As in the soup, because I made my own cream of mushroom– for a very specific purpose. This week I had my first tuna-noodle casserole. I did not grow up with casseroles. My dad never liked a one-pot meal, and my mom didn’t really care, so I had a childhood free of Durkee French Fried Onions. Frankly, I never liked tuna fish from a can until I was in college, so a tuna casserole was not in my culinary lexicon.
But recently my mother started making them for herself . Maybe she was finally feeling that empty-nest syndrome, or maybe she was hearkening back to her own childhood in the 1950s, filled with tuna-noodle casseroles. Either way she started to rave about them. At first I was appalled; this casserole always sounded like a train wreck to me. But then, as I started [...]

Sometimes, at the close of a weekend full of errands, dinner with friends, and general busy-ness, the most you can do is tumble onto the couch with the book review section of the New York Times. And then you remember that, oh yes, you have to feed yourself. What to do, what to do?
Growing up, my mother called Sunday suppers, “Fend for Yourself Night.” I must have gotten this propensity for laziness from someone. Usually my mom would do some cobbling together: there would be leftovers, or a can of tomato soup with some elbow macaroni bobbing about in the broth, there were eggs to cook, and if things really got slim, a bowl of cereal usually did the trick. But the one thing that these dishes had in common– mom didn’t have to spend much time in the kitchen.
Last Sunday I found myself throwing [...]

Innards. It’s what’s for dinnards. Awhile back, when finally coming clean to you all about my, well…diversity of eating habits, I mentioned that offal, delicious though it may be, “doesn’t photograph too well.” I stand corrected. Though it may not be the beautiful girl, with a sparkling smile, and hair so buttery blond she is simply crying out to have her picture taken, it is not necessarily the gangly, pre-pubescent, girl with wiry hair and a mouth full of metal either. I guess it is all in how one handles a little bit of liver, that makes one exclaim– beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I myself was not always a lover of liver. When I was young my mom would prepare them every so often for Sunday supper, and I would gag. She would drag out the heavy, cast-iron skillet, [...]

Did everyone have a pleasant, gluttonous holiday? Good. I don’t know about you, but each year come January, I am so ready to get back to my real life. I am ready to kiss those candy canes goodbye. Ready to extinguish those chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Ready to blow off those powdered sugar cookies. Is anyone with me?
As excited as I become to ring in the holiday season, I think that if I see another Bûche de Noël I just might have to toss it into the fireplace. (She says with a bah-humbug!) I am ready to go back to the daily, winter grind: obsessively checking the weather forecast for signs of snow, piling on layer after layer of woolen winter clothes, and slowly exhaling warm air hoping to catch a glimpse of my breath. And the food– there [...]

This is what I would have imagined being fed if as a child if I grew up in some Spanish villa. Instead I grew up in a ranch style house in suburban San Francisco eating macaroni and cheese. Not that there is anything wrong with that cheesy goodness, but chorizo sausage it is not.
When I saw this recipe in July’s issue of Gourmet magazine, it intrigued me. Crispy bits of chorizo sausage, buttery chickpeas, and the crunch of toasted almonds sounded perfect. And this pasta dish was terrific, as long as you cast aside any preconceived notions as to what pasta should be like, in the Italian sense. This is not an al dente dish. The body that comes from this dish is not coming from the swollen angel hair noodles, it is coming from the other Spanish ingredients added to the [...]

As I stumble out of the Grand Street subway station, I am immediately caught and taken away by the crowds of people, each grasping flimsy plastic bags holding ingredients, ready for cooking. This is Chinatown, a place so teeming with people I often wonder where they all come from. The shops each specialize in their own brand of goodies, from clothes to housewares, meat to fish, exotic fruits and vegetables, to more bottles of condiments than you would see bottles of potions in an old-fashioned apothecary shop.
I could spend hours here, and I do. I stroll along the streets, more quiet, with people actually sitting along the curbs once you turn off of Grand Street. I look at all of the dried roots, and mounds of dehydrated shrimp in one shop. At the butchers there are cuts of meat that I have never seen, and [...]

Sunday evening, 1987. I come to the table for a typical Sunday night meal. At the close of a busy weekend our dinners were filled with usuals: rotisserie chicken and a salad, some soup, leftovers from a more appropriate weekday meal, or sometimes my mother would whip up her version of Hamburger Helper– a mix of ground meat, a sauteed onion, and plenty of elbow macaroni. Now this wasn’t the sort of meal my mother would usually whip up, but on Sundays, typically fend for yourself night, this sort of American ease was a welcome change.
I have never even had traditional Hamburger Helper, neatly packaged in a cardboard box, with that jolly four-fingered gentleman smiling back at me; but I loved my mom’s version. It was pleasantly bland, seasoned only with salt and pepper, and I gobbled up the little crooked pasta which were far from [...]

There is something almost magical about a beet. Dirty, ruddy, and altogether blah on the outside, but crimson (if you’re using red beets), shiny, sparkling little orbs on the inside. When cooked and peeled they are like a sanguine surprise just waiting to be eaten. I eat beets in all sorts of ways, but I particularly love them used as a filling for (mostly) homemade ravioli.
To me, this ravioli mimics how a beet occurs naturally. All folded up, the ravioli look like neat little pillows of pasta, beige in color and well, beige in flavor too. But when these ravioli are cut into, out comes a shock of pink filling, and the flavor is divine. They are hidden treasures of sight and flavor.
Prepared simply, by roasting the beets in foil packets at 400 degrees prior to filling, the beets are then mashed with a potato masher or a fork. But [...]