The Tomato Knife

Lemon bars are one of my very favorite desserts – they always have been. When I was a teenager, my mom, sister, brother, and I would trek down to Albuquerque for violin lessons – that’s an hour from Santa Fe (where we lived) and thus shows pure dedication. Now that I’m thinking about it, though, [...]

I’ve been shunning exact measurements recently. With all that’s going on in the world, I seem to find refuge in the simple flow of following ingredients into their recipe – I say “their recipe” because I’ve just been letting them take over. Maybe this is a bit off the wall, but I almost feel like [...]

Why buy mayonnaise when you can make it? Yesterday, at lunchtime, I wanted to make an inside out (or outside in) tuna melt (like a grilled-cheese sandwich, but with tuna). Dilemma: I didn’t have any mayonnaise – and as most of us would agree, tuna simply needs mayonnaise. I knew the closest grocer didn’t carry [...]

It’s amusing, the number of random, yet special little finds, I come across in even the most ordinary grocery stores around here. Take, for example, the tin of chocolate powder I found just the other day. Inside, there’s nothing complicated – just 100% pure chocolate, ready for concocting goodies like hot chocolate or buttercream frosting. [...]

A quatre-quart is a simple cake traditionally made with four different ingredients (eggs, sugar, flour and butter) in equal parts. Thus the name, “four-quarters”. One thing I’ve learned about French cooking is that you have to have a scale. Unlike American recipes, European ones give ingredients in weight (i.e. grams for butter or kilos for [...]

It’s snowing in Paris – miniature flakes scurrying down from a surprisingly bright white sky. And it’s below freezing – maybe not the best time to be writing about yogurt – too cold for anything from the refrigerator. But, it’s been a yogurt factory around here and I have some stories to share. Like I [...]