Imatges/Irudiak de Espanya/Espainiako, a beginning of sorts.

Glorious, glorious, ham.

Prior to last week, it had been four years since I’ve been in Spain, or really traveled abroad anywhere; I’m not sure what happened, except that in 2016 we just never got around to putting something together and life simply got int the way the other times. Since this October marks our tenth anniversary, we figured this was as good a time as any to splurge on a trip, and Michael was good enough to indulge my desire to go back to Barcelona; this time, however, we agreed that we should try to fit another location in if we possibly could. Initially, we thought about going to Iceland as well as Barcelona—I spent a good portion of President’s Day researching logistics for this very possibility—but between a lack of convenient flights to and from Barcelona to Iceland and the fact that the weather would be very different in both places (thus making it much more difficult to pack for), we decided that wasn’t the best idea. Michael then suggested San Sebastian, as he’s been wanting to go there ever since we watched the Spain episode of David Chang’s Mind of a Chef season.

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Roasted chicken with crème fraiche and herbs, from Mimi Thorisson’s A Kitchen in France.

Roasted chicken with creme fraiche and herbs

It’s August now (how is it August?) and we’ve been largely avoiding the oven as much as possible because it’s been either hot, humid, or both and so we’ve largely been using our Griddler and the stove and also resorting to ceviche pretty frequently too. So it may seem pretty weird to be writing about roasted chicken right now, but I guess it’s my form of solace: if I can’t eat it right now, I can at least write about it, you know?

My top New Orleans picks, the Chris Hannah Napkin edition.

Boquerones, radishes with sea salt and butter, baguette with lardo butter and fermented tomato from Longway Tavern.

When I first sat down to write about our recent trip to New Orleans, initially my plan was to condense it into a concise top five list of food and drink that we enjoyed…and then I realized that was basically an impossible task. I then realized that I could break out my favorite drinks and dishes by theme, and so here’s hoping I actually get around to writing all of them. But first, I must speak of The Napkin.

Notes on pasta-making, or: what’s been keeping me in the kitchen lately.

If you aren’t following Kara Brown’s Fancy Pasta Bitch blog, you absolutely must—she was one of my favorite writers at Jezebel, and now she’s a staff writer on the Black-ish spinoff Grownish on Freeform*. She took up pasta making as a new hobby to cope with that man and his heinous administration and started blogging about it because it’s fun to write about a new hobby as you start to learn the ins and outs of it. She doesn’t update it nearly as much as I would like (which is rich coming from me, given that I haven’t updated here in ages) but when she does, delightfulness ensues.

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:

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.

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.