Celery root may well be the most homely vegetable in the garden.  It’s a wonder anyone ever thought of eating anything so gnarled, lumpy and hairy.

Yet once you get past its ugly exterior, the humble celery root is the most affable of winter vegetables.  Best known as the key ingredient in the crunchy French salad, celery remoulade, it’s also perfectly suited for soups, purees and gratins, where its texture becomes soft and melting.  It’s a natural partner with potatoes, lending a pleasant aroma and herbal flavor to familiar comfort food.  At the same time, it lightens up otherwise heavy dishes because it contains little starch.

This year, celery root is my nominee for the perfect side dish for the holiday table.   Layered with fennel, potatoes and Gruyere cheese, it makes an impressive  gratin that would be happy alongside a platter of roast beef or ham.   The gratin could serve as a substantial vegetarian entree as well. Continue reading Consider the celery root →

Candy has never been my strong suit.  With the exception of my family’s easy fudge, I tend to stay away from vats of boiling sugar.

So when I say these caramels from Jacques Pepin are amazingly simple to make and almost foolproof, you should take note. Just the thing for a last-minute gift from the kitchen, they require  less than half an hour of active work. Plus you’re likely to have all the ingredients sitting in your pantry and fridge.

They’re so good that you’re liable to find yourself whipping up a batch solely to indulge your sweet tooth.  The recipe does use a small amount of corn syrup to hold together all that glorious butter and sugar, but it’s not the high fructose variety that you find in processed foods.  Besides, no one would ever call this health food. Continue reading Last-minute gift from the kitchen →

A cookbook needs to be more than a compendium of recipes to catch my eye these days.  My shelves already are overflowing with encyclopedic tomes and the Internet covers almost every culinary base if you make careful choices.

What I want is a cookbook with personality, one I can curl up with on a rainy afternoon as well as take into the kitchen for a marathon session with the pots and pans. It should offer a new way of looking at food and act as my trusted guide in the kitchen.

That’s a tall order and few new cookbooks measure up. So I’m not going to offer my own variation on The Ten Best Cookbooks of 2010 here.  Instead, I’m showcasing the handful of offerings that qualify as keepers in my kitchen. With the exception of Dorie Greenspan’s irresistible best seller,  I’ve focused on the works of Bay Area authors. Continue reading Cookbooks for giving →

Homey chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies are all very well for the rest of the year.  The holidays, though, cry out for something spectacular.

It takes an over-the-top cookie like these chocolate cherry hazelnut bars to stand out among the fanciful sugar cutouts, elaborate spritz and spicy gingerbread men found on platters at every neighborhood party and office pot luck this time of year.

I usually try out a new cookie every year during the holidays, but this recipe has become a standard.  It’s always a hit on the cookie platter and it makes great gifts, too.  The fact that it takes only minutes to pull together only adds to its charm. Continue reading Upscale bar cookies for the holidays →

Thanksgiving is just days away, yet my thoughts already are turning to leftovers.

The menu for the big day is pretty standard:  Simple roast turkey a la Russ Parson’s Judy bird, decadent mashed potatoes, those sweet potato-stuffed mini pumpkins I wrote about last week, green beans, persimmon salad, fresh cranberry relish, homemade rolls and pumpkin pie from an old “Joy of Cooking” recipe.  It’s a lot of work to pull together, but the basic elements don’t change much from year to year.

When it comes to leftovers, though, innovations are definitely welcome.  Even after the obligatory soup–I’m thinking chili this year–and overstuffed sandwiches on Friday, we usually still have a lot of turkey left in the refrigerator.  And I’d rather be hiking or walking on the beach than spending more time in the kitchen.

By Saturday, I’m looking for an easy, fresh-tasting dish that puts turkey squarely in the background.  This pasta salad fits the bill. Continue reading Turkey leftovers transformed →

A Thanksgiving without sweet potatoes is unimaginable. The orange-fleshed tuber ranks right up there with the turkey in most families.

Yet, I no longer have any appetite for sugary casseroles topped with toasted marshmallows.  They’re just too much like dessert served in the middle of the main event.  I’ll save my sugar for later, thank you.

For years, I simply roasted whole sweet potatoes and served them plain as a counterpoint to all the heavy, rich food on the Thanksgiving table.  Plain sweet potatoes don’t feel festive enough for a culinary blowout, however, and an assignment to write about elegant Turkey Day dishes inspired these stuffed mini pumpkins. Continue reading Dress up sweet potatoes for Turkey Day →

A perfectly ripe pear is a joy unto itself, requiring little more than a bit of cheese and a handful of nuts to make a memorable dessert.

Sadly, I haven’t encountered many perfect pears.

The pears of my experience tend to be hard as rocks at the market, only to bruise and scar in the bag on the trip home, then turn to mush almost overnight on the kitchen counter.  Sometime in between, I know there is a point when they’re just right, the flesh still slightly firm, the sweet juices flowing freely.  But I miss it more often than not.

Still, I can’t resist the promise of pears.  Every fall, I find myself buying gorgeous pears at the peak of the season in the hope I can catch a few at the elusive moment of perfection.  It’s a good thing I have this cake as Plan B for the fruit that doesn’t measure up. It’s especially good with Bosc pears. Continue reading Pears spice up cake →

The trouble with writing about seasonal cooking at this time of year is you never know what the weather gods are going to deliver from day to day.

When I started working on this post, temperatures were chilly and the skies overcast.  Nothing seemed more appropriate than this hearty variation on risotto made with mushrooms and an ancient form of wheat Italians know as farro.  By the time I got up this morning, though, temperatures already were in the 60s and the sun was rising in a clear sky.

Still, the forecast is for rain and cold weather again in a couple of days.  Unless you have a well-stocked pantry, it may take that long to round up the essential ingredients for this dish. Not every market carries farro alongside the rice and pasta, although it has become more widely available in recent years.

Nutty in flavor and nicely chewy, farro is one of my favorite whole grains. It makes a tasty change from brown rice and bulgur and cooks about as quickly as white rice.   Semi-perlato farro, with lightly polished grains, still retains some of its nutritious bran and it’s a lot less daunting than wheat berries. Continue reading Ancient grain, modern flavor →

My assignment from the hostess:  Create a spooky appetizer for the neighborhood Halloween party.

It should have been easy.  But as much as I like the fantasy of the scary holiday, I still want my food to be real.  Yet wherever I looked for inspiration, all I found was processed food and outrageous colors.  The dishes were amusing  but I wouldn’t eat them.

What I needed was terrific food in Halloween disguise.   Enter homemade sesame seed crackers in bat shapes and zesty pimento cheese spread, which just happens to come in the perfect shade of orange. Continue reading Going batty over Halloween →

Every time I see a new recipe for  sesame peanut noodles, I feel compelled to try it.  Somewhere out there, I know, is the elusive sauce with the ideal balance of lively spice and creamy texture that turns cold noodles and fresh vegetables into a feast.

Most of the recipes I’ve made, however, tend to turn out bland, stodgy and gloppy.  Once the sauce joins the cooled noodles, it congeals and becomes almost impossible to toss with the pasta.

For years, my best bet was Nina Simonds’ rainbow peanut noodle salad from “Asian Noodles” (Hearst Books, 1997).  It was always a hit at potlucks and summer picnics with its creamy dressing and generous helpings of crisp vegetables, but it lacked the spark I craved.  I wanted the undercurrent of lime and tingle of chile that make Thai cuisine so irresistible.

During an extremely hot spell this month, though, I began experimenting with my own sauce, bumping up the heat with ginger and red chile sauce (I like sriracha in the plastic squeeze bottle with a rooster on it) while introducing the zing of fresh lime juice.  The ingredients are available in most supermarkets. Continue reading Noodling around Asian-style →