If something works for me, I stick with it, even if it sometimes seems a little weird. Earlier in this culinary adventure I turned one of my favorite salads, the Caprese (visit post)—a traditional Italian dish consisting of tomatoes, basil and mozzarella cheese—into a soup.  It turned out great.  This time, with spring officially upon […]

We didn’t eat a lot of Chinese food when I was growing up.  There was one take-out place near where we lived as well as the “Chinatown” just east of downtown LA, but we were hardly regular customers. Nor did Chinese cuisine figure into my mom’s home cooking.  She made Italian, French, and Mexican food, […]

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 […]

Back when I was single and first learning how to cook, I would invite friends over to my Valley Village apartment, cook all day, drink lots of wine, and wind up smoking cigars on the roof of my garage.  Unlike today, the menu was never static.  I made pesto lasagna from Marcella Hazan, chocolate mousse […]

At our house mushrooms are magical, not in a crazy Timothy Leary kind of way, but because of fairies. As any parent of daughters knows, mushroom circles are known as fairy or pixie rings and serve as portals to the supernatural world. European and American folklore is filled with stories of mortals witnessing fairies coming […]