Appetizer

    This is not a pizza. I know. I know. It sure looks like a pizza and we all know that old duck test: “If it looks like a duck…” Nevertheless, this is a crostata. A crostata is a rustic Italian baked tart, the…

  Today, April 3rd, is National Find a Rainbow Day. Woo-hoo!  Let’s party!  I’ll bring the hors d’oeuvres. National Find a Rainbow Day is a day to either follow your whimsy and go looking for a rainbow, or, failing that, to look for beauty and hope…

  You know how, when you aren’t exactly sure you want to do something,  you put it off—turning instead to “must do” projects like sorting the dog’s toys by size and color? This week I’ve been nagged by the feeling that I needed to make…

Certain things in American life are understood. You don’t mess with Old Glory, for example, or Texas. You don’t cut off a phalanx of Hells Angels on PCH. You don’t open wrapped candy during a performance at The South Coast Repertory Theatre. You argue with…

Apparently, it’s a Wisconsin thing. The Wisconsin cheese industry claims that club, crock or pub cheese originated there in the early 1900s as a snack served to touring guests at the Pabst Brewery Hospitality Center in Milwaukee. Smeared on a cracker and washed down by…

  Do you have PDA (phyllo-dough anxiety) ? A lot of people I know do. They get quiet and their eyes take on that glassy far-away look when we have “the talk” about phyllo. My stock answer is that phyllo is very very forgiving. Rip…

Does your food smile? Superstar (and perfectionist) chef Yotam Ottolenghi has been known to empty shelves displaying food in his delis because of the smile factor (actually, the no smile factor). In Ottolenghi’s food world, you have to be able to taste the food before…

  This is one of the appetizers people were eating around the holidays in 1984, thirty-one years ago. The recipe was featured in Bon Appetit as part of an elegant Thanksgiving menu. I haven’t made these in a very long time but decided to make…

  When my husband and I used to enjoy the Naples boat parade at the invitation of our friends Jim and Al, we used to unashamedly stand upon the Naples bridge and shout “best boat in the parade”  as each boat passed under the bridge.…

  Here is a recipe I like a lot. Actually, it is an adaptation of recipes from two sources, the food site AllRecipes and one of my favorite Indian-inspired cookbooks, Yamuna’s Table by the late rockstar chef, Yamuna Devi. She literally was a rockstar. She was…