California olive oil has held a place of honor in my pantry ever since I attended my first olive oil tasting in 2006 and discovered an emerging community of producers in the Golden State.  It’s a key  ingredient in this great quinoa, pistachio and cherry salad, which I’ll get to later.

Five years ago, the best-known California oils were produced by small growers raising Tuscan varieties for artisanal oils with high prices.   I saved them for special dishes and salad dressings.  For everyday cooking, I still relied on supermarket brands of extra virgin oils from Italy.

That changed when I tasted my first mass produced oil from a large California grower that uses modern methods of harvesting and pressing. Here was a fruity, fresh tasting oil at a price low enough for everyday use.  Imported oils were banished from my shelves.  Most probably don’t meet strict international standards for extra virgin oil, anyway, according to a University of California, Davis study released last year. (more…)

I’m a sucker for kitchen gadgets.  If there’s a clever new product to prepare food easier, quicker or with better results, I’m eager to give it a test drive.

Very few of those gadgets make the cut, however.  They have to perform with flying colors or they’re off to the thrift store.

These three tools have found homes in my kitchen because I can’t imagine cooking without them anymore.  I can recommend them without reservation. (more…)

Meet one of my favorite kitchen helpers.

If I were heading off for college this fall, a rice cooker is the one appliance I would pack for the dorm.  No one-trick gadget, it can cook everything from macaroni and cheese to pot de creme.

Rice, of course, is what it does best.  I made rice in a saucepan for years and most of the time it came out just fine.  Now, however, everyone in my family can make good rice every time.  We also make terrific polenta, which only requires a few stirs while cooking. (more…)

In the waning weeks of summer vacation, with the days already getting shorter and the first day of school on the horizon, few of us want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen.  Now is the time to make the most of the incredible bounty of the August garden.

I’m talking tomatoes, here, of course.  As far as I’m concerned, nothing compares to the deep, sun-warmed flavor and chin dripping juiciness of a freshly picked tomato.  Whether it’s a salty, smoky Cherokee Purple or a nicely acidic Early Girl, a good tomato needs very little help to make a good meal.

A couple of slabs of ripe tomato and a sprinkle of salt is the perfect mid-summer lunch.  Add toasted bread and a salty bit of cured pork and you have a simple feast of the season that crosses continents and cultures.  In America, it’s a BLT.  In Spain, it’s pan con tomate, or bread with tomato. (more…)

I wasn’t planning on posting another asparagus recipe this spring.  Really, I wasn’t.  But the local asparagus is still so gorgeous at the farmers market that I find myself buying it every week.  Then this recipe landed in my in-box last week in a newsletter from Pizza Antica and all bets were off.

Chef and owner Gordon Drysdale is a pizza genius who’s turned his original pizzeria at San Jose’s Santana Row into a mini-chain with locations in Lafayette and Mill Valley.  I’ll never be able to replicate his thin crust but I’m grateful that he’s willing to give out some of his recipes now that I don’t get into San Jose that often. (more…)