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Meet Steven. Best photographer ever. Steven translated my love for the style of cooking in the south of France into amazingly beautiful visions for my new! cookbook: Cuisine Nicoise: Sun-kissed Cooking from the French Riviera
I have totally become obsessed with Vine....it has such huge potential for either humor when you need it or instruction when you need it....fast! So I am playing with it. Experimenting. Following others. And I wanted to share it with you. Bon Appetit Magazine is using it brilliantly, I think. Watch below! (To get yours, go to itunes app store, it's free. Download and start creating 6 second f
These tiny, almost impossibly perfect little Forelle pears are the kind I could only imagine in an Hironymous Bosch painting. They weigh almost nothing and go down in two bites.
I know. I should show you the fresh raspberries. The bottle of imported balsamic vinegar. The fruity olive oil and fragrant local honey that went into this. But I got carried away. It smelled so good, and it came together so quickly that I just didn't stop to think I should be taking photos for my blog. So this is what we have. A photo of the results. Two small jars I am going to run over and
Between Pinterest and Etsy and new blogs, I am infused with inspiration lately. Here are a few of my favorite new food finds....I hope you enjoy them!!
Some fun on a Monday.....a remix of Julia Child.....!
I've been baking more cakes lately than I have in years. It seems the more time pressure I am under with writing deadlines, the more baking cakes I do! I just finished writing my cookbook and it's been sent to the printers. To celebrate: a cake! Just a little something to keep my body and soul together until the next deadline.
I just finished my writing and editing my cookbook. And I just received this beautiful sack of fresh walnuts from California Walnuts. To make a treat to celebrate my completing the book, I decided to make the most decadent deep chocolate cake with the walnuts, and eat most of it myself.
I'm still in awe of these little clouds of goodness. I went cookie-cutter mad the other day and ordered French inspired cookie cutters (I'm still waiting for the French poodle!). I decided to put to immediate use the Eiffel Tower one (a bargain at 10 cents) and the Fleur de Lys ($1.89).
All of a sudden, the kitchen fills with the aroma of oranges and cinnamon. And when I sneak a taste at the very end of baking the pudding, the flavor of orange has intensified. The grated orange rind simply comes to life in the last few minutes of cooking. Love this recipe!
The joys of making classic French sauces, with their heady aromas enveloping a dish and taking it to another level, are brought home by Holly Herrick in this the first of her new cookbook series: The French Cook: Sauces.
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I bake and make desserts all winter. It might be something to do with cocooning or comfort or simply loving desserts, but this winter especially I have been baking up a storm. To change it up a bit, I made a pillowy-soft cloud of star anise scented espresso custard and piled it on top of crisp Italian lady fingers. A spoonful alone transported me to Italy.......to a little cafe where I stood a
Looking for croissant cufflinks? A blueberry crepe necklace? Or French food art? Antique French escargot plates? They're all on Etsy, and more. I know, because after typing in: French food, almost 80 pages showed up. I had so much fun looking through everything for sale, that I thought I'd share with you some of the ones I liked the best. Here we go! I'm including links just in case one takes your
So few ingredients, so much fun! You make these one day and enjoy them the next. Slightly bitter and chewy against the crunch of the sugar coating, they're better than Gummie Bears.
When I received this book and sat down with it, I found myself unable to put it down, as each of the over 300 pages are filled with interesting imagry, facts, and enthusiasm for the area she lives and the food she encounters there. Reading it makes you want to know her, to go shopping with her at the markets, and to cook with her. I hope some day I will be able to do just that. Her love of the Lan
I'm sitting in the middle of a pine forest covered with snow, with a mug of hot chocolate in one hand, the other holding a doggie on my lap, and reflecting on the coming year. Every January my birthday comes around and I feel an incredible urge to refresh and improve. Every year I write down my goals and tape them up where I can see them. Some I actually achieve, so it's a good practice.
There was a wicker basket filled with pink grapefruit sitting on my counter. In the background, my kitchen window was like a snowglobe, showcasing big flakes falling thickly in the woods. Scones were baking in the oven, sending off curls of cinnamon aroma, and they were almost done. Now was the time to definitely decide what to make to serve with them, and the quickest recipe I could th
Twas the night before Christmas When all through the house Not a creature was stirring Not even a mouse When out in the nite A rumble and a honk Who could that be But the UPS truck............
Aurora borealis? No, light shining through a thin French crepe! I picked the edge of it up so you could see how thin it needs to be to be tender and light. Infused with the holiday spirit, I've found myself putting eggnog-type flavorings in everything lately, including these French crepes I made for breakfast. They'd be equally good for dessert, perhaps with a dash of rum in the warmed m
Hi everyone! My friend Warren Bobrow, "the cocktail whisperer", offered to create a custom cocktail for the holidays for me. So many people enjoyed the one he made last year, that I am happy share with you his newest creation. Warren is the ultimate connoisseur of cocktail making and cocktail...
This is my Top 10 List of cookbooks published in 2012 that I think would make great gifts for the holidays. I chose them from dozens and dozens I receive and read because I fell in love with them. I think you will too!
Even more than Thanksgiving, the day after is nostalgia squared, or maybe cubed. The memories rush back from the day before. The turkey. The perfect pies. Seeing loved ones, yet missing absent ones, and being thankful to have both. But now, layered on top, is a day of leftovers that are often better the day before.
With another storm on the way, along with the tremendous need still out there for food, clean water, blankets and warmth, I wanted to share with you a list of links you can use to quickly find ways you can still help. There's still time to make a tremendous difference.
The Roaring 20's along the Riviera were spent by the likes of Hemmingway and F.Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, who lived for a couple of years in the villa that is now the Hotel Belles Rives in Juan-les-Pins. The minute you walk in you can feel their fun-loving spirit and you can relive what it must have felt like to live there due to the impeccable preservation of art and archite
For a chef to achieve billboard status in one of the most glamorous cities in the world, where the faces of movie stars normally grace every inch of unadorned space, is quite a revelation. When you consider that this chef, Sebastien Broda, is responsible for bringing the status of Canne's culinary scene to a much higher level, you can see why he is the "face" of Cannes---just as much as a
A day in Cannes, a day bombarded with huge posters of television programs that are trying to get sold at the convention taking place where the Cannes Film Festival occurs. Even the tony Ritz Carlton was draped with actors' faces.
Nicoise olives are just about ripe and ready to harvest. A new crop of walnuts are in the markets now. As are chestnuts, apples, pears and green muscat grapes. I'm in the countryside above Cannes, France with friends, and we are eating our way through every village and market, as well as ransacking the trees and fields around the house we are renting, coming back in with our finds of k
From Cannes I drove up into the mountains, into the arriere payee, towards the sound of birds, perched villages high in the sky, through my old village of Bar sur Loup, and into Tourettes sur Loup for two weeks' visit with friends.
What you don't see in the bowl of olives are the bits of marinated fennel stocks---because I dug out each and every one and ate them first. Their anise salt flavor was a revelation with chilled rose. I was on the Croisette in Cannes, the setting sun turning the color of my wine from pink to apricot.
One of the things I love most about being a food blogger is all the interesting people I meet and make friends with because of a shared fascination with food.
One of my discoveries from years of traveling is the joy of being able to rent apartments and houses, rather than staying in a hotel. There is a sense of serenity traveling this way, to feel as if when you turn the key to the door that you are coming "home". You slow down and snuggle in.
As you now know, I am in France in the process of working with a photographer who is turning the vision of my writing and recipes into beautiful stills. Having never done this before, it has become an intriguing evolution for me to observe, how two people create and translate in unison, all the while feeling their way and hoping that the outcome shows their best work.
I'm here! The journey has begun! To smell the air along the beach in Cannes and then to walk up to the market and find these beautiful tomatoes answers all my yearnings to come back to where I lived for so many years. A wake-up call to make the most of life every minute and savor every sight, sound and smell.
Anniversary! I started blogging about food years ago. My blog was called Blond Food, a mix of musings, photography, recipes, restaurant reviews, and meanderings. A highly time-consuming full time job forced me to give up my writing and spend weekends catching up on what I couldn't get accomplished in the...
and the green olive liquid lay limpid, warmed in the sun baked by heat from the orange near it constellations nearby, beauties of black, fruit and vinegar and sharp tangs of summer.
"Take some fish bones, fish heads including the eyes, some conger eel, small fish, green crabs, some onions, olive oil, tomatoes and garlic and cook them into a soup. Then puree it through a seive or food mill."
When I was ordering soup from my local health food store, I saw they were offering locally fermented fresh Kombucha tea by the glass or gallon to take home...........
Kholrabi? Although I had seen them on menues, I had never tasted one. So when I first spotted them at the farmers' market they drew my attention. I was told they are part of the cabbage family and delicious raw in a salad........
