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It’s a very special Saturday edition of Spontaneous Tomato, in honor of two momentous occasions: Today is the final day of #BrunchWeek and the long-awaited Virtual Vegan Potluck! I think these two sensational celebrations of food deserve a double recipe post; I am bringing you two recipes, perfect for hosting a vegan brunch! Tart, sweet […]
Hello Spontaneous Tomato readers and Virtual Vegan Potluckers! This is a temporary post that will just be up for a few hours so that I don’t break the blog hop link chain for the Virtual Vegan Potluck. I want to wait until 12:01am (pacific time) on Saturday, May 11th to post my VVP recipe, since […]
It’s #BrunchWeek! A whole week to celebrate my favorite meal of the week– and not just any old wait-in-line overpriced restaurant brunch, but the best kind of brunch: the homemade kind. I hope you’ve already been enjoying recipes from my fellow #BrunchWeek bloggers, who kicked off the week on Sunday, and who have now posted […]
As promised: the chickpea-less hummus recipe! Strange, right? But this beet “hummus” is lusciously tangy and bright, with a smooth yet substantial hummus-y texture. It’s my new (slash only) favorite way to enjoy beets. I admit that I’ve never really gotten excited about beets in any form (although the idea of beet chips is intriguing…), [...]
Necessity is the mother of invention; I think many a cocktail owes its existence to low alcohol tolerance. Granted, some cocktails have an astronomical liquor-to-mixer ratio. You know, the kind so strong that you can enjoy approximately one drink on any given weeknight– maybe one and a half on a weekend– but where’s the fun [...]
I’ve been wanting to make something for the blog that draws inspiration from the stories I’ve read. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m just a wee bit obsessed with George R.R. Martin’s “A Song Of Ice And Fire” series. For those of you who don’t know about the books, they are the story behind [...]
I have a fear of deep-frying things. Well not so much a fear, as an unshakable ambivalence. And no, not just for health reasons. I’ll happily order deep-fried calamari, french fries, falafel, or agedashi-doufu at a restaurant. I’m just eternally reluctant to make them at home. My history with deep-frying things is short and tinged [...]
Paula learned how to make perfect pita bread! I possibly love her even more now. It took a lot of trial and “error,” but without any real errors, since her pita bread has always been successfully delicious, just not always successfully puffy, as good pita bread should be. Now that we’ve finally cracked the code, [...]
Who else gets way more excited about lemon tarts than about chocolate cakes? (And who else is– or was– eternally tempted yet intimidated by lemon tart recipes? Read on!) Maybe I’m the odd one out, but even with all of the chocolate-y icing-smeared treats out there, tangy fruit tarts are my kind of dessert– and [...]
Happy spring! I made you a winter salad. Sorry that I am so behind the times (especially when two weeks ago I was so ahead of them!). It’s going to be a shorter and photoful post today because my parents are visiting me in Santa Barbara. They needed a break from the dreary, snowy Wisconsin [...]
This is the story of how I accidentally invented Chana Masala Hummus. But let me back up for a minute. Chana Masala is one of my favorite Indian curries. Tender, hearty chickpeas nestled in a rich tomato and onion-based sauce, with hints of roasted cumin and the kick of fresh cilantro. When I lived in [...]
It’s already March! That means it’s theoretically almost spring! This past weekend it got up to a summery 76 degrees in Santa Barbara, and I decided I’d post a spring-like pasta dish for this week’s recipe. Then, as the week went on, the temperature proceeded to drop 30 degrees and a dense dark fog settled [...]
Before I dive in to this week’s post, if you didn’t catch the link on the Spontaneous Tomato facebook page earlier this week, I am honored to be this month’s featured interview on the Flavorful World website! My interview is the February edition of Flavorful World’s “F.A.Qs” (Food Adventurer Queries) series. Check out my Q&A [...]
For Paula’s birthday earlier this month, she requested Bulgogi Chicken. I was happy to oblige her, but we make Bulgogi Chicken so often around here (one of us tends to request it about once a week…), that I felt like it wasn’t quite fancy enough for a birthday feast. I decided to go all out [...]
Happy Valentine’s Day! The following post and recipe has little-to-nothing to do with the fact that I happen to be posting it on this, the 14th of February, but since I forgot to prepare anything heart-shaped or chocolatey in advance, let’s just pretend these cocktails are Valentine’s-Day-appropriate. (They are, after all, a little pink-ish, and– [...]
Three years ago I took a linguistics field methods class focusing on Tashlhiyt Berber (an indigenous language of Morocco). My favorite part of the course? In the first two long stretches of speech that our speaker recorded for us, she explains in Tashlhiyt 1) how to make Moroccan Mint Tea, and 2) how to make [...]
I had been thinking about this recipe for months before I finally tried it. I have to say I was a little intimidated by the name and the process, but when I finally made Pain à l’Ancienne for the first time, I quickly realized how incredibly simple the recipe was. First of all, these are [...]
I tasted my first cara cara orange about two weeks ago. I can’t even count how many I’ve eaten since then. Perhaps I’ve been incredibly vitamin C-deficient as of late, or perhaps they’re just divinely delicious. If you’ve never had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with a cara cara orange in person, they seem like [...]
If I had all the time and money in the world, I would: 1) Travel (and eat) 2) Cook (and eat) (and share) Of course I’d do other things, too– like read books, do yoga (level 1, forever!), and study language flashcards– but the first two account for most of my daydreaming, maybe because they [...]
You’ve never heard of yaki-tori-niku? That’s because my friends and I made it up. Allow me to explain: Japanese yaki-niku (meaning grilled meat, i.e., beef) is basically a Japanese version of the famous Korean barbeque. At Korean (or Japanese-style Korean) barbeque restaurants, you order plates of raw sliced meat and raw vegetables, then you cook [...]
New Year’s Day breakfast, 2013. Ok, so it was more like brunch. (At lunch time.) Since I stayed in for a low-key New Year’s Eve, it’s not as if I required a hangover cure– though this would serve: a savory blend of juicy acidic-sweet tomatoes, spices, and comforting poached eggs, rich in layers of flavor [...]
Happy almost New Year’s! This year went by so quickly, especially these last few months. But then, maybe it always feels that way– the near past and present are all enveloped in a busy blur, while the more distant past stretches out behind us, deceptively calm and rose-colored, punctuated by a few specific memorable events. [...]
It’s been a whirlwind of a week. I arrived home in Wisconsin just in time for the blizzard. I caught up with family and friends (and caught a 24-hour-ish stomach virus). Then just when I tried to fly home to California on Christmas morning, my flight was canceled. (The entire crew called in sick. My [...]
Wisconsin’s first snowstorm of the year arrived just in time for a white Christmas! The blizzard on Thursday dropped over 18 inches of snow in 24 hours. All over Madison, tree branches snapped from strong winds and the weight of the snow. Our power (and heat) went out several times, but luckily there was always [...]
I’m writing today from the midst of a blizzard. (In fact, our power is out, but thanks to my brother installing a back-up battery for our wireless router, I have internet! …just not heat.) Today’s weather forecast is: 33 degrees Fahrenheit (“feels like 20″) with (“100% chance of”) heavy snow and wind. And man is [...]
There is no such thing as too much cinnamon.* For many years that saying has been true for me. I’ve always loved cinnamon; when I was a kid I used to enjoy cinnamon in sweet rice (a dish my brother and I survived on, sometimes literally, during our childhood). I sucked on hot atomic fireballs [...]
It’s a stressful time of year, when warm comfort food recipes abound. Jap Chae (Korean stir-fried glass noodles with vegetables) is the rare sort of comfort food that boasts a variety of vegetables. The tasty noodle dish has a relatively healthy mix of textures, colors, and flavors. Usually made with a little stir-fried beef, jap [...]
Lemon bars seem so magical to me. The bottom crust is buttery, crunchy shortbread-like perfection– nothing too unique or miraculous in itself– but the top is a delicate custard: fresh lemon juice in solid, pudding-like form. A tangy, translucent miracle. Lemon bars rank among my favorite desserts; yet making them myself had always been intimidating. [...]
It’s here! The season {when I feel too busy for yoga, too chilly to make a salad, and too nervous that my car will break down to go to the grocery store when I’ve run out of both broccoli and kale} has arrived! Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against the other parts of [...]
I have a love/hate relationship with winter. I hate how cold and wet it gets. It doesn’t rain much in Santa Barbara, but the air is moist and I get covered in a wet dew whenever I bike to work. I wear the works– wool half-cape, warm and fluffy gloves, scarves, etc.– while every other [...]
Whoa. Somehow this happened: I’ve reached my 100th post! I have a hard time believing it; I still feel like a food blog newbie. Constantly torn between spending time creating this blog (fun) and my dissertation (real life), it seems I can never devote quite enough time for either one to really make something of [...]
Last week I browsed through about seventeen different internet collections of Thanksgiving side dish recipes. Would you believe that one of them included gnocchi? To me, gnocchi is no side dish. Not in terms of how filling it is. Not in terms of the amount of time it takes to prepare. And most importantly, not [...]
Happy Thanksgiving! This year I’m grateful to be able to spend all day in my kitchen, cooking and eating– one of my favorite ways to spend a day. (I’m also grateful for food blogs and instant recipe-googling, despite my undying love of actual cookbooks.) When you have a lot to cook in a limited time, [...]
Remember when I told you I’d become obsessed with oven-roasted broccoli? Well it was all I could do not to post this recipe immediately after that one (about roasted delicata squash and chickpeas… and broccoli or kale), but then I worried that you’d know the extent of my obsession and just how serious it was. [...]
I’m not a vegetarian, but turkey is my least favorite part about the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Roasted vegetables and baked chestnutty stuffing make for some tempting side dishes, especially when they’re topped off with tart homemade cranberry sauce. That alone would be enough to make me very happy. (That and pie.) Also: I hope no [...]
As Thanksgiving approaches and my list of things-to-cook grows ever longer– in some kind of cruel inverse proportion to the rapidly shrinking hours of daylight– I occasionally need to step back and reach for something simpler. Simple as, say, a recipe with a mere three ingredients! (Three or four, that is… sometimes I just can’t [...]
Prepare yourselves: this dish is a strange one. It’s a weird but unexpectedly good adaptation of a recipe with a weird but unexpectedly good combination of flavors, that just doesn’t look that appealing (in my opinion), and probably doesn’t sound all that appealing either. I almost didn’t post it. The original recipe is from the [...]
It’s still pumpkin season, right? I know the answer to that. The answer is yes. It’s just that the food blog world moves on quickly. According to the rules of food blog culture, I should have posted this pumpkin puree recipe back in October, or maybe even September… You know, when I was still busy [...]
Today I’m delighted to contribute a dish to the Virtual Vegan Potluck! Thanks to Annie of An Unrefined Vegan and Somer of Vedged Out for organizing this vegan feast, featuring 105 different bloggers in 14 countries! If you’d like to join the party, you can follow the links backward (through the breads, drinks, and appetizers), [...]
You might have noticed by now that I don’t often write holiday-themed posts, but Halloween is my girlfriend Paula’s favorite holiday, so she asked if she could write a guest post. Two things I won’t say no to: guest posts and cupcakes. Happy almost Halloween! ~Allison I love Halloween, and nearly everything about it. I [...]
Apparently we are suffering from a curry leaf shortage in Santa Barbara. Or rather, a curry leaf quarantine. That’s right: no curry leaves (or their relatives– citrus trees/fruit, for that matter!) are to be transported in or out of Santa Barbara County. (Of course, there’s no shortage of citrus trees or fruit, because we have [...]
My roommate of two years (who moved out this past June) used to make the best homemade granola. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I actually ever tasted her granola. Maybe once I tried a bite… Once a month or so, I’d come home to the scent of roasting syrupy oats, nuts, and [...]
(You can still enter my cookbook giveaway, now through Oct. 21st.) Prepare yourselves: this is the most scrumptious of appetizers (slash desserts?!) and one that I usually associate with winter time… But let’s face it: it’s always the season for cheese. (Unless you are vegan, in which case, hold tight for another vegan recipe on [...]
(You can still enter my Japanese cookbook giveaway, now through Oct. 21st.) It’s pumpkin season, and everyone knows that pumpkins are the superior squash. Or at least I am much more likely to yield to the temptation of anything that lists “pumpkin” as an ingredient, whereas substitute the word “squash” and… not so much.* Japanese [...]
Good news: my girlfriend, Paula, finally had time to write her second guest post about baking bread. This post about homemade ciabatta– and some major (and exciting!) life decisions– follows her first guest post about homemade French baguettes. (Oh and if you haven’t entered my cookbook giveaway yet, you should go do it now, through [...]
When I first moved back to the states from Japan, I missed the food something awful. But my Japansickness wasn’t limited to edible pleasures. I also missed all of my beloved Japanese (and Canadian, etc.) friends, and I was shocked by how much I missed speaking and listening to Japanese. When you’re a language nerd [...]
Remember that time when I accidentally made butter? Well this time I made butter on purpose. Progress! The accidental homemade butter was so smooth, rich, and just a little bit sweet that it won me over completely. We used it to bake cookies, make frosting, and to butter corn on the cob, but mostly we [...]
Last fall I visited Korea right after the Chuseok holiday and tried hotteok for the first time. I couldn’t figure out how I had possibly missed these scrumptious snacks during all of the time I’d spent in Seoul in the past. But then my friend/Seoul-roommate/honorary-sister Kyongsuh gave me an English-language Korean cookbook as a souvenir [...]
There’s a Vietnamese restaurant in Santa Barbara that makes a killer curry. It’s a soupy, peanutty, spicy, coconut milk broth with a submerged tangle of chewy rice noodles and a choice of chicken, beef, salmon, tofu, or shrimp. It’s my mission to make it at home. So far I’ve tried and failed once. What I [...]
It’s officially fall, and I’m still talking about tomatoes. Not just talking about tomatoes; slicing them up to eat fresh, blending them up into curry sauces, slow-roasting them to put on salads and pizzas, and even occasionally baking them. My summer CSA share of bulbs upon bulbs of fennel and baskets upon baskets of peppers [...]
