Nature has put on her Technicolor dreamcoat and cast a verdant spell across California’s brown hills. Last weekend I found some gorgeous wild fennel tucked in amongst the daisies and sage in Runyon Canyon, it’s bright green fronds fanning the smaller plants in the breeze. I didn’t pick any, but fully intend to go back with a bag and a little gardening shovel to pluck out a licorice-scented bulb or two. I’ve also been on the lookout for ramps, the garlicky wild leeks prized by chefs; they’re bound to start popping up soon. Though, since there growing season is so short and the flavor so sought-after, I doubt any will remain in the ground long enough for me to find and pick. I’ll just have to watch restaurant menus to get a bite while I can.
The farmers market is awash in green, too. Fava tendrils hint at the broad beans to come, graceful, tender asparagus line stall after stall like crowned guards and snap peas and English peas pour out of baskets, crisp pods beckoning like the Jolly Green Giant’s fingers.
Last Thursday was the Vernal Equinox, the day in the Northern Hemisphere when the night and day are essentially the same length. It is also the official start of spring and my second favorite time of year after fall. But living in Southern California, it’s easy to get a little detached from the seasons—the daffodils, cherry blossoms and tulips started blossoming at the end of February and I’ve returned to wearing flip flops most days—but I find that cooking always keeps me in time with the earth’s clock. Feeling springy, I decided to host “Easter” dinner for a few friends, a slightly surprising turn of events since I’m Jewish. Yet no sooner was the guest list confirmed than I found out I was supposed to work Sunday brunch at the restaurant I’ve been moonlighting at. Rather than cancel I decided to pick a simple menu, prep Saturday and have Neal do a bunch of the cooking while I was at work.
I have long counted myself among the Valentine’s Day-haters, a scowling anti-cupid. And my hate was the self-righteous kind, the disdain of the enlightened, of someone who didn’t buy into a holiday concocted to sell more greeting cards and chocolate—something like a Valentine’s vegan. But then I fell deeply in love. And suddenly, like someone who had deprived themselves of bacon and butter too long, I fell off the deep end.
Butternut Squash, Asiago & Walnut Ravioli with Brown Butter
Why are people so willing to start off the New Year with pie-in-the-sky expectations—thinking New Year’s Eve is going to be some transformational event—only to go to a large party, get sloppy drunk and end up in bed with a stranger? No wonder New Year’s is always a disappointment? I’m not trying to be Negative Nancy here, it just seems our New Year’s traditions are, shall I say, a little lacking.
What we know as New Year’s Eve is, essentially, an arbitrary designation made by two Roman consuls in 153 BC. Before that, the holiday was celebrated on March 15. And there are plenty of cultures that don’t even follow the Roman calendar, celebrating their New Year in the fall like Rosh Hashana—the Jewish New Year, or February, like the Chinese.
Normally, having spent much of my adult life in the restaurant business, I work on New Year’s Eve. The money is fantastic and, unlike my non-working friends, I wake up January 1st feeling refreshed. But at the beginning of December my dear friend Brooke, of Foodwoolf, and I were eating lunch at Joan’s On Third, when our cheese-pusher, Chester, mentioned he’d just gotten in the sausage for a traditional Italian New Year’s dish, cotechino con lenticche—cotechino with lentils. Continue reading »
Every Monday night when I was a freshman in high school my father and I made dinner. My mother would leave us chicken breasts, but the rest was up to us. We liked to stir-fry a lot in those days and we loved to play in the spice cabinet, opening random bottles and sprinkling on a whim, dusting the countertops a mottled pattern of ochre, crimson and green. Often we added peanut butter. We could never duplicate a dish and, to be honest, there were plenty of times we didn’t want to. But every now and then we hit our stride and the flavors were fantastic. Sometimes we ordered pizza. Continue reading »
Cooking, for me, is generally a solitary task, a moment to meditate. Alone, peeling carrots or chopping fennel isn’t a mundane task, but standing Zazen meditation. It allows me a moment with my senses, captivated by the way an onion’s odor transforms in the pan with a little bit of olive oil, how it loosens its astringent veil to reveal a sweet, earthen core. Cooking alone is like solving a Sunday New York Times crossword or other puzzle—carefully strategizing when to start each component of a dish or meal so that everything finishes hot and perfectly cooked at the same time.
Cooking with friends and family is an entirely different animal. Full of laughter, bumping into one another, tasting and, occasionally, smoke alarms. It’s sharing a delightful secret with the people you’re cooking with. Continue reading »
Nobody told me it was going to smell bad. Excited to try a new ingredient, I tore at the brown butcher paper like a six year old opening a present to reach the snowy white, stone heavy, rigid piece of bacalao inside. I gagged. I gagged again. Continue reading »
Let me just start by saying that I’ve never actually cooked a turkey. I’ve roasted chickens before, but nothing as big as a Thanksgiving turkey. So you would think that I’d listen to my folks, who have years of turkey cooking under their belts, regarding how long our 13-pound free range bird would take. You would think that I’d trust the calculator, dividing pounds by minutes instead of the mathematically deficient brain that struggles to compute the correct tip for the pizza guy. You’d think.
