Food, Photography and Bon Mots
It’s Blue Cayenne’s Birthday! This improbable journey started on a blustery October day three years ago. I desperately wanted to be a better writer, a better cook, and a better photographer, but I needed a nudge–a structured project to bring all those elements together…
Salted Chocolate Chip Tahini Cookies. I repeat. Salted. Chocolate Chip. Tahini. Cookies. These are stunningly good. Tahini, for those unfamiliar with the ingredient, is a paste made of ground sesame seeds. It is similar to peanut butter. It has been around for thousands…
Raise your hands if you are fans of lemon curd in all its piquant wonderfulness. Good. I thought so. Read on. This delicious lemon-almond butter cake is a crumbly cake made with regular flour, almond flour and a generous amount of home-made lemon curd.…
Trust me. It’s tough photographing frozen yogurt. The stuff melts. There you are setting up the shot–just the right lighting…just the right angle– and bam! By the time you are ready to release the shutter, your subject has melted and those pretty little chunks of…
“If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with him… the people who give you their food give you their heart.” -Cesar Chavez I get a lot of pleasure from sharing food. There is something wonderful about watching…
Three hundred and seventy-three blueberries. That’s how many berries Juliet and I had to pick up off the floor. I had reached into the refrigerator, gotten distracted as I grabbed a jar of marmalade and, in one fraught moment, managed to dislodge the two-pound box…
Yes. This is exactly as delicious as it looks, and as elegant, too. To be very honest, it is one of the best plum desserts that I’ve baked this season, and I’ve baked (and happily eaten) my share. The Austrians call this…
Egyptian pharaohs, European kings (and queens!) and Cornish miners all ate them. Beggars ate the crusts. Now, they are hot on the culinary scene again and they are delicious. Hand pies! Hand pies originated when some smart cook realized that there was a workaround for…
Apricots evoke strong emotions. For poet John Ruskin, they conjured up a visual and tactile beauty. He described them as “shining in a sweet brightness of golden velvet.” For Chilean novelist Isabel Allende, theirs was a melancholy comfort. She wrote: “At the most difficult moments…
Banana cake. Cream cheese frosting. Chopped pecans. This is a great banana cake. You may even want to eat the frosting by the spoonful. I did. OK. That’s a fair criticism. I have posted a number of banana cake and bread recipes on…
