Brined 
Canned 
Confit 
fermented 
Infused 
Pickled Easy Scallion Kimchee
Loyal readers–thank you, by the way, how amazing to even write those words–may have noted my fondness for fiery foods, a preference John doesn’t entirely share. Moderately spicy foods are okay with him, but when I dig into the Chinese hot mustard, peppers scoring off the Scoville charts, and dishes…
Corned Beef Brisket After Jane Grigson
Before discussing today’s recipe, it is only fair to touch on the last post, wherein I ranted and raved about my failed attempt to enroll in an identity theft protection program. This was occasioned by the hacking of my former employer’s antiquated computer system. Alas, attempts to protect my identity…
Bacon
If one considers a bagel with lox and cream cheese breakfast nirvana, it’s hard to understand the fuss over bacon.The current trend of pairing bacon with foods commonly considered dessert, like ice cream or chocolate bars, doesn’t help matters. In fact, some of us find it nauseating. When one considers…
Lamb Tagine with Preserved Lemon
WordPress bloggers have the instantaneous ability to check reader stats just by logging in.The first page we see on the “back end”–the dashboard–is a graph of blue bars whose relative heights indicate how many people hang around on a given day. So far I’ve managed to avoid constant checking, a behavior…
Preserved Lemons
So, are we having fun yet? Indeed we are. Here at the IK we’ve spent the past two weeks and much of our savings flying about California. We were ill-assisted by an airline team whose experience with wheelchair users was minimal, an accessible van rental agency who left the…
Duck Confit
Given the hugely happy response to cheese biscuits (thank you!), it’s tempting to skip writing about duck. I’m not sure why duck makes people nervous, but it does. Tell people you make confit at home and get funny looks. Here is your intrepid author, reflected in her kitchen window at 7am this…
Japanese Rice Bowl
When I moved to California in 1985, it was rather like being dropped on Mars. Everything–the landscape, the weather, even the English people spoke–was different. I wandered around in a state of perpetual culture shock. The food was different, too. I’d never seen, much less tasted, authentic Chinese, Mexican, or Vietnamese…
Hot Pepper Sauce: A Ghost Recipe
All cooks save recipes. It can be a peculiar pastime. For every two dozen recipes stuffed into a folder or box or computerized whatnot, one might slide into regular rotation. And that recipe often ends up so altered over time–the onions becoming scallions, the tomato sauce morphing into paste, the…
Sourdough Scones
The IK not a news site. Nor am I a pundit. That said, blithely nattering on about sourdough scones after a week like the one we’re concluding feels heartless indeed. So, let us acknowledge what a hell of a week we’ve had, as a world, as a nation, as individuals. In…
Summer Fruit Cordials
I love to drink. The above sentence is a rule-breaker. Grammarians frown on beginning sentences with “I”. The anti-temperance league frowns on drinking. So do the D.A.R.E. folks, who were tabling outside the market where I bought bourbon this morning. And admitting a fondness for alcohol is unseemly, particularly if…