Writing about food since 2004.
-
Knife Contest Winner
After careful consideration, and a morning spent reading through all your entries in the Korin knife salad recipe contest, I’d like to congratulate Liz who takes first prize with her Roasted Harissa Cauliflower Salad with Tahini Lemon Dressing. To my mind, it was one of the more original recipes in the bunch and the one…
-
A Meditation on Green and Yellow Sour Patch Kids
In the dark of a movie theater, as the opening credits scroll across the screen, you’ll see me in my seat engaging in a strange ritual. It begins by removing a single Sour Patch Kid from my box of Sour Patch Kids, holding it up to the light, and evaluating its color. Depending on whether…
-
Drunk Blondies
Repeat after me: Butter. Chocolate. Pecans. Coconut. Bourbon. Again: Butter. Chocolate. Pecans. Coconut. Bourbon. On Saturday night, we joined our friends Brendan and Danny for a screening of “Sunset Blvd.” at the Hollywood Forever cemetery. (You can read all about that in this week’s newsletter.) I was assigned the task of bringing a salad and…
-
Win a Korin Togiharu G-1 Chef Knife
In January of this year, the good people of Korin, one of the nation’s best knife shops, offered to send me a fancy knife. I stopped them in their tracks. “Good people of Korin!” I said. “I can’t take such a generous gift unless you can offer a similar gift to my readers.” Korin wrote…
-
Two Days in the San Gabriel Valley: Lunches at Tasty Noodle House
In the latest issue of Lucky Peach, Jonathan Gold talks about a Taiwanese restaurant that he really didn’t like at first. “I went and I really hated it…[But] I could tell that it wasn’t a bad restaurant. People were really dressed up and obviously they were there on purpose.” Gold ended up going back 17…
-
Buttermilk Cornmeal Pancakes
It’s Friday which means it’s time for a weekend breakfast recipe! I’d like you to meet my breakfast from last weekend, Buttermilk Cornmeal Pancakes. These pancakes, which come from Cheryl and Griffith Day’s “Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook” intrigued me because of the cornmeal in the title. I’m not normally a pancake person because…
-
A-Frame
The International House of Pancakes is not, by any standard, a hip place to eat. Leave it to Chef Roy Choi (a chef I cooked with for my cookbook, best known for starting the Kogi Truck) to turn an IHOP into a must-visit L.A. dining destination, one that effortlessly oozes panache and cool.
-
Bacon Bolognese
Italians, please look away. Everyone else, here’s something that I made up last week that was so good, I think you should make it too. I used leftover ingredients from the Haddock chowder I’d made the day before and, in using them, I did what Tom Colicchio’s always talking about on “Top Chef”–I developed lots…
-
A Summertime Farmer’s Market Feast (Green Goddess Heirloom Tomato Salad, Haddock Chowder & A Strawberry/Peach Shortcake)
At the start of my cookbook, I have a list of the ten most important over-arching lessons I learned cooking with the best chefs in America. One of those lessons is: “Put ingredients on display.” There’s an explanation of that in the book, and I’ll wait for you to read your copy before I spoil…
-
How To Store Strawberries
Strawberry season may be over in most parts of the country, but here in L.A. the strawberries are still bright red and fragrant and sweet as could be. On Monday, last week, I brought home two cartons of strawberries from the farmer’s market that I planned to use for a shortcake the next night. The…
