I’m sitting here on the first day of Spring at my desk and it feels particularly meaningful this year. Maybe because this winter felt particularly trying, maybe because so much of 2018 tested me and so many people around me in pretty awful ways, but I’m trying to approach this equinox with cautious optimism. At…
Making gazpacho in February, or: what to do when fresh tomatoes are not at their best.
For years now, my go-to gazpacho recipe has been an adaptation of one from José Andrés, and it’s a really solid recipe. (I just don’t go through with all of the toppings that he puts on top of his, because usually I don’t have time for that.) It’s one of my default summertime dishes, something…
Mushroom eggs from Basque Country for Sunday brunch.
While I won’t say that every brunch dish we make at home won’t actually be brunch-ish or brunch-adjacent, I have to admit that this new little exercise of ours is encouraging me to scour my cookbooks for the dishes I felt would always be perfect for that time of day first. Since most of them…
Sautéed squid with pepper sauce as inspired by Eric Ripert and Le Bernadin.
Back in 2017 when I was in the midst of cooking through my cookbook shelves, one of the more intimidating titles I took on was the Le Bernadin cookbook. Of the two books by Ripert I have, this one is by far the fanciest; Avec Eric is a little more down-to-earth because it goes beyond…
La cuina de Catalunya: La Alcoba Azul and their pa amb allioli.
For all of the planning that I did for our trip via my various maps of fun, I didn’t try to limit myself to only the places that were on the list. And I’m glad I didn’t, because otherwise I would have missed out on a really great find that was so good, we ended…
Musings on 2018 and saying hello to 2019.
Happy New Year, everyone! I hope everyone was able to enjoy some downtime over the last few weeks as we made the transition from fall to winter with all of the various holidays celebrated during that time. Our Christmas was typically busy, and our New Year’s was considerably more relaxed by comparison. Michael told me…
Gail Simmons’ Bloody Mary Eggs from Bringing it Home.
Something I’m trying to do as we head into winter is to make brunch at home once or twice a month, in part to switch things up, but also as a way to cook in natural light when the sun sets at 5 PM every day. This doesn’t mean that we will always make something…
La cuina de Catalunya: fried squid inspired by Bar Celta Pulperia and shopping for tile at Pinar Miró.
Initially, when I was deep into the planning stage for our trip to Spain I really, really wanted to find some tile shops to find some cool, ideally hand-painted tiles I could carefully bring back to the States, but in reality, the list I came up with comprised of shops that mainly sold the more…
Marc Vetri’s Mastering Pizza and my new favorite pizza Margherita.
Last year, on Black Friday, I found myself standing around the part of King of Prussia Mall in the area where Urban Outfitter, Free People, and Anthropologie are all situated, waiting for my in-laws to be finished in either Urban Outfitter or Old Navy. I started wandering around in the immediate area to stave off…
The TMFP 2018 holiday guide, promoting cooking as self-care.
I started pulling this together back in October, on a Friday afternoon when I was feeling optimistic and hopeful, but then I shelved it because I didn’t want to write anything too optimistic ahead of the midterm elections, were they to turn out to be not what was expected. Once that was settled, I wanted…
