Eating pancakes for dinner is always a good idea, I think, and one big puffed pancake an even better one. Using a ratio of 1:1:1 of flour to whole milk to egg, I whisked an egg (with a dash of vanilla) into a cup of milk then both into a cup of flour, adding a [...]

The weekend began with cassoulet—with the soaking of the beans, chopped onion sizzling in butter, pork layers of guanciale, a toscano sausage, country bacon cooking under duck confit in the oven. My good friend Solana was in Brooklyn for a few days between her travels from Puerto Rico and to Berlin, so I made a [...]

Although Thanksgiving at my mother’s house usually begins with butternut squash, this year, I thought we would start in Brooklyn with cauliflower from the farmers’ market, with the local markets as the beginning for all of this holiday about food. Imagining orange and purple cauliflower I found at Union Square Greenmarket swirling in a soup, [...]

Do you ever crave colors? Tonight, I turned to the stove knowing only that the pasta began with purple. Soon, slender purple kale stems slicked with olive oil rested on top of strands laced with minced raw garlic from purplish paper shells, roasted cauliflower, and Italian tuna packed in oil from an oblong tin, a [...]

It began with sandwiches. My fabulous friend Laura lives in Venice, California, near Gjelina, where we ordered the finest chicken sandwich with anchovies I’m likely to encounter and a BLT with a fried egg. And so began five food-filled days in Southern California as I relaxed into the sound of the ocean you can hear [...]