The preparation for this dish must begin a month in advance, unless you already have a jar of preserved lemons lying around. The lemons are preserved in water and salt with a layer of oil on top, and for the first week you must shake the jar daily to redistribute the salt. After that, the […]

This month, I am hosting Sugar High Friday, a traveling event that was originally created by Jennifer of The Domestic Goddess. Last month, Johanna of The Passionate Cook had the wonderful idea of inviting us all to make chocolate truffles, and oh, my, did everyone produce some tasty looking treats. In fact, they were so […]

It was hard, trying to figure out what to do for Sugar High Friday #25: Truffles. After all, we all know how to make truffles – either you throw together a ganache and roll it in something, then keep it in the fridge, or you take out your chocolate molds and create chocolate shells into […]

These candies are what Snickers bars ought to be – soft, salty caramel with the luscious crunch of cocoa nibs, topped with almond butter nougat, and coated with dark, high-quality chocolate. If I’m feeling very nice indeed, I will make boxes of these to give away for the holidays. Buying candy at the store is […]

I keep seeing these tiny, adorable clams in the Chinatown fishmarkets whenever I’m out shopping around there. They live in vast bins, not far from the live frogs and periwinkles that I keep meaning to learn how to prepare. I have this thing about eating cute things. I like doing it. If I see something […]

The bird in the top photo was found in my parents’ house by the window, terrified, unable to escape. He was so scared that when we lifted him up with the pool net and carried him outside, he didn’t move at all. You can see how close he let me get to him in order […]

This is my entry for The Spice is Right VIII: Frankenstein’s Monster, where we are creating culinary mash-ups using spices from one cuisine in recipes or with techniques from another. Here, I have used Sichuan peppercorns to add a tingle to a bowl of classically American shrimp chowder. The deadline to post your entries is […]

I met John Scharffenberger last Thursday. Yes, one of the founders of Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker. I passed by my local chocolate cafe, The Chocolate Room, that afternoon, only to notice a sign in the window saying that John Scharffenberger would be there that evening to give a talk and sign copies of his new […]

Ivonne from Cream Puffs in Venice and Orchidea from Viaggi & Sapori are hosting a one-time event called Dishes of Comfort. They ask us to write about something we consider comfort food, one of the special dishes that meant a lot to us when we were young. My grandmother has a fairly limited culinary repertoire. […]

October is over, Halloween has passed, and pumpkins are quickly going out of style. It’s hard to find tasty baby pumpkins, anyway, so these function more as cute bowls than anything else. But the meatballs were absolutely delicious, and the mildly intriguing taste of the squid ink pasta balanced well with them. Kids in particular […]

The Queen of Sheba was Solomon’s only match, as rich and wise as he, or more. Legend has it that it was she who told him of the lost vessel of blessed light that cast peace on anyone who stood in its presence, which became the greatest of his treasures. William Butler Yeats imagined the […]

When Rose and I got together a few days after our apple picking excursion, we decided to experiment with some of the apples. The rosemary currant shortbread is her adaptation of a shortbread recipe she found on Epicurious. Back when we were dating, she and I made rosemary chocolate truffles together; a love for rosemary […]