Sometimes you just make those salads that sound so good. With summery ingredients like juicy tomatoes and crisp cucumbers, bits of torn, aromatic basil, and my favorite, slithery, salty anchovies, it should be great. You follow the recipe almost to the T, and you know what? It just falls flat– not on its face but skidding ever so gently on its bum.
When I saw this recipe for what seemed like a delectably simple farro salad in The Zuni Cafe Cookbook my mind began to reel with all of the pithy titles I would name this post. So Near, So Farro. Farro Too Good. Or maybe, Once Upon a Time, In a Land Farro Way. (Yes, I know that none of these titles make a lick of sense.) But then I made this salad, and I’m sorry to say, for the sake of [...]

My stay back in California was filled with good friends, family suppers, and delicious food. It was lovely to be back as a guest in the place that I called home for so many years; sort of like being a tourist without any of the annoying guidebooks, iffy meals at unknown places, and the pressure of trying to do too much. I had dinner one night in San Francisco with a dear friend at a restaurant that is hardly new, but is always stupendous. My friend ordered a starter salad of fried oysters and fried Meyer lemons on a bed of frisee.
A nibble of her salad and I was hooked on those lemons, so tart, pleasantly acidic– delicious. It’s been two weeks since since I have returned to my new home, and I couldn’t stop thinking of that darn fruit, shared with a friend over a [...]

Happy New Year! I must say that come January 2, gifts passed around, ornaments strewn about, and merry friends seen, I am happy to get back to the real world…at least for awhile. My New Year’s Eve was a quiet one, dinner with good friends, a little sake and some good conversation. But come New Year’s Day, I still felt the need to cleanse the system of all of the holiday’s rich food and drink. And what better way to cleanse my system? With a lovely salad of course.
Now you knew that I wouldn’t ring in 2007 with a big bowl of iceberg lettuce, would I? So just what is this rosy salad that I threw together? A grated daikon salad, adorned with baby buckwheat greens, and shavings of purple cipollini onions, that’s what. I was feeling less than inspired when I [...]

I remember my grandma’s waldorf salad– an interesting mix of both fruit and vegetables, all mixed up with a paste-like dressing. I have never been a huge mayonnaise fan, but yet I was enthralled with the waldorf dressing. A little mayonnaise, a touch of whipped cream, could it be? Sweet yet tangy, light and lustrous, this dressing seemed to have it all. I would sit at the table, a dish of the mellifluous concoction before me, both repulsed and intoxicated.
Now it’s been years since I have partaken in this salad of yore. And just the thought of it, I must say, repulses rather more than intoxicates me. But the basics of the waldorf salad are good ones. It has good bones. It’s just the dressing that must be updated, made more palatable for my 21st century tastebuds. And so I resorted [...]

What do you do when all of sudden it’s September, and you just feel fall coming? It’s dark now by 7:30, there are no more cherries in the market, nor apricots, and there is actually a chill in the air when the sun goes down. Yes, fall is a-comin’. And I think I am ready for it. I actually love autumn, the change from the sweltering days of summer, to the frosty days of winter. Those nubby sweaters packed away in my closet are looking more and more tempting.
But every summer I feel a little sorrow. As much as I love those hearty autumn squash, and root veg in all its many incarnations, it is tough to say so long to my beloved berries and stone fruit. It throws me into a bit of a panic. And when I get thrown into this [...]

Maybe it is just certain octogenarians I have run into, but most of them do two things: talk about their health, and talk about the weather. And now that I have moved to New York, a place that actually has weather and seasons, I find myself doing the same thing (at least the weather part). I mentioned before that it is HOT, but besides the heat there is the humidity, the sort of humidity that makes you want to run back indoors, to your small, air-conditioned apartment, peel off your sticky clothes, and take a cool shower. I’m from California, I mean: What is humidity anyways?
And so I have joined the ranks of those people, the one’s that talk ad nauseum about the weather, and to me, it is endlessly fascinating. We are mostly unpacked, a household’s worth of goods transplanted from California to New York. Newsprint packing has been [...]

I have a secret to tell. I’ve been in a bit of a food rut. Each week I go to the market, wondering if they will still be there, like jewels of crisp vegetal goodness. And I can let out a sigh of relief when I see them stacked helter-skelter, waiting to be brought home. So no, my fixation has not been cherries, tart berries, or cooling watermelon. It may seem blase to some, but I assure you these beauties are anything but.
How could you not scoop up these lovely cauliflower, and bring them home? No bigger than your fist, with the curly greenery still attached, you know they are fresh from the earth. Sometimes there is a purple head of cauliflower, other weeks I have bought the romanesco variety, with its tight ringlets of flowerets; but this week I bought the basic white, a glowing green, and a [...]

How much do I love imported, canned tuna in olive oil? I will tell you, it’s a lot. No single, other food that I can think of brings a meal to glowing, bourgie status with just a can opener and a little bit of creativity. But what do you do when confronted with the aforementioned can, a basket of new spring groceries, and a baguette that has seen its better days? Make a panzanella, or a nicoise, no– a panzanella. Well which ever it was, it was delicious.
I had gone a little ga-ga at the market. With so much beautiful produce, how could I not? Peppery, bright green baby arugula, no plucking necessary, acted as my base. Juicy, red-ripe tomatoes, no larger than a golf ball, screaming for me to cook (or not to cook, as the case may be) with them. Shavings of crisp bulbs of fennel, their anisette [...]

With all of the different types of cucumbers at the market these days, you never know what you are truly getting. Watery and insipid, or crunchy and crisp, the adjectives vary as much as the cucumbers themselves. But I do like a good cucumber, and watery as they may be, they also taste of summer: light, refreshing, and cool.
You have your regular, garden variety sort, with the tough green skin almost pimply, and overflowing with seeds waiting to be discarded before consumed. Then there is the English cucumber, virtually seedless with a tender, edible skin. A pickling cucumber that is diminutive, and just yearning to be brought home and soaked in some briny solution, is next on the list. And finally, you have the slightly more difficult to find, Persian or Japanese cucumber. This is the baby of them all, no larger than your hand, virtually seedless, supple skin, and [...]

I am a miserable shaver. Perhaps I am not as diligent as I should be; or maybe it is that I am always in too much of a hurry, whisking a sharp razor up and down my peaked legs; but whatever it is I just can’t do it well. Each time I step into the bath, steam curling calmly at the surface of the water, I lather up my legs with shaving cream, and begin the process, the cream is zipped off with every course of my bright pink razor. The job is done, all looks well, and I emerge from the bath, and begin to dry off. Then the minute cuts turn into gushing, sanguine rivers of blood. I dab with a tissue, try putting on lotion to stop the hemorrhages. The bathroom looks like a crime scene. I cannot shave my legs. But what I can shave, are [...]