Recipe

Preserving Peppers

Consider, for a moment, the sweet pepper. No other plant demands so much, gives so little, yet keeps us coming back…

How-To (DIY stuff)

How to Make Tomato Paste

How to make your own tomato paste, Sicilian style. Patience is needed, but if you have it, you'll be rewarded.

How-To (DIY stuff)

The Courage to Cook with Borage

Not everyone knows that the borage plant is edible. So are borage flowers. Most people barely even know what borage…

How-To (DIY stuff)

Drying Tomatoes Without an Oven

“Oh my Gawd, it’s like an oven out here!” This is a not-uncommon refrain heard in Sacramento in summer. Well,…

Charcuterie

How to Make Venison Ham

I present to you: mocetta. It was my first-ever dry-cured ham, and it does not come from a pig. This…

Salmon and Trout

Six Days of Salmon

Salmon, especially king salmon, are the pigs of the aquatic world. Large, fatty, with significant differences in flavor from cut…

Charcuterie

Italian Head Cheese

Coppa di testa. In France it is Fromage de tete. In England, it’s called brawn. All decent enough names; but…

Recipe

Growing and Cooking Cardoons

Cardoons are slowly becoming more common in markets here in the United States, which is great. Because I’ve been growing…

Pheasant, Grouse, Quail

Pheasant Cacciatore

I do a lot of comfort food with big, flavorful, stew-y things loaded with tomatoes and herbs and some sort of…

Italian

How to Cook Fava Beans

Fava beans are my labor’s love. I am inordinately fond of the chubby legumes, which signal to me that high…

Italian

The Lonzino is Cured!

I have been getting a lot of requests for my lonzino recipe, and I thought I would celebrate this happy…