Annual holiday get-togethers always feature a grand cast of characters. This year the wise-cracking drunk, the overly sensitive cook, the gushing sentimentalist, the determined wanderer, the eager helper, the laissez faire parent and the bad conversationalist all made an appearance. And that was just me. Alas, I am still in the process of discovering myself. […]
I think of myself as a logical person. I consider numerous solutions to a problem, weigh them against each other on the scale of reason, and choose the best alternative. At least I used to. As I get older (and lazier) I find myself turning my back on rational thought in favor of gut feelings, […]
Do you have siblings who overshadow you in all aspects of your life? Are they better looking, funnier, more successful, and just plain more likable than you are? Me neither. But if you asked those same questions of the tomatillo, you’d get a whole lot of head nodding. Not literally. It is, after all, a […]
This week’s soup began like so many others in this blog, at Caputo’s. This ethnic Italian grocery store has some of the best produce in town, even better than Whole Foods most of the time. Their stuff is interesting too. It reminds me of the Jon’s in my old neighborhood in Los Angeles. Jon’s had […]
This week’s recipe didn’t start with Bugs Bunny. Yet because of my never-going-to-grow-up Peter Pan brain, or is it brain pan, it definitely ended up there. I started out making the white wine counterpart to coq au vin soup, which you’ll recall is essentially a chicken soup with mushrooms, onions and pinot noir (see the […]
In the past few months, I’ve produced Charlie Trotter’s (or was it Thomas Keller’s) Acorn Squash soup three times. That’s in addition to the indie soups I’ve made for the blog every week. I cooked it twice playing sous chef for the Italian wine dinner my wife and I worked on and once as an […]
When I started this week’s soup, I had no idea I was headed to the Middle East. It started with some cuts of pork and a few Honeycrisp apples. Nothing more American than that, right? Then I stumbled into the cooking process and the soup went all Moroccan on me. Now, before some of you […]
My brother-in-law’s turning 50 yesterday reminded me of the beginnings of my culinary education. I was still in college then, working on degree number two and teaching myself to cook by plowing through all the recipes my mom had made when I was growing up. I made tamale pie (rechristened “tamale slop” by a crew […]
Be glad that this week’s post isn’t called “Horrible Failure Soup,” because that’s where it was headed until this morning. Lentil soup was scheduled, if I can be said to actually have a schedule for these things, for next week or even later. This week was slated for Brussels sprouts. After all, aren’t I the […]
