Once upon a time, fresh salmon made a regular appearance on my dinner table.  The California fishery was still relatively healthy and I could always count on finding fresh, locally-caught king salmon at my neighborhood grocery store throughout the spring and summer.  The succulent orange flesh of the thick steaks and fillets was irresistible.  Prices weren’t bad either.

Fast forward a decade and fresh salmon from local fishing boats has become a rare luxury.  Federal authorities have placed the California coastal king salmon, also known as Chinook, on their list of threatened species. The state closed salmon fisheries altogether for the first time in 2008 and 2009 because the stock of Chinook was so low.  This year, the ocean season was restricted to the month of April and catches were limited to two salmon a day.

Of course, there’s still salmon in the market, but most of the wild-caught fish has been shipped from Alaska with prices to match. Even then much of it is labeled “previously frozen” because most of the Alaskan catch is flash-frozen on the boat as soon as it’s caught.  So I’ve been reconsidering the shrink-wrapped wild salmon in the freezer cases at stores like Trader Joe’s, where prices are about half that of fresh fish. Continue reading Sustainable salmon–from the freezer →

New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman always seems to have his finger on the pulse of how America cooks.  His encyclopedic book of pared-down recipes, “How to Cook Everything,” Wiley, 1998, long ago displaced the venerable “Joy of Cooking” as the everyday kitchen reference in our house.  My husband would be lost without it.

Now Bittman has joined the smart phone age with his nifty new iPhone app, “How to Cook Everything On the Go” ($4.99). I’m not going to give up my hardback version of his cooking bible anytime soon but I’m smitten with this clever bit of technical wizardry.  It has everything in the book and more in a to-go format that is much easier to search.

The shortcake pictured here is based on the simple scone recipe I found while browsing among the strawberry entries.   The ingredient list is short, the instructions are simple, and the results are delectable.  This may be the easiest, most tender and flaky scone I’ve ever made even though I switched out half of the white flour for whole wheat pastry flour.  Use a food processor and the scones are ready to bake before the oven has warmed up. Continue reading Bittman on the iPhone →

Sometimes there aren’t any shortcuts to good food.  If you want the flavor of the real thing, you just have to put in the time and effort.

Fresh fava beans are a prime example.  Each plump little bean must be liberated from its cozy cocoon within a sturdy pod before you can even think about peeling and cooking it.

Yet these beans are so wonderful that cooks around the world are happy to spend the time shucking and peeling them for everything from a simple antipasto to a spring stew with artichokes and new potatoes.  The subtle flavor is one of the true delights of spring – fresh and sweet with buttery overtones and just a faintly bitter finish.

This year, I fell in love with a salad of tender spring favas and salty pecorino cheese tossed with fresh arugula, basil and mint that I found in Sara Jenkins’ Mediterranean cookbook “Olives and Oranges,” Houghton Mifflin, 2008.  Simply dressed with olive oil and sea salt, it’s a feast of the season.  Continue reading Fresh favas worth the effort →

I’ve been looking for the ideal lemon bar recipe for ages.  Over the years, I’ve made bars with fabulous citrus zing and bars that held their shape when cut, but only rarely did I get both in the same pan.  More often than not, the very best tasting bars never set properly and I ended up chilling them to the edge of freezing before cutting. Or I’d just slurp up the soupy center squares with a spoon.

Leave it to Martha Stewart to solve the problem.  I found these luscious squares in “Martha Stewart’s Cookies,” Clarkson Potter, 2008, one of the best cookie cookbooks in my experience.

These bars are bright and fresh tasting with just enough mouth-puckering tartness to satisfy a real lemon lover.  Yet they’re also firm enough to slice into perfect squares when cooled. Continue reading Lemon bars hit the mark →

It’s not a celebration in Mexico without pozole. The spicy, porky soup, laden with tender hominy corn and a fiery chile paste, is perfect for a crowd and just the ticket for a Cinco de Mayo party.

The trouble is it’s hard to find a really good recipe that you can make with readily available ingredients. I mean, who can find pork trotters without an exhaustive search?  Even the Mexican markets in my town don’t carry them.

Then there are the secrets that you’re not likely to know unless you grew up in the culture, cooking at your mother’s elbow. I struggled with the dried corn for which the dish is named through a couple of batches of soup before I understood that even the bags of corn in the Mexican market had to be boiled with slaked lime before washing and cooking.  The pozole tasted good but it was so rubbery and tough it was almost inedible. Cans of white hominy – many cooks’ standby – just didn’t appeal.

Luckily, I found the already treated – nixtamalized – corn at Steve Sando’s great online store, Rancho Gordo. Sando uses small Southwestern corn kernels for his posole (it can be spelled with and “s” or a “z”).  The treated kernels cook up tender and fluffy,  providing the perfect canvas for rich pork, lively chiles and the panoply of toppings that give pozole it’s festive character. Continue reading Pozole for Cinco de Mayo →

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. Continue reading Asparagus one more time–on pizza →

If mention of olive oil turns your thoughts to Italy, it’s time to expand your horizons.  Some of the freshest most flavorful olive oil on the market today comes from California.

For more than two decades the state’s  boutique producers of high end oils have been getting all the attention.  One of the most popular and widely distributed, McEvoy Ranch, commands more than $20 for a 12.7 ounce bottle of its  intense, pungent oils from Tuscan varieties of olives.

Now, California is building a reputation for high quality oils delivered at a more modest price, thanks to intensive planting techniques, mechanical harvesting and a proliferation of high tech mills.   Although many may be familiar with the oils from the mammoth California Olive Ranch, with mills in Oroville and Corning, far fewer are likely to recognize the products of the state’s number two producer, Corto Olive.  That’s because most of its oil production is bottled under private labels for the likes of Zabar’s and Sam’s Club. Continue reading Aglio e olio California style →

Quick: Passover is only two days away and  you’ve been invited to a seder.  What can you bring for dessert?

That question can be challenging enough for cooks who were raised in the Hebrew tradition and understand all the dietary restrictions on flour and leavening associated with this celebration of the Jews’ escape from Egypt in biblical times.

For the rest of us, there’s matzo crunch.  This addictive treat pairs bland and brittle matzo–an unleavened bread that could qualify as the poster food for Passover–with the caramel and chocolate flavors of toffee.  It’s crisp, sweet and impossible to resist.  Only the most self-disciplined can eat just one piece. Continue reading Matzo crunch gilds Passover staple →

Wandering around San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood, camera in hand, for Penny de los Santos’ food photography workshop last week, I spotted this sandwich through the window at Tartine Bakery & Cafe.  It was so tempting with its plump asparagus spears tucked beneath a luscious blanket of bubbling cheese and bechamel.  But the line was long and time was short.

I left without tasting it, alas, and I couldn’t get that sandwich out of my mind.  So I resolved to make one for myself when I got home.  Continue reading Asparagus, Part 2 →

Can it be?  Is that the sun blazing in the sky for the third day in a row?   After a long, wet winter, even an elusive promise of warm, sunny days to come is cause for celebration.

For me, that calls for an asparagus binge.  No vegetable is a better harbinger of spring than the slender spears of grass-green asparagus that finally have arrived in the farmers markets here.  Yes, you can get asparagus year-round in restaurants and supermarkets anymore, but those crops are grown thousands of miles away.  By the time the get here, the stalks have lost all the fresh, green flavor  and crisp texture I adore.  There is no substitute for local asparagus straight from the fields.

At one time, nearly two-thirds of the asparagus consumed in the U.S. was grown in California, most of it in the fertile San Joaquin Delta region west of Stockton. Production has dropped precipitously, however, as the high labor costs for harvesting the stalks has made the price of California asparagus less competitive year after year with the asparagus imported from Mexico and Peru.  Fortunately, farmers markets have created a profitable outlet for small farmers. Continue reading Asparagus and the promise of spring →