• Best Sticky Buns Ever

    Best Sticky Buns Ever

    Hyperbole on a food blog? Well I never! Look: I’ve eaten many a sticky bun in my day (that sounded dirty) and the best sticky buns I’ve ever experienced were the ones that I ate in my kitchen just two days ago when I made the Sticky Sticky Buns from Joanne Chang’s essential Flour cookbook.…

  • Brioche for Beginners

    Brioche for Beginners

    I’m currently listening to Julia Child’s memoir, My Life in France, on Audible. I’m embarrassed it to say that it took me this long; I suppose I thought I already knew the story because I’ve watched both Julie & Julia (multiple times) and Julia (which I really loved; I interviewed the showrunner, Daniel Goldfarb, on…

  • Seared Scallops on Sugar Snap Cacio e Pepe

    Seared Scallops on Sugar Snap Cacio e Pepe

    There are certain culinary rules that people memorize like they’re gospel, even though they’re not really rules and those who adhere to them are doing it more out of fear than logic. Case in point: cheese and fish. “In Italy, you never put cheese on fish!” No less an authority than Lidia Bastianich has disproven…

  • Chicken and Rapini Stir-Fry

    Chicken and Rapini Stir-Fry

    Some people collect matchbooks from restaurants, others dinner napkins. Me? I collect cookbooks from the restaurants I’ve been to. On my shelf, you’ll find a Spanish language version of the El Bulli cookbook we collected on our trip there. There are cookbooks from Prune, St. John, Mozza, Lucques, and so many others, too many to…

  • Reverse-Seared Ribeyes

    Reverse-Seared Ribeyes

    Remember that scene in Mary Poppins where they all go up the chimney and come out all sooty? That’s what my dinner guests usually look like when I cook steak. The whole kitchen fills up with black clouds as I sear the meat in a large cast-iron skillet, flipping and continuing to cook while frantically…

  • Spicy Merguez with Spinach and Borlotti Beans

    Spicy Merguez with Spinach and Borlotti Beans

    Every so often you encounter a recipe that grabs you by the throat and won’t let go. That was the case when I was thumbing through an old book in my collection: Daniel Boulud’s Braise, which he co-wrote with Melissa Clark back in 2013. This is one of those books that’ve survived many a cookbook…

  • Wining and Dining Our Way Up the California Coast, from Los Angeles to Sonoma

    Wining and Dining Our Way Up the California Coast, from Los Angeles to Sonoma

    We’ve lived in Los Angeles for twelve years (moved here in 2011!) and in all of that time, we’ve only taken one legitimate road trip up the coast… and that was during the pandemic when we escaped to Washington State to see my husband Craig’s family. On that odyssey, we stopped in Carmel, which was…

  • Holy Sheet Pan Pizza

    Holy Sheet Pan Pizza

    Some people see the light and get religion. Other people see the light and get sheet pan pizza. That’s what happened to me this past Friday night when I cooked up the best sheet pan pizza of my life here in my own apartment, setting off a smoke detector and freaking out the dog in…

  • Eggs on a Green Blanket

    Eggs on a Green Blanket

    Iconic dish names have to start somewhere. Who invented Toad in the Hole? Chicken a la King? S’mores? I’m sure they all have stories, and if we had more time we could research those stories, but my point is that sometimes a dish needs an official name. And that’s why I Christen (what’s the Jewish…

  • Chocolate Cherry Poppyseed Cookies

    Chocolate Cherry Poppyseed Cookies

    Call me a rebel, but when a recipe calls for dried cranberries? I used dried cherries. “Adam!” you might say. “What are you? Some kind of thorn in the side of society, trying to topple the status quo?” To that I say, “Hey, I’m just your average every day food blogger who happens to like…