Beet-cured salmon from Gail Simmons’ Bringing It Home.

Beet-Cured Salmon

My love of Top Chef has gotten to the point that I have a section of my main bookshelf dedicated to some of my favorite judges* and cheftestants from the show—though I will admit that Tom Colicchio’s books live up in my New York section, because most of these books came out way after his did—and while I’ve enjoyed them all, I’ve been heartily enjoying Gail Simmons’ Bringing it Home as it is filled with really interesting recipes and lots of excellent anecdotes about Top Chef from foods she loved while on location to lots of interesting tips based on professional chef techniques that she’s observed along the way, along with her own insight from her days in culinary school.  Gail has long been one of my favorite staples of the show because she’s a delightful mix of knowledge, insight, warmth, and the occasional dollop of well-timed snark:

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Sabor de soledad, Michael in Australia edition.

Chopped chicken liver toasts

I don’t know why I haven’t been feeling so inclined to write about food, but I’m going to blame February, my second-least favorite month after January, for bringing me down. I have all of these post ideas written down and when I sit down to write, it all feels so stilted and so phony. Here’s hoping that as we get closer to Spring and the return of Daylight Savings I’ll feel a bit more inspired than I do now.

The Tom Cat cocktail from The Hygge Life.

The Tom Cat

While I can’t believe January is almost over, I’m also relieved that January is almost over. This is my least favorite time of year, and furry blanket and globe lights aside, I’m eager for the trees to have leaves on them again and for a 60-degree day to be a normal one rather than a data point either supporting or denying the existence of climate change. At least this weekend we get a respite of sorts from football, so for the first time since September our neighborhood will not be run amok by people trolling for parking spots to hit up the bars all day. Next weekend, on the other hand, should be interesting—while the Ravens aren’t in the Super Bowl (obviously), we are close enough to Philly that there are many an Eagles fan around here too, so I have a feeling we’ll be staying firmly in our apartment after Michael returns home from the gym. We do have some excellent food plans for that day, so I’m not complaining.

A recap of NYE, holiday cookbook roundup, Cherry Bombe’s #86This, and other thoughts in early 2018.

Candied Bacon and Curried Almonds (link to recipe at the bottom of this post)

With the holidays over and things slowly coming back to normal, I want to get back into the habit of blogging more regularly again. So in order to do that, I need to clear out some mental clutter.

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Tuesday marked the first day in about two weeks that the temperatures went significantly over the freezing point; when preparing to go out to pick up some bread for dinner, I had steeled myself for the slap of cold I had come to expect when walking outside and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was…mild. I know it’s still early-ish in January and we have a long ways to go until spring, but it’s nice to have a bit of a respite from it for at least a few days.

Feast of the Seven Fishes preview: fried oysters with pickled pepper mayo and cucumber salad.

Fried Oysters with Pickled Pepper Mayo and Cucumber Salad

With Christmas less than a week away, it’s time for me to start packing up all of our stuff to bring back to PA for the holiday weekend and get a cooking game plan set for Christmas Eve. We’re leading that particular dance this year, which is great since we did zero cooking during Thanksgiving. We are going to do the seven fishes this year, but in order to maintain our sanity and to make sure that everyone can try at least a bit of everything, we’re keeping the portions small and basically treating the meal like a tasting menu.

The Manhattan [food] Project’s gift guide for 2017.

I’ve been going back and forth on posting a gift guide this year; even posting one in early December feels like it would be too late to do so as I know I’ve made most of my purchases by now, though I still have a few more to get. But I have so much fun making these guides each year (and once again, there are no affiliate links here), so I’m going to go for it anyway.

On Cherry Bombe’s new cookbook and their International Supper Club from this past weekend.

The Sinsear Cocktail

I was doing so well in getting back to the blogging habit, and then my weekends got busy there in October between visits home and visitors here and a trip up to New York for work, so I’ve been a little distracted from this space. I’m always eager to get back to cooking after a few days on the road, and that combined with the acquisition of five new cookbooks since my self-imposed buying embargo lifted meant that I took to both weekend meal planning and figuring out what I’m making this week while Michael is away with gusto.

One of those books was the Cherry Bombe cookbook, which was one I was not expecting to get so soon, but a few weeks ago I was scrolling through Instagram and saw that the authors (and founders of the magazine) were coming to Baltimore as part of their cookbook tour, and they were having a really cool event up at Trohv in the Hampden neighborhood. It was billed as a party featuring some local food people and promised delicious snacks and YesWayRose’s Summer Water, so I ended up getting two tickets for Michael and myself and we took an Uber up on an otherwise unassuming Monday evening after work.