DIY

I don’t need an expert to tell me that I eat too much dairy.  I live with a 93 year old mom who puts sour cream on everything.  So when I decided to prepare for my interview with Mark Bittman on his new diet book VB6:  Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health…For Good (well that’s a mouthful), I knew …

I first posted this recipe in 2005.  It was the featured gefulte fish substitute at the Angeli Passover dinner for more than twenty years. But don’t just think of it as Jewish holiday food.  Pesce in Carpione comes from the Italian culinary tradition of agrodolce, sweet and sour, a remnant of times when vinegar was used to preserve food, not just for it’s in …

When I was teaching a Passover Cooking Class last week I realized how even the simplest of tips can push your pot roast from just okay (or even barely edible) to excellent.  Take a look at this video I did a couple years ago for The Jewish Federation to get an idea of how easy it really is.  Hint:  It’s all about the vinegar-sugar …

Variations on these intense chocolate no flour cookies pop up all over the internet around Passover, but they deserve some attention all year round as a Gluten Free option.  They are deeply chocolaty and take well to experimentation with additional flavors.  I like to add some of my favorite chocolate friendly flavors like almond, cinnamon and a hint of coffee.  I add coffee flavor …

People ask me if I use cookbooks. Yes I do. I’m a voracious consumer of food information and ideas, so if a cookbook piques my interest I will browse through it to see what I can learn.  Rarely do I ever make a recipe exactly. Not even with my own recipes from my own cookbooks. Cooking is a fluid mode of expression for me …

It’s almost impossible to find an edible knish anywhere, let alone a truly delicious one. So with my mom’s 93rd birthday coming up I decided to make a knish she would like.  KCRW colleague Ariana Morgenstern agreed to help and we set a date for our knish project.
I started researching cookbooks and online resources and finally decided to follow Pam Reiss’s wonderful pictorial demo on …

Turnips.  Such an unsexy word for a defiantly unsexy vegetable.  Yet often surprises await in unlikely places.  Like marrying the technique of braising (eg. moist cooking) with the simple turnip.  When braised the porous root will soak up your favorite flavors like a sponge.  Prefer a Mediterranean twist?  Use broth, garlic and thyme or rosemary and a little tomato.  Want an assertive Spanish side …

Onigiri are the perfect portable Japanese snack or lunch food.  In it’s classic form it’s a rice ball enclosing a bit of tasty filling, and finished off with a wrap of nori.  Stuffings can include salted salmon, different roes, tuna, but it’s fun to come up with your own.  I love stuffing them with boiled chicken mixed with soy and chives.
Making the Onigiri are …

I had a Pie Class to teach, and my go-to not-so-secret ingredient, Lard (which I get mail order) was in short supply.  What to do?  I am a believer in using more than one fat in the dough.  Using only butter tastes great, but I prefer the texture of a mixed fat dough.  And for me, the texture of the crust is about 65% …

Whenever I travel I always think the trip is a success if I see an easy project to duplicate or think about. I recently went up to Vancouver Island to visit a salmon farm (more about that later). Our group was put up at a lovely log cabin resort called The Lodge at Gold River. One night after a day of float planes, boat …