Mallow – Hiding in Plain Sight
An offhanded remark leads me down the rabbit hole in search of the mysterious – yet ubiquitous – mallow plant. Who knew how important this weed was to the Eastern Mediterranean?
How to Cure Green Olives
Year after year in my new home here in Northern California, I feel myself sinking down roots and developing new traditions. One of them is curing my own olives, which begins for me in early October. On some crisp autumn day, I will head out into one of the many public parks near my [...]
Tinkering with Sausages
I have been making a lot of sausages lately, and as each batch will typically give me some new insight into this craft, I have much to tell from my recent adventures. You can learn all kinds of things from books on the subject; I recently went through a quick review of my sausage-making library. But [...]
Culinaria Simplicitas
It’s summertime, and the eating is easy. With so much fresh produce, I am finding myself falling into a pattern these days: Chop, lightly cook — or not at all — toss with salt, lemon juice and olive oil, then eat. It doesn’t make for riveting food writing, but it does make for some riveting meals. [...]
Simple Pleasures: Fresh Figs
The first fresh figs have ripened on our tree in the front yard, earlier than they did last year. Maybe it’s the dry weather, maybe it’s that our tree is four years old now and beginning to mature. Figs are something I know I should love more than I really do. They are beautiful, lush, [...]
More Fun with Fresh Fava Beans
I grow so many fava beans I have to scour my recipe books for things to do with them all. And so far as fresh fava beans go, I have discovered over the years that there are really two kinds of fresh favas: The sweet green ones that come in early spring, and the starchy [...]
Loukaniko: Traditional Greek Sausage
While I spend quite a bit of time making delicacies for our Big Fat Greek Parties, the mainstay of the party food is always this more or less traditional Greek loukaniko sausage. Loukaniko is an ancient sausage, dating back to Classical times. Nowadays it is a roughly ground Greek country sausage that, like any country [...]
Quail with Wild Fennel and Fig Leaves
I had a minor epiphany as I was driving home from work the other day: There is a basin beneath the Nimbus Dam on the American River that is a forager’s paradise, full of wild blackberries, wild fennel, wild grapes and fig trees that had escaped from somewhere long ago. I fish there on occasion, [...]
Bacchus Biscuits: Greek Fennel Cookies
I first made these fennel cookies for our annual Big Fat Greek Party, a festival of all things Greek we hold every spring. They’ve been dubbed Bacchus Biscuits. I support that. They turned out to be quite a hit, much to my relief – I’d never made them before the party. They are a riff off [...]
