Borscht, that often cold, Eastern European, potato-laden, crimson soup– it’s not one of my favorites. I love soup, and I love potatoes, and beets are my BFF (best friends forever), but all simmered together, eehhh… However, looking through the SF paper last week, the food section of course, I saw a recipe for an altogether new beet soup that I knew that I had to try.
Nowhere in the article did it mention that this was a bourgie soup, but made with bright golden beets, and embellished with creme fraiche, how could it not be? I quickly deemed it the Anti-Borscht and the Bourgie Beet Soup. Simple in its composition, using golden rather when ruby beets, and made with just a handful of ingredients, the soup was beautiful to behold and delicious to taste. So rarely do you obtain a soup that is so clear, so honestly golden in color, [...]

I love Thai food. The interplay of unique flavors, the balance between salty and sweet, the clean palate, all make up entirely new taste combinations. I recently picked up Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid’s brilliant book, Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Trip Through Southeast Asia. This enormous book is filled with both tales of the authors’ travels throughout this region of the world, as well as easy-to-follow recipes of the delicious sorts of food eaten on their excursions. While flipping through the pages, dog-earring the recipes I had to try, I came to a recipe for Pomelo Salad that looked intriguing.
The pomelo, a typical Southeast Asian citrus fruit, now sold in the U.S., looks like a giant grapefruit. Usually less juicy than a common grapefruit, with a thick spongy skin, they can range in flavor, from quite sour to pleasantly sweet. You never know what kind of pomelo [...]

Never did I think that words like limp and wilted would describe something so utterly delightful. These adjectives call to mind a soggy salad, vegetables left too long in the refrigerator, or even overcooked spaghetti noodles. But they also describe, quite aptly I might say, a simple, unadorned celebration of a new way to prepare a rather standard green vegetable. And with that glowing introduction, I give you, Grilled Escarole.March is the most difficult month for me. Yes it is the beginning of spring, the start of a season filled with juicy berries, fuzzy stone fruit, and multitudes of light lettuces. But spring is just spring by the calendar year. Even in California, a place that is teeming with produce, the bounty doesn’t really start to get going until mid-April. And so I struggle with March. Cabbage, potatoes, broccoli, oranges, and mandarins just aren’t doing it for me anymore, I [...]

For any of my long time readers, perhaps you remember my late summer trip to LA. Bagels were eaten, stars were spotted, and I even took a trip through the greater LA area, in search of programmatic architecture. Fun was had by all (well, maybe just me).
This morning while doing a bit of research on-line, I found out a most disturbing turn of events has occurred. Tail o’ the Pup, that long-standing, ever-loved restaurant, serving up greasy hot dogs to multitudes of adoring, hungry diners, is no longer. The owner has sold the land to builders planning a retirement community. The Tail o’the Pup closed in early 2006.
There has been some talk of reopening the Pup in a parking lot in Westwood. But no plans have been made as of yet. Might I make a suggestion? Load the Pup on to a giant, flat-bed truck, strap it down, good and [...]

There is just something about homemade yeast bread. The earthy, slightly sweet smell eminating from a lump of dough, as it gradually warms and rises on your kitchen counter, there is nothing homier. For all of my waxing poetic about the miraculous discoveries of yeast products, let me put out the disclaimer that I am not a baker. Far from it in fact.
Baking was always too fussy for me. It was all about timing, chemistry, and temperature; I favored the freedom of cooking. And I still do– I just realized that at a certain point, I would no longer be fulfilled being either one or the other– a cook, or a baker. A good bourgie would have to be, at the very least, proficient at both. Slowly I have begun to bake more, and I actually love the sweet treats bounding from my kitchen. But yeast, with all of its [...]

Beans can be perfectly bourgie! I was so entranced by my earlier bean discovery, I decided that beans were it for me, and that more of this perfect legume should be incorporated into my diet. So, flipping through Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, I stumbled upon a recipe for Mashed Fava Beans and Greens, that sounded like just the thing to pile on slices of grilled country bread to be eaten as an open-faced sandwich.
Crostini, or as we like to call it in America, The Open-Faced Sandwich, are a thing of beauty. Ideal in their composition, with just the right ratio of filling to bread, eaten perfectly civilized with a knife and a fork, or gobbled up by hand, I think it is true to say that I enjoy them more than I do the traditional sandwich…and this crostini was no different.
Garlicky and flavorful, these beans when doused [...]

In my youth, I always avoided garbanzo beans. Clammy and peaked, resting in some avocado colored, melmac bowl, next to the pickled beets, and the rosy kidney beans at salad bar, they were always so slippery and unappealing. But I have grown, and my tastes have changed. While I can’t say that I now love those garbanzo beans of yesteryear, I can say that I rather like them in various other forms– like roasted.
Something so simple takes on an altogether different feel with the addition of a bit of heat from the oven. Crisp outside, tender inside these chickpeas are both a wonderful snack eaten out of hand, or they are a scrumptious, hearty side dish with whatever entree you choose. And they are simple to boot.
It seems that lately I have a bit of a fascination with roasting. Maybe it is the blustery weather, or perhaps it is knowing [...]

Jasmine, basmati, brown, California long grain– I love them all. The staple of so many diets around the world, rice is a wonderful side dish alternative. But if you are anything like me, you always make a bit to much of the grain to suffice one meal, so into the refrigerator it goes. Sure the intention is always there, I tell myself, “I will eat my leftovers this time around,” but inevitably they sit, getting chilly in the Fridgidaire. That is until I discovered a new way to use up my old rice.
Wild Rice Pancakes with Cranberry Compote, a delicious, flavorsome dish, complete with just a bit of sweet-tart fruit to round out the menu. These flapjacks use pre-cooked (read: leftover) rice as the main ingredient. Any type of rice should do, but this time around I had made a wild brown rice pilaf with onion, and simmered in [...]

With spring quickly approaching (at least I hope that it is), and those lovely, knobby spears of asparagus making their first appearance at the market, I quickly bought a bunch and hurried home to create a perfectly pleasing mid-week meal. And sometimes there is nothing that pleases a bourgie more than to sit down to an almost monochromatic meal.
Now this might appear to be the standard pasta pesto, slippery and smooth. But in actuality, it was Pea Pesto, making it all the more green, and all the more vernal. I started this pesto out with a bag of frozen peas, because really, who can bear to shuck all of those fresh ones. I simmered the peas in a 1/2 cup of chicken broth for flavor, and after they were cooked, put the entire contents, peas and broth, into the bowl of a food processor. In went just a few [...]