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Eggplant is one of my favorite vegetables and whenever I see a new recipe for it I just want to try it right away. This recipe is featured in the March 2013 edition of Saveur Magazine. A few years ago Steven’s colleague at work lent him a wonderful cookbook, “Pei Mei’s Chinese Cookbook Volume 1.” [...]
My default winter squash is either kabocha or butternut. I rarely buy acorn but they were so fresh when I spotted them last week at the Alemany Farmers Market that I couldn’t resist. Plus it was a bargain: organically grown and it cost me less than a couple of bucks! I borrowed the idea of [...]
My aunt Mary Ann, came for a short visit last week. She lives in New Hampshire and has been overwhelmed by the brutal winter they’re having back East this year. Blizzard after blizzard would make anyone long for sunny California. She’s only about 13 months older than me, so really we grew up together, almost [...]
The first time that I had this soup was with my glamorous friend, Euriele. At the time we both worked together in Palo Alto. One day we just took a long lunch break and feasted on an authentic Korean meal with multiple courses: kimchi soup, pickled cucumber, bean sprout, rice cooked with beans, Napa cabbage [...]
Okay. They say cardoon’s flavor and texture resembles artichokes. I like artichokes, a lot. But as everyone knows, they’re technically difficult to prepare. So many sharp rough leaves to remove before you get to the flavorful choke. Well, in that sense, cardoon isn’t too different, either. Cardoons don’t grow chokes. Instead you have to remove [...]
Pasta à la Romana has been a Friday ritual at home ever since our friend Kristen taught us how to make it a few years ago. We enjoy it so much that we’ve even posted the recipe twice on the WC for your pleasure. Last week I de-salted a large gorgeous piece of cod. The [...]
This is another great recipe from Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem. It uses capers! Hurrah!!! How can you go wrong with capers? Salted or brined, these tiny flower buds are alright with me. Yotam writes that caper bushes grow wild around the city of Jerusalem. They’re hardy and you can even find them growing out of cracks in [...]
To me Israeli couscous looks like and almost has the same texture as fish eggs. Obviously this is a pasta variety but somehow it seems so different compared to spaghetti and her friends. I love it. This recipe is a snap as an elegant side dish. We had it with salt cod brandade. Mmmmm! The [...]
This Napa cabbage kimchi turned out as authentic as the ones I eat at Korean restaurants here in San Francisco. It was fun to make and it took just 3 days before it was ready. (Three days might sound like a long time to some, but I’ve seen recipes where the kimchi had to ferment [...]
Steven gave me Yotham Ottolenghi’s new cookbook, Jerusalem as a sort of date-night surprise gift. I’m psyched about it since his previous book, Plenty, was a total success at home. We cooked most of the recipes from the first with hardly any failures. I’m just starting in on Jerusalem but have high hopes. In both [...]
Our old friend David went to Seattle last year and brought us a little tin filled with the aromatic Turkish powder, baharat, from that city’s famous Public Market. I have been shy about using it. Frankly, I thought the spice mix was for meat dishes only. So I’d sort of side-lined it to the back [...]
I like the taste of the French/Italian/Spanish dish brandade. Usually made with salt cod, potatoes, dairy and spices, everything gets whipped together then baked in the oven till golden and delicious. Here’s a traditional brandade recipe from the New York Times. Steven’s been after me about making this for a while. I won’t say how [...]
I know I should have bought a smaller container of Greek yogurt in the first place… We don’t normally eat yogurt by itself. In fact, we usually only have it at home when a recipe calls for it. Like Ottolenghi’s Greek yogurt baba ghanoush. But that scrumptious dish only required two tablespoons. What to do [...]
Steven’s been complaining about my cooking lately. Well, maybe not complaining exactly but pointing out a bit clearly that we’ve been in a breakfast rut for a while—bread and coffee, bread and coffee, bread and coffee. Perhaps we’ve both been a little bored with this monotonous refrain. We do eat whole wheat, which is very [...]
This recipe was adapted from health. Old fashioned but I think making a come-back: after all you make it with horseradish and panko breadcrumbs. That’s real style. Straightforward to make, and really tasty, I’ve already served it a couple of times at home. This is perfect for the holidays. I made it over Thanksgiving with [...]
I wanted so desperately to adore Benu! This place is über-chic right now. Supposedly when it was reviewed by some really fancy and prestigious paper in New York a while back, the writer said it was worth hopping on a plane for the six hour flight just to dine here. That’s a spectacular idea, isn’t [...]
Sweet potato’s great! Don’t you love it? I do. I’ve made it seasoned with shoyu and toasted sesame oil, which is amazing. They’re lovely simply oven baked, too. Somehow, I’m disappointed to see so few stories on el blogo about this humble tuber. Perhaps this the beginning of a new culinary trend for us at [...]
I’ve been longing to visit Hanzell for ages! Really after I read Matt Kramer’s fabulous, New California Wine. He describes Hanzell as “Aesthetically, …one of the most elegant wineries in the state” and concludes his mini-history of the place: It is difficult to over-praise Hanzell, as it has stood the test of making great wines [...]
When I was in Brazil recently my niece took me to a fun restaurant in São Paulo that offered dishes from South East Asia, Peru, Japan and northern Brazil. The flavors were very exciting. We ordered a lot so we could taste everything. For my main course I had a white fleshed Brazilian fish served [...]
Wow it’s been a while since I wrote regularly for weirdcombinations. This is my first week “back.” I miss it and I miss visiting my blogger friends’ blogs. The reason for the hiatus is that it got super busy at work, plus I had to travel down to Brazil, also for work, in late [...]
I’ve wanted to tour Quixote ever since I saw a pic of their gorgeous and eccentric winemaking facility in Wine Spectator about a year or so ago. The place is incredible looking, isn’t it? Designed by the Viennese architect, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, we learned on the delightful tour that this is the only building created be [...]
These are not fish fingers or mozzarella sticks but the idea is similar. Instead of frying, I baked my zucchini fingers, for my own health This is a really fun and tasty way to use up all that summer squash that seems to grow like weeds in your garden. Next year, maybe only a few [...]
I have always wanted to try making a salt crusted fish, really ever since Emeril Lagasse made it on his show about ten years ago. It was so impressive when he cracked the fish out of its salty shell. He didn’t even need that trademark expression to pique my interest. This dish is simple—yes, simple. [...]
Real Food Daily is not the kind of place I’d have dreamed of when I was younger fantasizing about Hollywood. Vegan cuisine in West Hollywood? Does that even make sense? Well, yes it does. Hegui and I stumbled upon this wonderful spot on a stroll back to our hotel on West 3rd after catching up [...]
This tofu dessert… yes, you read correctly, tofu dessert, is another super recipe from Nguyen’s Asian Tofu. She touts it as a higher protein version of the Indian kaju barfi, typically made with milk, sugar and cashew nuts. Mine was delicious but didn’t quite have the consistency of what I consider to be fudge. This [...]
I completely adore Littorai pinot noir. I wrote that first sentence and somehow feel that the point of my story today is more than half accomplished. I adore Littorai pinot noir. J’adore! It even looks good in French. So I was thrilled when I learned that Hegui and I had the chance to attend another [...]
I’m so excited about this new-to-me book, Andrea Nguyen’s Asian Tofu. I saw it by chance at the local Whole Foods and was cautiously interested. I ordered a copy from the library and couldn’t put it down once I started reading. I shall have to splurge and actually buy a copy soon. Nguyen writes in [...]
I have fond memories of a cooking class we took in Chiang Mai, Thailand several years ago. The chef picked us up early in the morning from the hotel then off we went to a thrilling local market to buy the ingredients for the cooking class feast. I think there were about 16 of us [...]
These Yukon gold potatoes came from our community garden plot! I am so excited about that fact. Have you ever grown potatoes? Well, I haven’t before. And we never planted them to begin with—they just “came with” the new plot. These are super yellow and lovely. I wonder if they were planted intentionally? The person [...]
Sometimes the most memorable dining experiences are when you cook with friends. Dinner yesterday was a treat: our friend, John, and I made it together. This delicious shiitake mushroom on toast was his contribution. I was mentally taking notes while watching him preparing it. The dish came together in almost no time and it tasted [...]
Sweet or savory, most countries have their own style of making pancakes. I really like the Vietnamese version, bánh xèo. This recipe is especially interesting because it utilizes two ingredients very common on our table in a totally different way: rice and beans, a favorite combination on this blog. See what I mean here. I’ve [...]
My niece Juliana who lives in Virginia came over to spend a few days with us recently. She’s been here few times before so she’d done all the touristy stuff in San Francisco. I like that because it forces us to push ourselves and expand our horizons in terms of visiting different places in the [...]
We are still enjoying home-grown zucchini from our prolific community garden plot squash plants. It feels so good just going there to water them. We find new ones growing full swing every time. It seems to happen overnight! This recipe comes from this lovely blog, not without salt (I so wish that I’d come up [...]
I’m so excited! We just came back from the Alemany farmers market after a quick stop at our community garden plot. The garden’s doing great but the market was amazing! Goodbye to all those tiresome root vegetables—at least for now. Heirloom tomatoes are back! It isn’t quite mid-summer yet but they’re starting to look good. [...]
This is my first time ever cooking rhubarb. I have eaten it before of course. Steven made a beautiful rhubarb streusel cake last year. His recipe used rhubarb with very red stalks. At the time I didn’t think much of it. The stalks are always red, no? We inherited a rhubarb plant in our new [...]
Polenta is a popular staple back home in Brazil. I grew up eating lots of it and never got bored. My mother cooked it on her fire wood stove in an iron pan. It had to cook forever! So she would use a wooden spoon to stir it occasionally while she prepared other delicious dishes [...]
Who wouldn’t want to eat at a place called the Barking Frog? When I was researching restaurants for our recent Sedona vacation, the name really caught my eye. Plus I loved the menu: full of exciting Southwest cuisine. I really miss this kind of food since I’ve moved away from Texas in the mid-1990s. Sure [...]
My home state of Minas Gerais in Brazil has a varied cuisine. Mainly focused on meat and amazing sweets, the “side” vegetable dishes rock too. I especially enjoy those made with unusual veggies, such as giló, similar to eggplant with a slight bitterness, almeirão, somewhat similar in taste to escarole or frisée, couve mineira, a [...]
This delightful recipe comes from Eating Well. I was feeling inspired after Hegui made those tremendous red lentil croquettes. We eat a lot of beans at home and frankly it gets a bit boring just having them tossed with garlic and olive oil after a while. Sure, that always tastes great, but variety is the [...]
Greed never pays. Listen to what happened to us and our new, dramatically bigger community garden plot. After a couple of arduous weekends working on our new plot: digging, cleaning debris, adding topsoil, planting boundary poles and installing wood planks to hold the soil back, then finally wrapping the whole lot in chicken wire, we [...]
In the past, I wouldn’t bother researching potential restaurants when I travel. It always seems like so much work, and perhaps too precious. Though, often enough, Hegui and I end up feeling disappointed by the less than stellar places that we happen upon randomly. Several friends, including our lovely blog-buddie, Devaki, have been actively working [...]
The humongous bag of Meyer lemons our friend Kristen gave us in early April lasted for more than a month. I just love how aromatic Meyer lemon juice and zest are. Sometimes I just enjoy eating them whole, skin and all. When I saw this recipe for pickled Meyer lemons on Just Homemade, I knew [...]
This isn’t a recipe that I would have been excited by before my “Veganist” epiphany. Nancy Harmon Jenkins’ dish relies on Spanish chorizo. I’ve yet to find vegetarian chorizo so made due with Tofurkey brand Italian sausage. To make the olive oil redden, I added a bit of sweet paprika. (In the full on meat [...]
The April issue of the Saveur Magazine is themed “The Las Vegas Issue: a guide to the world’s hottest dinning destination.” Sin City includes all types of indulgences and food plays a significant role in the experience. Saveur covers a whole bunch of restaurants from different cuisines on and off the Strip. Many of them [...]
Let me begin by stating right here that, despite myself, I liked this book, a lot. I’m starting with that because should you read further, I don’t want you to lose the essential fact in my barrage of nitpicking. This is not a book that I would have sought out, even though it has “INSTANT [...]
Spring is racing by and asparagus are plentiful right now here in sunny Northern California. But it won’t last. This is the time of year when this beautiful vegetable tastes best. It is true that nowadays one can buy any vegetable or fruit basically whenever but the difference is in taste and in the size [...]
This recipe is a slightly modified version of the one on the back of my Trader Joe’s “Southern Green Blend” pre-washed and chopped bag of greens. The greens include mustard, turnip, collards and spinach. Usually I just sauté some garlic in olive oil then cook the greens until they’re just beginning to wilt. That’s tasty [...]
This simple and versatile recipe comes from David Rocco’s Made in Italy. Essentially just garlic, salt, various chiles, fresh basil and sun dried tomatoes covered in a bit of olive oil to preserve it, this makes a wonderfully flavorful base for a large variety of food. This is my third time making a large batch. [...]
I am a big fan of lentils of all kinds. They’re super versatile, tasty and perfect for a vegetarian diet, as this legume packs a good amount of protein. This recipe, adapted from the book Homestyle Vegetarian published by Bay Books (strangely there’s no author named) is nice because it has an Indian flair, which [...]
We’ve been blessed with lemons recently. Earlier in the month Kristen harvested her Meyer lemon trees and surprised us with a huge bag of fruit. We’ve been using them essentially every day but I still have a good amount in the fridge. A couple of weeks ago we went for a BBQ at a friend-of-a-friend, [...]
