Seitan at home
Prior to encountering seitan in How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, on page 668–when Bittman says everything, he means it–I’d met it once before, in a Chinese restaurant on University Avenue in Berkeley, California. (The name of this place eludes me. Nor could I find it on the net.) Technically it…
Roast Peppers Preserved Under Oil
I began writing this post two weeks ago. The world was a completely different place then. Here is a link to agencies assisting Afghan refugees, from the New York Times. Here is a link to help those impacted by the earthquake in Haiti, from National Public Radio. — It’s late…
Elegant Egg Salad Sandwich Savoury
Savouries, like the Foot Guard Uniform and cream teas, are a uniquely British institution. Modern eaters will recognize these salty, spicy, small bites as appetizers, commonly appearing before the meal with drinks. Famous savouries include angels on horseback–that’s a bacon wrapped prune–and Fergus Henderson’s bone marrow and parsley salad. Not…
Zucchini with Tomato and Ricotta Salata
This is the time of year when gardeners starting bitching about zucchini. Newspapers and online media everywhere are publishing tranches of recipes devoted to using up the glut. Not zucchini. Tiny squash from the farmer’s market. Being but a humble serf on the Internet’s massive estate, I have no special…
Pickled Onions
Once again your hostess would like to apologize for being such a laggardly poster. It’s not lack of interest in the blog, or in you, my readers. The truth is the same dull reason it’s always been: my health. More precisely, my back. Last week I had yet another cortisone…
Corn, Bacon, and Shallot Salad
Corn, Bacon, and Shallot Salad started as a riff on a Pepper Teigen recipe, but fridge contents forced some detours. Besides, as Laurie Colwin so presciently noted in More Home Cooking, all plans go to hell during the summer. Then again, Colwin had no way of knowing that all plans,…
Zucchini with Chaat Masala
So, I had my first Covid vaccine. I have lived to tell the tale. My insurer offered appointments online or by telephone. The web was impossible. The phone was little better: when I could get through at all, I waited on hold for hours. This is not overstatement. A few…
Cooking Cucumbers
So, hi. I could regale you with the horror story entitled “my latest dental extraction,” but I’ve been gone for weeks. That says it all, right? For comic relief, it rained for ten minutes on Friday night. Northern California’s entire rainy season was compressed into those ten minutes. Trees, they…
Summer Vegetable Saute
So far as I can tell, people are responding to the pandemic in two ways. The first group Marie Kondos everything in sight, moves on to reading all of Tolstoy and/or Proust, then tackles that novel they’ve always meant to write. All of these accomplishments are shared on social media,…
Roopa Gulati’s South Indian Rice And Lentil Pulao
Many American readers know Roopa Gulati through Diana Henry’s books. Roopa’s Spicy Scrambled Eggs appear in A Change of Appetite. Her Lemongrass Turmeric Chicken recipe has stained many a copy of A Bird In The Hand. Her Mumbai Toastie recipe, printed in Simple, has acheived cult status. This is…