Making Minty Mojitos
At last–it’s warm outside again! I’ve been craving summer cocktails even though it hasn’t felt much like summer in the last month. So now that it’s finally heating up, I need to stock up on simple syrups. If you like to make cocktails, or even mocktails, simple syrup is a must-have ingredient. We use it [...]
Blood, Bones & Butter
My birthday present to myself this year was a copy of Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by recent James Beard award-winning chef Gabrielle Hamilton. Then my food-themed book group decided to read it for our next discussion. Problem was, I plowed through the story so quickly, it was a [...]
Irish Quick Bread
A few weeks ago, I won an Irish-inspired recipe contest with my vegetarian Cottage Garden Pie. I ended up with a gorgeous cookbook, the James Beard Award-winner The Country Cooking of Ireland and about 8 pounds of Kerrygold cheese and butter! To thank Amber, who ran the contest on her blog, I invited her and [...]
United States of Arugula
Lynn and I recently joined a book club dedicated to food books. I hate to say “foodie” club, since that doesn’t seem accurate. We’re all interested in cooking and eating, but also in learning more about the history and literature of food. So the first assignment was to read The United States of Arugula: The [...]
Term of the Week: Crostata
I was served this heavenly strawberry crostata recently at Grange. Some of the other diners there asked about the name and whether it wasn’t really a galette? So I came home and looked up the terms. My indispensable book for food terms is the Food Lover’s Companion, The (Barron’s Cooking Guide) 3rd Edition. I use [...]
Term of the Week: Dok
Recently I discovered a different kind of rice cake that I think I could love. It’s called dok in Korean. Instead of puffy nothingness, these are chewy sticks made of glutinous rice that’s been beaten and formed. You can get them in coins, stars, hearts, and all kinds of sizes. A haul over to Vinh [...]
