I’m absolutely crazy for stone fruit. From the moment the first cherries come in, I quiver in anticipation of what’s to follow: sweet-tart plums and pluots, gushingly juicy peaches. I most look forward to the apricots, seductive and demure. I could eat a bushel of them right out of hand, but apricot jam is my [...]
I’ll admit that I have a soft spot for those Day-Glow red maraschino cherries that lurk in the murky depths of the classic Manhattan. They’re nostalgic, and always good for a bar bet if you can tie the stems with your tongue. But let’s face it: They don’t really taste much like cherries. Or, for [...]
They turn your head. Maybe it’s the flash of lurid red in the corner of your eye as you walk by the booth at the farmer’s market. More likely it’s the intense, candy-like perfume that fills your sinuses. Maybe you weren’t conscious of the triggers, but you suddenly find yourself salivating. Strawberries have a siren song. [...]
Aside from judging pickles and standing in line for hours at various street food vendors at last year’s Bay Area Eat Real Fest, I also attended the adjunct Eat Real Lit Fest. It featured a wide range of brainy foodies alternately reading from their works or extemporizing on the topic of street food and other burgeoning [...]
I am not a sports fan. I had a brief flirtation with the excitement of professional sports last October when my home team won the World Series, but by and large sporting events just don’t make my radar. But there’s some kind of big football event coming up, I hear? I don’t know thing one [...]
On my mother’s side, my family is entirely Italian-American, and each year on Christmas Eve we would observe the Feast of the Seven Fishes. No fewer than seven fish dishes would be prepared, in groaningly large quantities, and laid out on a large table for dinner. Among the dishes there was always baccalà, salt cod [...]
Back in August, I was tapped to be a pickle judge at the Eat Real Fest in Oakland, CA. The festival was a bacchanalia of all things foodie: Squadrons of street carts, tremendous walls of spigots spewing microbrews, live demos of everything from butter to butchery. The judging came as part of a series of [...]
Homemade liqueurs are the ultimate gifts that keep giving. They continue to mellow and improve over time, and always trigger fond memories of the gifter when the recipient takes a little post-prandial tipple. I’ve been making whatevercellos for years now. Limoncello is the most famous, of course, made from large, pungent lemons from Italy’s southern [...]
Even non-foodies are passionate about their Thanksgiving foods. Would you prefer white meat or dark? Do you call it stuffing or dressing? Is ambrosia salad actually food? But the one T-day element that cleaves the world neatly in two is cranberry sauce. In one corner you have the folks who like the gelatinous log embossed [...]
I’m not really sure when it happened. At some point in my life I became hooked on heat. It was probably some gateway drug, over-the-counter stuff like Tabasco. A dash on some eggs, and then on a slice of pizza. I craved new sensations: Sriracha, chile verde, South Indian curries. My growing tolerance drove me [...]
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