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Category Archives: Food

Adventures in recipes, restaurants and other food topics.

Cornbread

I don’t bake or eat quick breads that often, so it has taken a while for me to get around posting one of my favorites, cornbread. When I discovered blue corn flour (finely ground cornmeal) back in the 1990s, I went nuts making cornbread…then stopped for some reason. I think the following recipe has a […]

Brazilian cheese puffs: pão de queijo

I adapted this from Simply Recipes. I didn’t use a mini-muffin pan since I don’t have one, and I increased the amount of cheese. As Elise Bauer points out, the resulting cheese bread puffs are like crispy mochi popovers. Or, alternatively, like a South American version of gougères.

Raspberry-vanilla ice cream

We don’t get raspberries here as often as we do blackberries and ollalieberries. But one day this past summer, Simon came home from the market with the most fragrant of raspberries… He got four punnets for $12—not cheap!—although high quality and organic, from Borba Farms. It was barely over a pound of fruit, so not […]

Zucchini, (sweet) potato & cheese gratin

Here’s another dish that makes use of our garden’s summer surplus of zucchini. Inspired by the potato, squash & goat cheese gratin recipe from the The Kitchn, except that I reversed the proportions of summer squash and potato. And added sweet potato, changed the cheese composition, among one or two other things. 🙂

Roasted tomatoes, good for freezing

I thought I had posted a recipe on how I roasted tomatoes for future usage, but I have not! This recipe was inspired by The Homemade Pantry, by Alana Chernila—about the guilt of letting surplus tomatoes sit too long on the counter. I know that sad feeling when I notice the impending squishiness and mold. […]

Waffles from sourdough yeast starter

Finally! After a botched attempt at making waffles from my yeast starters, I believe this a decent recipe that works. Many thanks are due to Smitten Kitchen’s essential raised waffles. My variation has different ingredient proportions to accommodate using the wet starter. I also use different flours because, in spite of having far too many […]

Orange cake with browned butter, and draped in chocolate ganache

[Actually made this cake nearly a year and a half ago!] Browned butter adds a hint of nuttiness to this cake without adding nuts. Because this cake is made with the sponge technique, rather than a creamed-butter-and-sugar one, it’d be drier without a syrup, so I’ve added that as well. Also, because three is such […]

Apricot brandy with orange and vanilla

It’s strange given my love of apricots that I had not made apricot liqueur. Last summer I finally did, using an inexpensive brandy from Trader Joe’s, an orange, and some vanilla sugar. I filtered out the fruit solids after steeping for 4 months—using a double layer of fine butter muslin over a fine sieve. The […]

Lime curd with a hint of ginger

We’ve got a Bearss lime tree in a large ex-wine barrel. The peak of the crop, in the past, has been during the dead of winter, December through February. But starting this year, somehow the tree started to offer ripe fruit over a wider period. Like, dropping them frequently over the past couple months. While […]

Meyer lemon, ginger and vanilla liqueur

It’s been many years since I’ve made my own alcoholic fruit infusions, and this being a boom Meyer lemon year encouraged me to get back into the habit. Sure, there are many recipes around for limoncello, but I wanted something different. Something with a bit more kick (ginger!), yet a bit more floral (vanilla!). I’ve […]