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…
Category: aperitivo
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…
A txiquiteo in San Sebastian: montadito of chorizo and quail egg from The Basque Book.
[Ed. – To my friends in the US, please vote today if you haven’t already.] The sheer number of Spanish and Catalan cookbooks in my collection is proof enough that one of the things I love to do most after visiting a place I love is to try to recreate as many of the dishes that…
A txiquiteo in San Sebastian: shrimp and pancetta pinxtos with modern allioli.
It should come as no surprise that I was determined to embrace Basque cooking even before we had left San Sebastian; I found one of the few open-on-Sunday bookstores and purchased myself a copy of Los Mejores Pintxos de Donostia along with another book devoted to tartines that was too visually appealing to pass up,…
Barcelona’s Bar Marsella and their gin, fig, and honey cocktail, which I have named La Fi de L’Estu.
Bar Marsella first came on my radar four years ago when I was doing research for our last vacation to Barcelona; specifically, I wanted to spend a day doing a walking tour of the city finding various filming locations from Vicky Cristina Barcelona because it’s one of my favorite movies, despite its director being highly…
Beet-cured salmon from Gail Simmons’ Bringing It Home.
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…
The Tom Cat cocktail from The Hygge Life.
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…
A recap of NYE, holiday cookbook roundup, Cherry Bombe’s #86This, and other thoughts in early 2018.
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. 1. Tuesday marked the first day in about two weeks that the temperatures went significantly over the…
Feast of the Seven Fishes preview: 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….
