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I’ve been really into tomatoes this summer. Every Sunday I’ve been going to the Atwater Village Farmer’s Market, buying some juicy heirlooms, and using them in sandwiches, salads, tomato baths, you get the idea. You might think that now that August is over, tomato season is on the way out… but you’d be wrong! Most…

When you’re an old fogey food blogger like me, dinner comes in one of two categories: 1. something you’ve already blogged about and 2. something you’ve never blogged about. The sad truth is that more often than not, lately, I feel like cooking things that I’ve already blogged about because I love making them. It’s…

Mario Batali’s recipe for Eggplant Parmesan–which I consider, in my humble opinion, to be the Ultimate Eggplant Parmesan–does something most Eggplant Parmesan recipes don’t: it honors the eggplant. Instead of coating slices of eggplant in egg and breadcrumbs, frying them in a skillet, and piling them up with tomato sauce and cheese until you have…

If you cook the same thing over and over and over again, eventually you get really good at it. That’s what happened with me and chicken: I’m really good at cooking it. And though there are many who find chicken boring, that’s usually because chicken, when stripped of its skin and bones, is, indeed, very…

I’m kind of digging this L.A. winter. I was worried it’d be too hot and that I wouldn’t be able to cook my cold weather comfort food. Instead, it’s just cold enough to make a big pot of soup–like this Italian cabbage soup called Ribollita–and to feel good about it. Served up with lots of…

Growing up, if I visited a friend and that friend’s mother was cooking dinner, one word would make me run away screaming. That word was “lasagna.” Theories for why this was the case: (1) I grew up in a non-lasagna household; (2) it was a non-lasagna household because (a) my dad hates cheese and (b)…

Eggplant is a funny vegetable. It’s not a vegetable that inspires passion, the way that asparagus or ramps do in springtime. It’s not a vegetable that anyone would put on a short list of favorite foods. If the farmer’s market held a prom, I’m pretty certain eggplant would be sitting by itself on a bench,…

Pó isn’t a restaurant that I frequent, but it’s a restaurant that I should frequent more. After all, this is where Mario Batali got his start, and however much distance now exists between him and this restaurant, every time I eat here I’m reminded of all the things I loved about Mario when he first…

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It’s summer. It’s hot. Most people, hot in summer, do not crave liver. I didn’t mean to crave liver. In actuality, I haven’t eaten much liver in my life. I’ve eaten chopped liver–but that seems like a different thing: masked by egg and onions, eating chopped liver at a deli and eating a whole chicken…