BiteClub Eats

Exotic citrus makes this cake extraordinary

A spicy vegan cookie gets a lot of thumbs-up from tasters

Lettuce, cheese and eggs make this simple terrine a winner

Get Your Sh!t Together Breakfast

Fresh goat-milk pudding with brandy-soaked cherries

Loaded with eggs, these tortas are a cross between a potato pancake and an omelet, and are great warm or cold.

A mix of butter caramel, custardy bread and crispy crusts just can’t be beat on a lazy Sunday morning.

Simple puff pastry gets a fancy filling of farm-fresh eggs, goat cheese and prosciutto

This is the winning recipe for April’s Eggs & Breakfast Contest, submitted by Tyfanni Peters.

Chorizo-Cheddar Cornmeal Waffles Recipe

Thinly shaved asparagus and grape tomatoes with meyer lemon olive oil and sel gris make for a great seasonal spring salad

Using Rancho Gordo heirloom beans for refried beans, with fresh local eggs, tortillas, and cotija cheese

Simple recipe marries buttermilk Belgian waffles and bacon

Springtime’s favorite veggie gets a no-fear sauce

How to make In N Out’s famous sauce at home

A Hawaiian-influenced recipe that brings back memories

A roadside stop inspires a memorable sauce

A pasta dish that’s simple to make

For years, those three little words neatly summarized my feelings about Whole Foods, and made for a Flintstones-sized bone of contention between me and every food-snob I came across; where my friends and family chomped at the bit to feel good about parting with their paychecks, I saw only a business model predicated on sloughing-off expensive products of inconsistent quality, remarkably mediocre prepared foods, and egregiously priced dry goods encased in very clever branding.

Inasmuch as complex events can be said to have their roots in a single moment, I credit my first attempt at this delicious soup – an assignment for my Fundamentals of Stocks, Soups, and Sauces course at the ICE Culinary Institute some 10 years ago – with much of what I’ve produced in the kitchen ever since. I might as well call it my Butterfly Effect Soup.

I cooked this steak – with a simple red wine-honey reduction and a creamy parmigiano-peppercorn salad – in honor of one of my especially snarky fans, someone who objects strenuously every time I buy something from a supermarket for what I’ve billed as a “cooking locally” weblog. I’ll stipulate the point, but my money says I’m not the only parent in the County who’d like to serve their kids a decent, healthy steak for a few less bucks. But is it a decent, healthy steak?

Cooking with flowers has never thrilled me. Call me crazy, but not once have I thought, “You know what this salad needs? Nasturtiums!” I leave the blossoms in the garden and call it a day. Then along came a lavender bush…A guest post by Katie Githens. You can follow Ms. Githens on her own blog, Clary Sage, where she writes about the quirks and comforts of cooking and life on the West Coast.

Sometimes, it’s fun to see how much we can do, with how little. I could list the underlying moral imperatives – saving money and time would presumably occupy the penthouse suite – but in the main, I just think it’s plain fun, a sort of Sudoku with pots and pans. Case in point: How do [...]

I may have seen a cloud this week, but if I did, I don’t remember it. Really, our weather has been impossibly nice. And really, it ought to worry me – the lack of rain, the risk of budbreak before a frost – but it’s hard not to simply soak in it, the whole of our little wine country valley like some great, tickly bubble bath of pea shoots and sunlight.

Road Trip: Sunday night red-eye from SFO to JFK; mythical quantities of food and booze; a cumulative loss of sleep bordering on some chapter in FM 34-52, the field manual of interrogation techniques. Many of my best and oldest friends and much personal history remain rooted in the concrete canyons of Manhattan, so normally I’d [...]