Not Your Mother's Cookbooks

My friend, award-winning food writer, journalist, food scout, restaurant critic, reporter on the lam, her own t-shirt boutique pusher, dancer in the dark, dragon boat rowing in the sun, and former editorial boss at the San Jose Mercury News is Carolyn Jung, aka FoodGal. She always has the best darn recipes, from her father’s steak sauce to the best cookies and cocktails.

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Quinoa translates to “mother” in Quechua, one of the main languages of native Andean peoples and Incan descendants. It was a staple highland grain of equal importance as maize, and considered a premium food source of strength and endurance for working in the thin mountain air.

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January 1988 started what was to be a good year for catering. It was an election year and Reaganomics had the country in the lull between Iran-Contra and the end of the Cold War. People were entertaining at home nonstop. I had a lot of private parties scheduled way into the summer. January is a great month to entertain since people are looking for some excitement in the dreary cold month following the Christmas holidays.

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Love hot chocolate as much as life itself? You have come to the right place for inspiration.

One of the taste sensations of cultural cuisine is the emergence of the combination of chocolate and chile powder. As it happens, chiles are a counterpoint to dark chocolate and accents its natural flavors just like coffee or vanilla does.

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In each genre of cooking, there are the celebrities, the ones who are well known by being on TV, and then there are the insider pros, the ones who the food world recognize but often are not more widely known. If you are a serious home bread baker, you know Bernard Clayton’s recipes.

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I think we are in a waffle renaissance. Not pancakes. Waffles. The food of the kids on the weekend. Waffle are just everywhere and they are begging to be reinvented anew.

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Mildred Pierce move over. Here is the alternative to all that messy stovetop frying.

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There have been epistles written about Irish soda bread. This recipe is from my family and it still is the best. Makes great toast, crunchy and tastes just like an English muffin.

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Granola certainly has become one of the most touted of healthy breakfast cereals and what we are experiencing now commercially has grown straight out of its roots in the hippie whole grain oat-nut-and-seed kitchen of the 1960s. The name granola is a take on granula, a toasted wheat cereal touted by whole grain movement of Sylvester Graham in the 1900s. Since it is tremendously versatile, it takes to all sorts of additions and variations on the basic recipe.

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It’s technically the end of the cranberry season. But I notice big piles of cranberries in the produce section, begging to be taken home and frozen for use throughout the year. Hopefully you stashed a few bags in the freezer to hold you over until next fall holiday season. Frozen cranberries are excellent for making muffins, quick breads, even in stews or as one of your favorite cranberry sauces at Easter, if you haven’t noticed.

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