My Japanese cooking adventure continues. It’s lovely to have someone to cook for every night, especially someone as sweet and encouraging as my student roommate Miku. Given the heat I figured that she might appreciate a bowl of cold udon. Now that my pantry is stocked with Japanese basics it’s so easy to put together. You can buy udon frozen that’s decent, but I have a giant bin of flour and feet (that’s how you knead the dough) so I’ve been making it. One of my online mentors is Nami from Just One Cookbook. So far everything I’ve made using her recipes has received the thumbs up from…Continue reading »
It happened that Good Food was nominated for a Beard Award and I found myself in NYC with an unbooked Saturday. I remembered a New York Times article I read on League of Kitchens, a unique organization that offers cooking classes taught by immigrant home cooks. I reached out to to the League to see if I could slip into a Japanese Immersion class. Even the name is perfect. Immersion like language, my language, food. Founder Lisa Gross and program manager Sonya Kharas were welcoming and so helpful. Each class is five hours long and has only six students, a perfect experience for jumping into a new cuisine. I’ve said…Continue reading »
Several years ago, 2004 in fact, I became obsessed with Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Gingerbread from her cookbook Feast. I made it once then another thirty times. Why? It’s a perfect foolproof cake with holiday flavor that is dead simple, not just to make but to serve. At Angeli we ended up pairing it in a trifle with a luscious tart lemon curd and whipped cream. It’s easy to make for a crowd. Now I serve it for tea plain or with a lemony glaze studded with candied ginger or with swirls of ginger-cinnamon enhanced cream cheese frosting. The tweaks I make are adding ground pepper for more bite….Continue reading »
