Fish Cakes
Before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1998, the closest I’d come to sampling a fish cake was the McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish. I say that without sarcasm. In 2000 I found work at a large university. My colleagues and I often lunched out. One of our haunts was a…
Rockfish Fillets with Panko
Rockfish fillets grace our dinner table almost weekly. Given this fact, you’d think I’d have written about them by now. The fact is I find rockfish and the entire whitefish tribe boring eating. Unrelated photo. My husband does not share this view. So I cook rockfish for him and eat…
The Frozen Fish Sandwich
I attended elementary school during the mid-1970’s. Hot lunches were served daily for a nominal price. The food was inedible, but nobody expected otherwise. Not my elementary school. The exception to this was Fridays, when fish sticks were served. These fish sticks came straight from a box. They were served…
Seafood Rillettes
Sometimes a recipe comes to you numerous times before you think to make it. Such was the case with seafood rillettes. As a nervous fish cook and somebody whose relationship to canned fish began and ended with tuna, seafood rillettes weren’t on my radar. Aiming for the casual indoor picnic…
Thai Shrimp Paste
Today’s recipe, for Thai Shrimp Paste, flouts a Major Food Blog Rule: Thou Shalt Not Post a Recipe Of Unknown Outcome. The thing is, shrimp paste is a summer project, requiring protracted periods of heat and warmth. Meaning now–May–is the time to get shrimp pasting. (Never mind that I write on…
Dungeness Crab
Forbidden fish and seafood include… all shellfish and crustacea.. The Askenazim have been much stricter in their practice of kashrut, whereas the Sephardim, even when deeply religious, are known to have been more tolerant and easygoing. Claudia Roden, The Book Of Jewish Food Lobsters are essentially big fucking bugs; they’re…
Dried Shrimp and Pickled Lettuce Salad
Occasionally you pick up a cookbook at random. You park it on your “to read” shelf with every intention of getting around to it. Meanwhile, various disasters transpire: dental work, feline illness, neighbor drama, spousal sickness, inept national leadership, world mayhem. Finally you open the cookbook. There, glimmering, is the…
Asian Fish Cakes
Many of you know the woman behind the IK hails from Detroit. She is of Eastern European extraction. Sadly, she has never traveled to Asia, though she hopes to, one fine day. It may be surmised from the above that the IK has no expertise in matters Asian, culinary or…
Nearly Nicoise Salad
The recipe authenticity argument is a deep, dark hole we’re not going down today. I mean, if you want to go, I won’t stop you, but you’re going alone. Suffice to say the IK is not remotely qualified to call her salads “Nicoise.” She’s never visited Nice, for starters. People who…
Kitchen Note: 7/13. Cortisone Shot
“Your x-rays look fine,” the physician assistant said. “No arthritis.” Saying an x-ray of my knee looks good is akin to saying the surface of the ocean appears calm. Then National G or some other science show, narrated by a fellow with a plummy Oxford accent, sends a pile of…