I’m always hesitant to order crab cakes. Mainly because most places fall short in including a key ingredient: crab. I refer to those as “cakes” since they are mostly just a filler of cracker, celery, onions or whatever. You chew with your eyes closed in concentration, trying to detect that twelve dollars worth of shellfish, [...]

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I shamelessly admit that I’m a sushi snob. It’s unavoidable. I lived in Japan for three years and ate some of the best and highest quality fish. The bar was set high. I have found many exceptional sushi establishments in the US, but unfortunately, I have also encountered a great number of sub-standard ones. Raw [...]

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I’ve mentioned my love of cookbooks before. Admittedly, I generally do not create many meals from their pages, but I often sit for hours perusing them for inspiration and oohing and aahing over their photos. I thought I would share a list of my personal favorites. Some of which I do [...]

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For the last 8 years we have attended the Sundance Film Festival and have seen it grow from just a few thousand attendees to about 50K this year. It’s always a wonderful adventure seeing artistic documentaries, creative short films (aka “shorts”) and feature films, many of which make it to the big screen.
As exciting as [...]

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Usually salad rolls are eaten as appetizers, but I love to make them with various fillings and serve them as the main entrée with different dipping sauces. The delicate rice paper wrappers can be filled with just about anything: shrimp, basil, mint, lettuce, rice noodles, veggies. In the past I’ve also made more avant garde [...]

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Save your mother! That’s what you’ll need to do if you want to make your own vinegar from wine. The mother, or Mother of Vinegar, is that slimy film that forms in vinegars and is needed much the same way that starter is used in bread making. The mother is a nasty looking thing. To [...]

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We definitely eat more fish than beef, but I was feeling unavoidable carnivorous so I thought I would make simple Thai-style skewers. I was also secretly craving the easy clean-up of BBQing!
The marinade for six long skewers is as follows:
2 stalks of lemongrass or about 3 T (use the lower green part only and [...]

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In 1994, my mom’s best friend, and my “spiritual” mother, Ann Wall Frank wrote a fabulously hilarious little cookbook titled Cooking For Your Evil Twin: Devilishly Tempting Recipes for the Modern Woman.
I was looking for a chocolate chip cookie recipe the other day and remembered Ann’s swoon-inducing decadent version. This is no Tollhouse cookie, my [...]

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One of the things I love about Thai food is the gentle balance of spicy, sweet and sour flavors. This is one of my favorite salads any time of the year. It’s easy to make and is so crisp and fresh with it’s mint, basil and spicy chili dressing.
Salad
Romaine lettuce, chopped in shreds
Julienned carrots
Green [...]

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Risotto is a difficult and time consuming dish to make, one that all too easily results in a heavy, mushy glob. A good deal of patience is required to stand at the stove for half an hour and constantly stir and ladle hot liquid in small increments. But it’s well worth the effort. I’ve [...]

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