  I have wrapped it in pastry , roasted it with dates and thyme , and now folded it into soup.  I have two bags of cut squash in my freezer.  And I fear that there will be more squash in this week's CSA box.  It is a founded fear. This recipe hails from a lovely cookbook-- Ancient Grains for Modern Meals --and to qualify this soup for the cookbook, Maria Speck simply adds oatmeal to this soup, which thickens the soup nicely.  Thus inspired, I have recently taken to adding oatmeal (raw, believe it or not, but cooked would be equally yummy) to my morning smoothie.  It adds only a modicum of thickening, but more importantly it adds all the good stuff we know oatmeal can d...