I realize that a traditional pie is the first dish that pops to mind when you’re gazing on a shiny pile of  fall apples at the market.  Who can resist fat slices of freshly-picked fruit, dusted with cinnamon and tucked into a buttery crust?

But I get bored with the same old dishes and was intrigued by a reference to apple pizza I encountered while casting about for a new recipe.  It was made with puff pastry, though, which really doesn’t qualify as pizza in my book.  So I began experimenting with fresh pizza dough. (more…)

Time is running out.

If you want lovely little sugar plum cakes on your holiday table, you’ll need to preserve the fruit now, while fresh plums are still in season.   A few minutes of preparation today will pay off big at Christmas. (more…)

California mangoes are back in season at last.  Just in time, too.  I’ve been aching to make this black bean and mango salad but couldn’t bring myself to buy imported fruit.

Not only do imported mangoes travel thousands of miles to get to the local supermarket, they’re picked green and are usually bathed in hot water before they’re allowed into the U.S.  California mangoes, grown in the Coachella Valley, spend more time ripening on the trees. Many are even grown organically. (more…)

As much as I adore homemade jam, I’ve always considered it an enormous gamble.  The more I invested in time and ingredients the higher were the odds I would end up with a runny syrup or a rubbery mass better suited for Gummi Bears than toast.  Perfect preserves eluded me.

Neither the old-fashioned cookbooks I inherited from my mom nor the new crop of canning guides and web sites were much help.   Most of their recipes relied on commercial pectin and called for specific amounts of sugar and fruit, stated in cups.  All advised checking whether the jam had set by watching it drip off a spoon or cling to a chilled plate — imprecise measures at best for the uninitiated.

Then I ran across Russ Parsons’ advice in the Los Angeles Times this summer and everything began to make sense.  He offered a simple ratio for making small batches of jam using equal weights of sugar and whatever fruit you have on hand.  Because you cook a limited amount of preserves at a time in a non-stick skillet, it’s easy to tell whether it’s ready just by watching the syrupy mixture become thick and glossy as you stir.  Flavors are also fresher. (more…)

When temperatures soar and appetites wilt, nothing is more appealing than a salad packed with cool, crisp greens.  Add a little protein and dinner is ready for the table.

This summer, I’m enamored with the pork tenderloin salad with warm strawberry dressing I found in “The Berry Bible,” by Janie Hibler.  Nominated for a James Beard award when it was first published in 2004, the cookbook is one of the books Amazon Encore is bringing back because customer reviews and other sources indicate they were overlooked and under-appreciated when they were first released. (more…)