House porn– magazines like Dwell, and Architectural Digest, that make you scratch your chin, and wonder, “Does anyone truly live like this?” Sure we love them, maybe we even steal ideas from them, or hold them up as models of something we some day aspire to, but ultimately are they good for us?

I bought some cookbooks recently, and food porn they were. Actually it seems that more and more these days it’s difficult to buy a cookbook that is not porny. Blurry fruitbowls, whisks, frosted with beaten egg whites, haphazardly thrown about pristine kitchen counters, and juicy pieces of meat, hot off the grill, marks perfectly posed, glistening in the noonday sun, have all become commonplace as we glance through the newer cookbooks or flip through the pages of Gourmet magazine. My feeling towards food porn is quite similar to my feelings towards house porn; revel in it I will (you might even see my versions of food porn on this site), but I will always question its need.

I have plenty of cookbooks, dog-eared, and stained with little bits of food and drips of sauces, that do not have a single picture in them. And are they any worse because of this fact? Absolutely not. Are the foods that they are carefully explaining how to make poorer in quality? Of course not. In fact, it could be argued that these books have a certain freedom to them by not containing pictures, that the food benefits from the freedom that is supplied by not lavishly displaying its wares. Sometimes when a recipe displays the final product, perfectly sliced, free of gristle, with just the right amount of sauce to adorn not drown, I feel pressure to perform. I get disappointed when the dessert I made, delicious though it may be, does not look just right.

When I was in the 4th grade we had a California Missions project. Each student in the class was assigned a different Mission on which to do a class project, culminating in a scale model-making of your assigned Mission. I asked for my mothers help, and although she sat with me as I placed little plastic monks, tonsures gleaming, around my Mission, never once did she simply do it for me. This was for two reasons: 1. This would have been cheating, it was my project assignment not hers. 2. She didn’t want me to feel badly about not having my Mission turn out exactly right, knowing that a woman in her mid 40′s could produce a far better Mission than a girl of 10. Do you get what I am saying?

And so, let me vow now to continue my cookbook collecting, giving equal shelf space to the picture-less, as well as the porny. Taking pictures of food is fun, Gaussian blurring is a gas, and I will indulge in all of these things in the future. But I will try very hard to not feel badly about the foods that I prepare from the porny books, and I will say to myself: No ones (insert name of food being prepared here) really looks like that.

When you have breakfasted both well and amply, if you swallow a generous cup of good chocolate at the end of the meal, you will have digested the whole perfectly in comfort…Out of zeal for science, and by sheer force of eloquence, I have persuaded not a few ladies to make this experiment, although they thought to die of it; in every case they were delighted with the result…Those who habitually drink chocolate are conspicuous for unfailing health and immunity from the host of little ills which mar the enjoyment of life; their weight is also less inclined to vary; and these are two advantages which anyone may verify in society and among people whose diet can be ascertained. –Brillat-Savarin

Whether or not what Brillat-Savarin claims is true, is not of importance; it’s the fact that he wrote it at all. For years we have waged the war with health fanatics, trying to shove carob down our throats, that chocolate is bad for you. Slowly we are coming to discover from various universities and health clinics, that chocolate does in fact contain beneficial health properties such as antioxidants (oooh) and cancer fighting components (aaah). So I say eat with abandon, roll in chocolate syrup, and lap up hot chocolate like it is going out of style!

But for those of you with a more refined palate, whose tongue is craving just a modicum of velvelty smoothness, I offer you Hot Drinking Chocolate. Different from hot cocoa, that wintertime beverage of our youth, and for many, simply an excuse to drown piles of whipped cream in a dessert flavored beverage, or dunk a mellifluous marshmallow or two, drinking chocolate is slightly sweet, veritably rich, and altogether delicious. Drinking chocolate gets its creaminess from actual chocolate and milk, where as cocoa, though the words are often used interchangeably, comes from cocoa powder, a process made by pressing all of the fats– the cocoa butter, from the bean.

Though it may be summer, typically a season we do not associate with hot beverages, I say, “Come on, it’s chocolate!” Sinfully rich, the milk fats skipping across your tongue when you taste it, and the delightful decadence of the entire beverage beckoning you to drink ’til the cup is empty. Try a batch anytime, as dessert or respite from afternoon activity or be truly 18th century, and like Brillat-Savarin have it at the culmination of your morning meal, and see if you are not amply ready for the day ahead.

Hot Drinking Chocolate
2 servings
2 1/2 cups milk, either low or full fat
4 tablespoons grated, good-quality, bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate
1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

In a small saucepan heat the milk to a simmer, whipping constantly. It is important to incorporate air into the milk, to maintain a frothy consistency. The more fat that is in the milk, the more froth that will be maintained. Add the chocolate and vanilla to the milk, and whip until incorporated. I use a pre-grated chocolate by Dolfin that is 77% cocoa. Sprinkle any remaining chocolate on top, if desired. Pour into cups, or cafe au lait bowls, and enjoy.

Aaahh, Memorial Day weekend, the official kickoff of summer. A season that makes me eat too many cherries until my stomach is turning in satiated circles, gobble up corn– sliced from the cob and sauteed with butter and chives, or grilled and slathered in sweet cream butter, and the grandaddy of them all, the BBQ, is belching smoke into the warm summer sky.

Now I don’t live in Memphis, or Kansas City, or Texas for that matter, I live in Berkeley, CA. And I don’t own a massive BBQ, a smoke pit, or a galvanized steel drum, in fact I do my barbecuing on a very modest hibachi; but this does not negate my desire for smoky, charred BBQ, slathered with tangy, slightly sweet sauce. What could be better than homemade sauce? Rich, piquant, the reddish color tinging the fingertips, and melting to a smoky, sweet flavor, caramelizing delectably.

Early in the week, preparing for the holiday to come, I whipped up a batch (no, it was more like a gallon) of homemade BBQ sauce. Who knew a handful of condiments, thrown together with some dried spices, would make such a delicious condiment? This sauce is true American style BBQ, containing a bit of sugar balanced out by a bit of acid, for that perfect sweet-sour combination.

Now in the summer I grill a lot: tuna steaks, tandoori style chicken, whole red snappers, and butterflied chicken marinated in olive oil, lemon juices, and fresh sage. Weeks will go by and I will not have tasted “true American style BBQ,” and I can’t say that I miss it. But sometimes I get a hankering for something traditional, the carnivore that lies within me calls out for a barbecued brisket. And now I can oblige, with some rib-sticking homemade sauce of my own.

This makes a relatively large amount of sauce, but it can be stored, refrigerated, for up to six months. Stored in mason jars, it is also the perfect gift for your barbecuing friends.

“Q” Sauce

46 ounces tomato catsup
2- 12 ounce cans tomato paste
1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons dried mustard
2 tablespoons paprika
2 teaspoons dried ginger
2 bay leaves
3 teaspoons garlic granules
2 tablespoons liquid smoke
juice of 1 lemon

Mix all ingredients together, and simmer for 30 minutes. Pour sauce in clean mason jars, if desired, and store in the refrigerator for up to 6 months.

Just what does this mean anyway? It seems to me to be one of those idioms that came out of nowhere. Now the “salad days” have fallen out of favor, only uttered by grandmothers, and linguists interested in peculiar vernaculars. But I did a bit of bird dogging (watch out, the vernacular is flying) and discovered the term was coined by none other than William Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra, and means youthful innocence, or indiscretion. What this has to do with salad, is anyone’s guess. And what this posting has to do with vernacular speech and etymology is really up to you.

But it’s spring, almost summer, a time when enjoying a salad for your evening meal seems less dietetic and more of a celebration of the season. Certainly not a salad my grandmother would make, this salad was bright and sweet, lightly dressed with dijon mustard, lemon juice and olive oil, with a healthy dose of cracked black pepper. Butter lettuce, delicate in texture, was adorned with micro greens, a heartier texture, and bright pink in color. Peppery radish slices mingled with fresh, raw corn– sweet niblets of flavor, and the occasional chopping of chive lended an oniony strength to this melange of vegetables. And mesquite smoked salmon with strong, hardly cracked, fresh black pepper topped off the mix with its meaty saltiness.

I know, it’s just a salad, but it was delightful in its simplicity, hearty, but not overly filling. It just felt good to eat. Sometimes, after a few too many meals eaten out, a salad, tossed together and enjoyed at home, is the perfect remedy.

We all know by now that I am a big fan of desserts. This does not mean however, that I am huge fan of making desserts. Every once in awhile I forget that I don’t loooove to bake, and I jump head first in to some lengthy project involving vanilla beans, too many egg whites beaten to stiff peaks, and a very hot oven. I get impatient. I get frustrated. I go running from the kitchen in a poof of flour, swearing that I will never bake again. That is until the following week, when the entire process starts again.

I adore summer, for many reason, including those culinary. Stone fruit. Luscious, fleeting, and dessert worthy, is my reason for seasonal adoration. For some it may be a bit early for summer fruit, but here in California, land of citrus fruit in the winter, and apricots in the summer, this fruit is starting to pop up all over at local markets. And with plums, apricots, and peaches, come those beautiful, little orbs, bursting with flavor, and with enough rosy pigment to dye both tongues and fingertips– the cherry

And with the cherry, comes chocolate. Milky, smooth, delicious– the Scharffenberger Chocolate Bar, is the perfect culmination to a meal. Earthy, with notes of freshly brewed coffee, and a subtle bitterness, the milk chocolate is 41% cocoa, and has all of the richness for even the true chocolate connoisseur.

I nibble the chocolate, letting it rest and melt on my tongue until all of the milk fats have dissolved. A bite of cherry, rolling the flesh across my mouth, careful to avoid the pit. Alternating between the two, a bit of chocolate then a bit of cherry. Simple enough for the ascetic in me, yet delectable enough for the dessert loving fiend that I am. I throw caution to the wind and consume until my belly is full, a neat stack of cherry pits lay before me, and a crumpled bit of foil strewn to my side.

A few summers ago, I moved back to the East Bay, and in with Brian. I was thrilled to be back, near the friends and food that I had come to love. I think I remembered Berkeley as being an idyllic community, filled with new places to explore, as well as old haunts to frequent. It’s amazing how being away from a place completely changes how you feel about it. Now Berkeley is home again filled with just as many frustrations as it is filled with joys. But that summer Berkeley was good to me, and I reciprocated with jam– lots of jam.

I’m not sure how it all began, I had never made jam before, or even been given homemade preserves, but that summer I pumped out enough jam to keep the students at the local elementary school in PB & J until mid October. Mixed berry, plum and apricot, nectarine and peach scented with mint, I ate it all, gave it to friends and family, brought it to the neighbors. Every person I came in contact with, was given a jar of jam. It was sweet, and quaint, and I was popular. But every good thing must come to an end. As the autumn leaves turned to red, the sweet stone fruit left the market, and were replaced by pungent citrus fruit, classes began once again at the university, and the last of the jam jars scraped clean of all their sticky goodness– My Year of Jam, came to a close.

And since that fateful summer, I haven’t been able to even think of making jam again. The thought of chopping pounds of stone fruit, sterilizing Bell jars, dragging fronds of fresh mint through potfuls of stewed fruit, is too much to bare. But it is lovely to have something fresh and homemade to spread on your morning toast, so why not a little Lemon Curd. Citrusy and bright, sweet and delightfully creamy, Lemon Curd is the perfect item to make breakfast a bit more special. And it is so much simpler to make than jam, no sterilizing jars, no risk of botulism, and in about 20 minutes, your spread is made.

Lemon Curd
adapted from bills open kitchen by Bill Granger

3 egg yolks
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces

In a double boiler, mix yolks, zest, lemon juice, sugar, and vanilla extract together. Whisk over gently simmering water until mixture becomes thick and opaque, about 8-10 minutes. Take off of heat, and stir in butter, one piece at a time, until well incorporated. Chill and serve.

When I was young my mom used to make egg salad. Hard-cooked eggs, mayonnaise, diced dill pickles, all mixed together into a sunny glop, awaiting two slices of white bakery bread to be sandwiched between. I never ate it. All of my least favorite ingredients blended together to make one wholly undesirable lunchtime entree. As I’ve gotten older, my tastes have changed. I like dill pickles (but never pickle relish); I’m learning to tolerate hard-boiled eggs, and alas, I still do not enjoy mayonnaise (and yes, I’ve had the homemade kind).

I’m not the hugest fan of savory egg dishes, except frittatas. And while you still won’t see me gobbling up a large plate of scrambled eggs on a Sunday morning, or puncturing the yolk of a fried egg, the bright yellow ooziness quickly sopped up by a piece of generously buttered toast, I am coming around to certain egg dishes. I love a poached egg, and a soft-boiled egg, with all of its various accoutrements, how could you not love it? Certain scrambles, jammed packed with seasonal vegetables and heavy on the cheese are even becoming acceptable to me. But the hard-boiled egg was still difficult for me to consume. I blame it on my mother…

It was the sulfuric smell, the yolk crumbly and tinged a greenish-blue, that turned my stomach. But I learned, thanks to Mark Bittman, and his fabulous tome, How to Cook Everything, hard-boiled eggs do not have to be this way. If cooked properly, the white will be springy (not rubbery), and the yolks will be buttery and smooth (not desiccated and tough). That greenish cast over the yolk comes in fact, from over-cooking. The iron that is contained in the yolk, interacts with the sulfur from the white. The longer one cooks the egg, the more heat is transferred through this cooking process, and the more greenish the yolk becomes. How I see it, this greenish cast is equivalent to burning your eggs. Sure they’re edible, but do you really want to eat it.

By dropping the egg gently into simmering water, and keeping it at slow simmer, for the next 11 minutes, you will have the ideal egg. The whites will be just cooked, yet not stewed, and the yolks will be gazing up at you, with a sunny disposition. As for me, this has been somewhat of a revelation. Now I can’t go crazy, if confronted with a plate full of hard-cooked eggs, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. But cooked properly, sliced relatively thinly, and served open-faced on a sandwich of arugula and sliced radish, drizzled with a high quality, peppery olive oil, I might say that’s a delightful lunch.

What is this lovely? Well, it’s not a scallion, and it’s too broad to be garlic chives, so by process of elimination, it’s a ramp, or as some like to call it– a wild leek. Indigenous to North America this aromatic vegetable simply resembles other vegetables, but has a taste that is uniquely it’s own.

I had seen ramps popping up on menus in restaurants around town prepared in various ways; left whole and grilled, sauteed and braised, or even slivered and served raw, but I had yet to try them myself. When I saw them, haphazardly lying in nest-like pile at Berkeley Bowl, I decided to bring them home and experiment with them for dinner.

At $9 a pound, these babies are not cheap, but doing my research I understand why. Ramps are generally grown and foraged in the wild. I’m not actually sure how “wild” one can get in the Bay Area, the wilds of my back yard seem to be fairly tame, except for the neighbor boy leaving his tricycle lying about, but, oh well. They prefer to be grown in deep forest soils, in relative shade. Similar to a green onion, you can eat virtually all of the ramp; the flavor gets more mild the farther you get from the bulbous root end.

My dinner went as follows: ravioli stuffed with potato and pea, in a light sauce of white wine, fava bean, and ramps, accompanied by a rustic loaf of Acme bread, and a peach (first of the season), as a perfect end to a springtime feast. And how were the ramps you ask? They were delightful. Garlicy, oniony, with a flavor distinctly sweet upon cooking, they mellowed as they sizzled away in the pan, flavoring the entire sauce. Strong, but not necessarily pungent, the flavor changed as the cooking continued. Tasting them raw as I sliced them for the saute, I was surprised by sharpness of their sapidity. They hit the pan with a sizzle, the fragrance similar to both onions and garlic wafting into the air, and with each ingredient added to the sauce their gentle strength withheld.

So the next time you are at the grocery store, or a farmer’s market, look for, and try them. Don’t worry about the price, a little bit goes a long way. But you had better hurry, ramps have an incredibly short season; they are only available in the months of April and May.

I did not grow up in a household of health nuts. My parents did not try to convince me of the virtues of carob, when the only thing I truly longed for was a sumptuous, rich bit of chocolate. I was not plied with Kefir, nor was I given sandwiches of sprouts and soy cheese on multi-grain bread. But I did eat fairly well. My lunches, packed by my mother for entirely too long, well into high school, I’m ashamed to say, always contained two fruits and a vegetable, or vice versa. Dinners were always well-balanced, perhaps this is how I have achieved the propensity for “proper” meal planning. But every once in awhile, I was allowed a glorious treat, a sugar cereal at the grocery store.

I have always eaten breakfast. Whether it be a piece of fruit, some toast, or Eggs Benedict (which it never actually would be, I’m not fond of my entree being hidden by globulous mayonnaise-like sauces), I need to have a bit of something in the morning. When I was younger, juice replaced my standard cup of coffee, and the usual weekday breakfast was a bowl of cereal. Usually it was Rice Crispies, raisin bran, or a bowl of Cheerios, but from time to time, while out doing the week’s grocery shopping with my mom, I was given the treat of selecting any cereal I would like. There I would stand, carefully trying to choose the ideal cereal, the perfect balance of sugary sweetness, and empty calories. Cartoon characters did nothing for me, I didn’t like chocolate cereals, I didn’t appreciate their ability to turn my milk a cocoa richness. I remember many a visit to the grocery store, my mother coaxing me from the cereal aisle, proclaiming it was not such a dire decision to make, so inevitably I would fall back on an old stand-by– Lucky Charms.

I loved the oaty, bland taste of the cereal, mixed with the stale, almost styrofoam, sweetness of the marshmallows. The cereal would tumble out from the box, a jumble of colors and shapes, and land crisply in my bowl. Gingerly I would splash milk on the pieces, examining each marshmallow as I brought it to my lips. As I got to the end of my breakfast time ritual, the marshmallows now appropriately soggy, I would fish out, and eat the oats separately, leaving a handful of marshmallows alone in the bowl. I would carefully gaze at each fluorescent sweetie before gobbling it up, the very end of a morning time ceremony. There the milk would set in the bowl, tinged an awkward grey-blue, dyed by the once colorful marshmallows.

Feeling slightly nostalgic for the Lucky Charms of my youth, I picked it up at the store, and waited patiently until the following morning to replay this breakfast ritual from my passed. Imagine my surprise when the marshmallows that came cascading from the bright red box, emblazoned with a cartoon leprechaun, were not the marshmallows from my youth. They were a new, hip version of the little puffs of air that I once knew. I shouldn’t be surprised, everything changes, and it has been close to 10 years since I ate Lucky Charms. Gone were the marshmallows that corresponded with the colors of the rainbow; they had been replaced by a vivid green chapeau, adorned with clovers, a mock-up of the entire rainbow, a purple (I say it was mauve) horseshoe, there were stars, streaming across my cereal bowl, pots of gold, and puffy white clouds that displayed rain and wind when milk was added.

But the taste remains the same. The oats are still deliciously tasteless, and the marshmallows had clearly had a makeover, though they still tasted like crisp puffs of sugary air. It took me a day or two, but soon I found myself chasing the last few marshmallows around the bowl with my spoon, the milk that same grey-blue color. I guess it’s true, old habits die hard.