SaltShaker

 The traditional Mediterranean diet is firmly rooted in the earth. The warm, sunny climate, the long growing season, mild winter, and fertile soil of this region have long provided its inhabitants with delicious, fresh fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, and nuts. It is, and has always been, a plant-based cuisine, one that never depended on animal [...]

 Men are always pushed into group situations … like group sports with a leader. In the kitchen the chef is your captain, but in pastry there is more autonomy, more independence. Women relish that. you are permitted to be creative sooner than on the hot line.”
- Claudia Fleming, NYC pastry chef
I’ve worked a good percentage [...]

Our recent visitors from Canada for a private dinner apparently enjoyed themselves quite a bit and recommended us to a group of their friends from Chicago, who dined with us this last weekend, also for a private evening.
Much of this comes out of some favorites, and one dish, new to the dinners, comes out of [...]

 The man who trusts men will make fewer mistakes than he who distrusts them.”
- Camillo di Cavour, prime minister, Kingdom of Sardinia
I’m getting a bit behind on dinner posts, so I may throw these at you rapidly over the next couple of days. You’ll live. Let’s start back at the beginning of the month and [...]

 The fields from Islington to Marybone, To Primrose Hill and Saint John’s Wood, Were builded over with pillars of gold; And there Jerusalem’s pillars stood.”
- William Blake
Over time, we’ve had quite a few visits from our local puertas cerradas compatriots, as well as visited their dining spots. We’ve had a few from the US and [...]

 We’ve traveled almost the full length of the island and can report that every corner of it is wet, every river overflows its banks, every rain barrel is filled to the brim, every wall washed clean of writing no one knows how to read anyway.”
- from In the Time of the Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez
Last [...]

 If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens.”
- Robert Browning, poet
As always, playing around with new breads.

Nothing quite like good pumpernickel rye. Fairly classic recipe with a couple of minor adjustments:
1⅛ to 1¼ cups warm water
25 grams fresh yeast
1½ tablespoons corn oil
⅓ cup molasses
2 teaspoons salt
1½ cups [...]

 Shellfish are the prime cause of the decline of morals and the adaptation of an extravagant lifestyle. Indeed of the whole realm of Nature the sea is in many ways the most harmful to the stomach, with its great variety of dishes and tasty fish.”
- Pliny the Elder
It was the age of Pisces, not Aquarius, [...]