Recipes and Essays

Cranberry Conserve: tangerine, ginger and sultanas

Cranberry Conserve: tangerine, ginger and sultanas

  Yes, tangerine, ginger and sultanas.  A contrast of flavor and color that I think is really amazing with the seasonal cranberries.  I urge you to try it at your Thanksgiving meal.  I’ve adapted this recipe from one I read many, many years ago in 

Parmesan-Roasted Artichoke Salad, Apple-Tarragon Vinaigrette

Parmesan-Roasted Artichoke Salad, Apple-Tarragon Vinaigrette

Parmesan and Artichokes are a natural pair, I’d say. So I’ve roasted them here and combined them with leaf lettuce tossed in a Tarragon-apple vinaigrette. The tarragon aroma makes a rich-tasting contrast to the sharp artichoke.  The apple juice-oil gives the salad a pleasing silk-like 

Green Chiles, Yellow Tortillas, White Cheeses

Green Chiles, Yellow Tortillas, White Cheeses

Direct, uncomplicated, profuse flavor. I think oftentimes we miss so much by complicating our everyday, wasting time with artifice.  Just look at the beauty of what’s around, get real and go with it!We roast Anaheim chiles then eat them with hot yellow corn tortilla and 

Chicken Cutlets Meunière

Chicken Cutlets Meunière

Of course, it’s “Sole Meunière” that’s the quintessential French luscious dish but chicken is great.  Here it’s served with spinach and roasted potatoes. I think the dish is rustic country and also elegant.   Recipe: serves two Ingredients Chicken 2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts ¼ 

Food and Media are Deeply Connected

Food and Media are Deeply Connected

Food is direct cultural memory; it nourishes as it keeps us alive and connects us to the past — our own, our families,’ our communities.’ Our media is also direct cultural memory. It has the fierce ability to nourish our consciousness just as powerfully and 

Mexican Cuisine

Mexican Cuisine

Notes on Cookingthree-minute interviews with chefs, filmmakers and food activists This week Chef Iliana De La Vega, acclaimed authority on Mexican Cuisine, explains the Spanish and Arab influences on Mexican Cuisine.  Noting her philosophy of food, she advocates not covering up flavors with heavy lard 

Smoked Trout w/ Horsradish Butter Canapé

Smoked Trout w/ Horsradish Butter Canapé

For Fall socials, this elegant and earthy local canapéwill please friends.  The trout is aromatic and complex.  The flavored butter gives a perfect velvety mouth feel companion to the oils and flavor of the fish. After brining and drying the trout, place the fish in 

Smoked Trout, the Karankawas and Cannibalism

Smoked Trout, the Karankawas and Cannibalism

Smoked trout is a favorite of mine for dinner parties because it brings the outside in.  It’s also deeply entrenched in our Texas Mexican culinary tradition of outdoor techniques of salting, drying and smoking.   Many techniques (pickling, brining, drying, freezing and smoking),  take us back 

A Serving of Justice

A Serving of Justice

It’s a good thing that I’m feeling jumbled, riled, mixed up and chaotic.  The protests against the corporate reality in which we live (corporations are persons now) are chaotic, which means powerful, energizing and substantive.  Injustice is always served with food.  So is justice. The 

I cry for us

I cry for us

I cry for us.people powerless in society, the despised, the de-humanizedwhat a contradiction. The despiser.  I cry for us.  And sob,sob, that it is in our nature to inflict pain, bully, fellow human beings. LISTEN TO THE AUDIO DOCUMENTARY:  “REMEMBERING STONEWALL” BY DAVID ISAY Recently