Tag: recipe

Finding your Groots

August 19th, 2026

The time had come, once again to purge the bookshelves. According to the database that indexes my cookbook collection, I have 54,000 recipes at my fingertips. If I made one recipe every single day, it would take me 148 years to get through all these cookbooks. So, away some of them must go. I have done this before, I am more comfortable with letting go of books than I used to be, and I have a system for making decisions in my living library.

First, there are the books that do not have added value in someone else’s life. A couple of examples- My mother self-published a couple of family cookbooks that are full of recipes, pictures, and stories about my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and everyone else. A copy of Better Homes and Gardens from 1989 that has the recipe for Pumpkin Raisin Tart I make every Thanksgiving; this probably would go to the recycling bin for almost anyone else. These, and a handful of other books belong in the “don’t think about it” category, books that have more meaning to me than they ever could for someone else, so here they stay.

The easiest books to get rid of are the free ones or real cheapies from the thrift shop, books I looked at the day I bought them, then were put on the shelf until the day they went back to the thrift shop, ready for some other bargain hunting enthusiast. There is one book that I’ve purchased and given back three times. It’s an Italian cookbook that has a pretty cover and is revered, but I never use it, and it bores me to read for some reason. (Benji, please remember this, you don’t like this book!).

Which leaves us in the murky middle world; this is where the work needs to happen. A long list of cookbooks that need putting through their paces, then in or out. These books are separated into categories- 1.Books I have read but never cooked from 2. Books I’ve had a bad experience with because of something I did or that happened, but I still like the book but now I am afraid of. 3. Reprints of old cookbooks that may be great, but the recipes need to be translated to today words and methods and 4. books I have never cooked from or read or even casually looked at.

I will put these books in a pile and, one by one, make several recipes from each of them. I went to the shelf and got started. The first book I pulled actually meets all three criteria above. The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth by Roy Andries de Groot.

Groot was an interesting fella. He is remembered as a food and wine writer, but before that he was a reporter for the BBC, and suffered serious eye injuries while covering the Blitz. By the time he published Auberge, he was completely blind.

Now Groot has written another book, Feasts for All Seasons, which was for me, what’s the word I can’t think of, it’s not kryptonite, or waterloo, but you know, I was intimidated and discouraged by its strangeness and complexity. The dishes and methods are unusual, and his language is specific but florid, poetic. He might write a sentence like this: The pheasant must be cooked for exactly 16 minutes to 150.1 degrees and not more, then rested on an unvarnished solid oak table top (not stainless steel or worse! travertine) for 11 minutes and not a second more, or the angelic vapor of peach and freshly tanned leather will have evaporated into the ether, carried aloft by the East Wind, and all your work will be for nought.

I find that intimidating.

The Auberge is his most famous work, and is a beloved memoir considered by many to be one of the best books about food of all time ever in the whole history of humanity. The Auberge was also an inn in the Savoy region of France, where Groot had gone to research and write about the famed local liqueur, Chartreuse. He ended up writing a book about the Inn itself, and the second half of the book is devoted to recipes for the many dishes he enjoyed while there. Or so he claims. Apparently his book inspired many people to visit the Auberge, and a number of them wrote to Groot to say that their experience was nothing like what was described in the book. Groot replied that much of the book had come from his imagination, and that it is really the spirit of the thing that counts. I didn’t know this until after I had made a meal from it, but let’s get to that now.

The Menu: Ratatouille Whole Wheat Walnut Bread

Pot Roast Beef in the style of Marseille

Raspberry Cream Tart

There seem to be as many recipes for Ratatouille as there are rats in Paris, and this one was incredibly simple and recommended covering it with Gruyere cheese, which we did, with no regrets. I think it was cooked for three hours. Tons of olive oil, eggplant, tomatoes, onions, garlic, and parsley. Great. We scooped it onto slices of the whole wheat bread, seen in the background. Wonderful. Good on Groot!

Next we tried the Pot Roast Beef Marseille style. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. The recipe itself is unusual. What makes it unusual? It includes lardons that have been marinated in blackberry brandy, and is finished with chopped mixed olives. This is what makes it Marseille, I read. Those seem like competing flavors to me, and I’ve never had that pair in one dish before. His instructions are unusual, by which I mean, wrong. Example-although he suggests a chuck roast, he insists that it not be cooked to higher than 140F or the essential essence or whatever will be ruined and lost forever. If we cooked that roast to only 140F, we’d still be chewing on basically raw meat, essential essence be damned! The result of all this is that I cooked it for 4 hours, until the inside registered 195F, and it was delicious, although I wondered what, if anything, was lost in its “magical” flavor. We’ll never know. We could definitely taste the blackberry in the background, but also all those olives with their salty muskiness. It was old-world tasting, like what fairy tale characters might eat, or what old movies smell like.

Finally, the tart. The recipe again, language. He keeps describing the preparation as a pastry, and I’m thinking French pastry, with cold butter worked in layers alternately with flour dough. Except this one has yeast and needs to rise. The kitchen must be between 65F-70F so that the yeast can rise without the butter softening or melting. Well, no way, you crazy nut! The kneading process of course obliterated the butter and it was worked into the yeasty dough like Brioche, which is exactly what it was, not a pastry! It also had something he described as cream, which was really a light and almost unsweetened custard sauce. I was expecting disaster.

It was lovely, and you can see how the dough puffed up and looks a lot more like bread than pastry.

OK, so we enjoyed the food, the adventure and stories-from Groot in Savoy to Bachmann in San Francisco. I decided to keep the book, even though it has errors, not typos, but actual errors. Which means that the writing doesn’t have to be clear or even accurate to warrant a place in my cookbook library. What else could this mean?

It’s funny because I look at the pile of cookbooks going to the thrift shop and think that a few of them at least are better instructional cookbooks than The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth. I guess for me a great cookbook is more than recipes, and if the book itself sparks conversation, it might be worth saving.

And yes, friends, General Mills has done it. Wicked, the breakfast cereal. Glinda Good Berry. What else is there to say?
Middle Summer

July 23rd, 2026

It’s Leo season. Leo the Lion, mighty hunter of the arid plains. We’ve all seen the episode of Nature. The one where Leo tackles a gazelle and tears it to shreds on camera, in slow motion, the victim’s little cloven feet snapping like match sticks in the predator cat’s mighty jaw. The cat licks its chops with a huge salivating tongue, looking out onto the Serengeti with the confidence of an undisputed king at home. Home.

Whenever we see a lion in real life, it’s in a zoo, and the lion in its tiny enclosure is almost always sleeping. We all think of the cruelty of taking wild animals from their natural habitat, plopping them right in the middle of Cleveland, where there is nothing to do but sleep, pose for photos, and get fed already dead animals by people in khaki uniforms. Such a poor life. Or is it?

I recently took my young niece and nephew to the Cleveland Zoo and encountered this very thing, would you know it? There they were, two lions, sleeping in the sunshine on large man-made rock formations of poured concrete. Why are they always sleeping, I am asked? Well, perhaps this handy little plaque with the map of Africa on it could help us understand. It turns out, lions sleep sixteen to twenty hours a day, WHEN THEY ARE IN THE WILD! Well, that’s a relief. Like a lot of people we know, lions can sleep anywhere. Imagine that. We sleep twenty hours a day, and only get up to use the reserved energy to kill a few deer and eat them, then go back to sleep. What a lack of ambition! Talk about not being afraid to miss important things. Birthdays, anniversaries, New Year’s Eve, world travel, these things mean nothing to a lion. These creatures spend MOST of their lives completely asleep.

I suppose it is just a coincidence that the constellation in the sky at this particular time of year resembled a lion and ancient astronomers called that constellation Leo, after the Lion, because it seems to me to be the prime time of year to be sleeping or at least, being lazy. Over are the glorious days of first summer, when everyone is excited to be out, graduations, parties, and picnics, and letting the kids stay up late. This all culminates in the 4th of July with hot dogs, fireworks, you know that story. We haven’t entered the dog days of summer, the ones where school starts, and we get back to reality whatever that is, and prepare for fall. So, here we are in middle summer, another shiny afternoon pool side, it’s gonna be in the 90s again tomorrow, and when will this end? July is the February of summer. Is it Halloween yet?

So here we are, back in San Francisco, where the thick blanket of cooling fog comes in from the ocean, and we enjoy the coolest summertime temperatures in the country. It’s great weather for cooking things.

In background, a cauldron of Hebrew Nationals, and in the center, baked beans covered in uhh, bacon. Then-

Devils food cake, filled and topped with chocolate mousse.

I made these things for the 4th, the big 250. We must be doin somethin right!?! It was an infamous 4th for our fair city. They decided to set the fireworks off from the Golden Gate Bridge to mark the special anniversary, which would have been wonderful had Karl the Fog not also gotten an invitation and shrouded the whole thing in impressionist mist. No fireworks, only the shadow of fireworks. Add to this, crazy wayward Waymos and one toilet for every twenty thousand spectators, and well, you got yourself a 4th of July you’re not soon to forget. I’m glad I stayed at home and watched fireworks on TV, from the Brooklyn Bridge. The one in New York.

That being settled, we settled in to the middle summer. I was on a chocolate kick, which you’d think the Devil’s Food would have satisfied, but it only put me in the mood for more.

The only good thing to do with bananas-make banana bread. A great thing to do with bananas-make a marble bread with half chocolate and half banana walnut. A wonderful treat, and the first time I remember ever making something marble. You pour one batter in half the pan, the other in the other, and swirl it with a skewer making that pattern. It’s fun.

This week-a trio of meals with height of summer produce, fresh from the Farmer’s Market. On Sunday, risotto, starting with onions, leeks, and green bell pepper, cooked down to soft and savory. Then, the Arborio rice, alternatively with home made chicken stock, adding fresh chopped zuccini and tomatoes, and finished with Pecorino Romano cheese, shredded basil, and a squeeze of lemon juice. Does it get better? Yes

Tuesday night- a fresh head of cabbage, leaves separated and blanched. A tomato sauce, made with garlic and plenty of sweet paprika. Leftover risotto dolloped in the center of the cabbage leaves, rolled up nice and tight, smothered in tomato sauce, covered in cooked bacon and sprinkled with cheese.

Heavenly.

Wednesday- a whole chicken, quartered, browned in olive oil, then simmered in red onions, garlic, and fresh tomatoes. Served with mashed potatoes. Even better than heaven?

For dessert, we’ve been eating fresh peaches and strawberries. There is an important lesson about life, eating with the seasons. The asparagus is long gone, the strawberries are getting over the hill, and the zuccini and eggplant, onions, garlic, peaches, are in full swing. Soon, tomatoes and figs will be here. Oh, that life lesson, I don’t know what it is, but it has something to do with the little cyclical deaths we experience when we eat the foods that are available for only a short time, then gone till next spring or whenever. Like Leo the lion’s waking moments, short and intense.

So let’s enjoy this time while we may, doing what we are naturally inclined to do. If only those poor folks that went to see the fireworks on the 4th had been reminded that even the Lion King probably would have slept through the whole thing, they might have rethought their plans. What would they have done if they’d have known that they weren’t really missing anything because there is nothing to miss? Only sleeping in the sun, dreaming of that gazelle.
Cassoulet: Hip hip hooray or no way, Jose?

January 26th, 2026

Our beautiful cassoulet, after its 2nd cooking. That was not the end of it. It finally looked like this:

There is magic in this dish. There is something about breaking up the crust and having some of the liquid bubble up, seep through the cracks and become its own crisp layer. The what do you call it? Sauce? juice? soup? That thick liquid made of disintegrated beans and deeply braised meat spewing up like lava that cools and hardens as it rests.

Everyone enjoyed. Bringing the cauldron to the table, it really is an impressive looking dish. The texture was so smooth and creamy, with the occasional bite of roasted duck leg. The crisp crust layer. Yes.

Would I, will I make this again? I think yes, perhaps when I am older. It is the perfect dish if we had been snowed in for several days like the folks back East is doing. This is most definitely not California food. But it made us all dream. The other thing is it does take a lot of time, which is not bad, you just need a good amount of it, and you must choose to use it making the cassoulet. It was interesting to watch what in its uncooked forms looked like a modest bowl of beans next to a large pile of assorted meats become a bean stew with judicious bits of meat in it. It was a total reversal.

Still and all, it is wonderfully, gloriously rich. I would maybe serve it earlier in the day and take a long walk after eating. Or perhaps before. Or maybe both. The day after I had that sad feeling that I often do when I finish a major musical project, I had developed some kind of relationship to this recipe and this dish. It was an adventure in its own little way. Another iconic French recipe that i had once not made, I have made. I am a little more experienced that I was three weeks ago. What do we do now? We keep going.
Cassoulet-the 2nd Day

January 23rd, 2026

How did we get there from here, Mr. Bachmann? Well, I’ll tell you. Three days and four grocery stores later, behold!- the fully assembled cassoulet.

There are two types of cooking adventure. The first is when you take very simple everyday ingredients and do some technical wizardry and Voila-puff pastry, for instance. The other, like this here cassoulet, is not technically difficult, but require days of cooking, resting, and perhaps most adventurely, obtaining the right ingredients. First, get the meat.

The 55 bus took us out to the Dogpatch, a neighborhood which didn’t exist in name when I moved here. It was always there but didn’t become popular until the City by the Bay starting living closer to it in by filling in the old warehouse district into a young urbanite’s paradise. This includes wonderful restaurants, coffee shops, boutiquey food places, and an absolutely wonderf French butchery called Olivier’s.

Duck legs, ready for confiting? Check! Toulouse style sausages? Check! Cute young butchers with long white aprons, handlebar mustaches, eager to please? Check! This place had everything. Those beautiful duck legs pictured above were subject to a quick confit for the cassoulet which included nutmeg, allspice, gin, and plenty of salt. It needed to brine for a day, and the beans needed to soak overnight to soften.

Day One. Oh yes, and I cooked the ham and pork shoulder to tenderness in water, which became stock. That too. I’d forgotten, or perhaps not put together in my mind in the first place, that I would be at work all day on Thursday and not able to do anything with the cassoulet unless I got up very early in the morning and worked constantly until the very moment that I had to rush out the door and catch BART. Which is exactly what I did. I roasted the duck confit for two and a half hours, I seared the sausages, I simmered the beans in the pork stock with onion garlic, onion, carrot, and herbs for an hour. For you see, every element of this dish is cooked separately before cooling, resting, processing, reassembling, and then recooking. That’s where I started to get worried that three days wasn’t enough, and dish wouldn’t happen. Well, when I pulled the duck legs out of the oven, I sighed with relief.

I am serving the cassoulet this evening. It is in the oven now with its mixture of breadcrumbs and walnut oil on the top. I tasted the bean in their liquor yesterday and they were absolutely wonderful. The scent in the house right now-ham, garlic, allspice, walnut, gin, savory meat. It is other worldly. I imagine it is what elves make in their little hovels at the base of the old oak tree. It is the food in fairy tales.

Now that it’s cooking, I seem to have forgotten any anxiety about getting to this point. Finding the all the ingredients, meat aside, were trickier to find than I thought. The beans for instance. It wasn’t the type of bean, Great Northern Beans were easy to find in cans. But finding big dry ones didn’t happen until grocery store number three. The walnut oil was worse, that was shop number four. When I’m making something as big and complicated as this I really want to make it to the letter of the recipe, and when I get into a situation where I may have to substitute ingredients, well, look out. I can get really grumpy. Same with timing, if I run out of town and I start to feel that I have trim minutes from the process, then you got some serious trouble. But, here we are. Everything is going to be fine, good even. And the pizza man is still just a phone call away.

Friendly reminder- I can no longer edit or change anything on this platform so this is all basically raw, unedited stream of whatever writing. For instance, in that last paragraph I wrote “if I run out of town”, when of course I meant “run out of time”. Ya know, that kinda thing. OK, more to come.
It’s OK to cassoulet

January 17th, 2026

Is it OK to use cassoulet as a verb? I am going to cassoulet this weekend. Well, maybe not, but perhaps I’ll make a case to use it as a verb after I make it. That’s right, friends, I am going to make cassoulet this week. It’s like so many storied French dishes that everyone must make at least once. I have done souffles, quiches, Coq au Vin, all sorts of daubes, soups, you name it. But never the legendary cassoulet. And, like other iconic recipes, the French people insist that there is one, true, authoritative recipe that must be adhered to the letter of the law or it simply isn’t this dish, then have no consensus as to what that recipe contains and how it is to be cooked.

Something new- I am currently taking requests for menus or at least dishes that friends want me to make. I am happy and excited to do this as I need to be pushed a little bit these days, at least with regards to making new to me recipes. Cassoulet is the first one requested and will be the first big cooking project of 2026. I knew it would take a good deal of time, but other than that I thought it would be simple.

The first thing I should mention to the reader at home is that this has not happened yet. I can not tell you how it tasted, I have not tasted it yet. There is nothing to taste yet, you see. I scoured my cookbook collection, and in the database that use, there are no fewer than forty seven recipes for cassoulet. Each recipe has several things in common and several things that are very different. I will tell you which recipe I decided to go with, and why, but I’m not going into any huge comparison or anything like that.

First and foremost, cassoulet is a dish of slow cooked beans. It really is French pork and beans. Now, I don’t know if you are the kind of person that A. doesn’t eat beans, B. has only ever opened a can of beans, microwaved that and eaten it, or C. has opened a can of beans in liquid, tarted it up with some spices and cooked it in the oven, you may not know the glory that is the slow cooked New England baked beans. This is a dish that is cooked low and slow until the beans are so creamy and juicy and savory, that, well, I don’t know, something special happens. Point is, American baked beans like this are very much like Cassoulet.

This was not true of all the recipes, but most of the forty seven recipes in my collection finish with a layer of fresh bread crumbs spread on top of the cassoulet before the final cooking. Frequently the bread crumbs are tossed in walnut oil before scattering on top of the beans. Now, that sounds fun, huh?

A third and final similarity: Each recipe called for at least three, often four, sometimes five or six, types of meat. Some of the recipes were revolting to read-pork shoulder, ham hock, bacon, pork belly, fresh duck, fresh goose, duck confit, goose confit, lamb shoulder, kielbasa, garlic sausage, pork skin, cracklings, everything really except chicken or beef, make their way into the cassoulets. Honestly, I would be reading these recipes and I swear I could smell cooked meat smell oozing out of my own skin. It was horrible! So, I had to find a recipe that didn’t make me feel this way.

I found a recipe from a wonderful book that I have used many times call My Paris Kitchen by David Lebovitz. David I’ll call him, though I don’t know him, is a sometime San Francisco resident who, unsurprisingly, spends most of his time these days living in Paris, and I for one hope that he is very happy. He is a friend of Judy Kasinsky, owner of the building that has housed until recently Cookin’ a used cookware shop here, and Judy is the famed cantankerous proprietor. Another story for another day. I always mention him when I am in the store, and she regales me with some tale of her friend David, and some recipe she tried and how she fixed it when it didn’t work out. Well, the shop is closed now, and so I won’t be able to talk to her about my cassoulet.

It is currently Saturday. The serve date of the cassoulet is next Friday, six days from now. The dish is already in the making, here’s what I got so far.

David’s recipe calls for unsmoked ham hock, an ingredient I was unable to find even in our foodie city. I could find smoked ham hock, or unsmoked ham that is not the hock. He clearly doesn’t want that smoky flavor in the dish, so I will use a cured but not smoked piece of ham. I also couldn’t find duck leg confit for sale in a grocery store, I’m sure there must be some in town, but David actually gives a recipe for a quick homemade confit that sounds really great, so I got fresh duck legs and we’ll do that. Exciting!

One great adventure-I’ve found an amazing new-to-me butchery in town, Olivier’s Butchery in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco. It not only has all the meats that need (including making the duck legs “confit ready”) but also the Toulouse sausages that most “authentic” recipes call for. So, the meat totals for this dish will be: Pork belly, pork butt, duck confit, and sausage. Four types of meat, that’s plenty. And the beans. And the breadcrumbs. OK, more to come, I pick up the meat on Wednesday.

Also, I know there are mistakes. I am only to write things once, I am no longer allowed to delete or edit anything on this platform, which I am still looking for a new one, btw. If you use WordPress and know something about this, please share it. It’s annoying. OK, love and best wishes to you all.
Eatin Greek like the Greek eat Greek

November 11th, 2025
11 November 2025 Tuesday

I know you’ve seen this: An online article with the headline “What California city is the best place to retire?” and above the headline is a photograph of the skyline of Atlanta. Or how about this: an article with the headline “Miley Cyrus fans shocked to hear devastating health news” only to discover that her Pekingese has asthma. Each of these is a manipulation, a lie that is told on purpose presumably because people don’t know what the skyline of Atlanta looks like, or they don’t know Atlanta is not in California, or they don’t care. Someone assumes it doesn’t matter.

In the latter case, a preying on the emotionally confused, who may not have been devastated by Miley Cyrus’ news about her pet, but are now devastated because they assume that all of her other fans must be devastated and you don’t want to come across as either not a great fan or an unsympathetic person, so you are devastated by the news too. The type or types of person that are likely to be moved by this headline also are frequently unable to have a hierarchy of feelings, conflating say, the dog’s asthma with genocide in Sudan, describing both as “devastating”. In the twenty years I have lived in California, I have noticed residents love this word. Here are a few of what I am coining “California sentences”. 1. Neighbors were devastated to learn that the children were found dead in the bed with their parents, all having been shot in the head at close range. 2. The community is devastated to learn that Ernie’s hot dog stand will not be participating in the county fair this year. 3. I was devastated to hear that the children’s pictures would be displayed in the side hallway, not in the main room, where they were displayed when I was a student here and it’s just not the same.

Now, that’s a lot of devastation, I’m surprised that people are able to keep going. Which came first, the event, the headline, or the feeling? Sometimes I wonder at my own emotional response to media.

I remember when I learned that what I read in the paper was not necessarily true. “Your family won’t believe how delicious this dish is, or that it is made with broccoli! They will be asking for seconds!!” I was twelve years old and just starting to cook from recipes and go off on my own little directions, and I came across this recipe in the local newspaper. It was a pasta dish with a garlic broccoli sauce of sorts. It was published in print, it sounded lovely, everyone in our little family liked the ingredients, and it promised to elicit a certain and positive response from the people eating it. It did not do this.

The recipe was flawed; all the measurements were off, that much I do remember. It made a tiny amount of burned sauce, and we ended up opening a jar of regular old tomato sauce and pouring it over the spaghetti. But for a twelve year old boy, it was, well, devastating. I followed the recipe to the letter of the law, and it had failed. It took a while for me to realize that the flaw was in the recipe itself, which had obviously not been proofread or tested. It made me wish that they had done both of those things instead of writing the useless and inaccurate claim that we’d love it.

Doesn’t this happen to us all the time? We are lead to believe that something terrible has happened to Miley Cyrus herself, and we open the article to see what it is, and if she is OK, only to be deceived because it’s not about her, it’s about her dog. And yet, to the people that adore everything about her, the news about her dog IS big news. If the recipe doesn’t work and your family doesn’t love it, it’s our fault somehow. You must be moved with sympathy, you must love the recipe. Why can’t we eat it and judge for ourselves whether or not we like it? Or why can’t we decide how to feel about celebrity’s pets on our own, without knowing how other people are feeling, or how the people that write these headlines interpret what they think other people are feeling. How does this stuff get published?

OK, skip ahead thirty six years. I am looking for recipes for things that include pumpkin (excluding the soup served in the pumpkin) that aren’t pumpkin pie. I came across a curious recipe from a cookbook called The Complete Book of Greek Cooking, written by the good yiayias at St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral, which must be a wonderful place. I did think it was a little unusual to find a pumpkin cake recipe in a Greek cookbook, I guess I didn’t know they had pumpkins in Greece, but you’re learning something everyday, aren’t you?

I thought I’d give it a try, and maybe make a whole meal out this book, because I had never made anything from this book I’ve had for years, and why not? Lamb shoulder was on sale at the market, and well, it just seemed like it was meant to be. I would make a roast lamb with oregano, and the recipe for Lentil Soup to start.

Well, there she is, that pumpkin cake I was telling you about. Pumpkin, walnuts, raisins, and a little of dark chocolate and cinnamon.

A few people came over for dinner and the announcement was made (I like to make announcements) that we’d be eating Greek food, or rather, that all the recipes had come from a cookbook called The Complete Book of Greek Food. As I was making this announcement, perhaps because I was hearing the words come out of my mouth, my heart sank a little. I felt like perhaps I was not telling the truth, I was being inauthentic. I was wanting my guests to believe that these were authentic Greek dishes because the print had convinced me that they were authentic. The Lentil soup was a lovely normal Lentil soup with nothing that occurs to me as being Greek. Someone asked what was Greek about this Lentil soup, and the only answer I had was that it was from this Greek cookbook, yiayia wrote it, and yiayia doesn’t lie.

The Lamb was a little more understandable. I mean, lamb, right, that’s Greek. Oregano? Yeah, sure.

The cake, as food, was easy to swallow. The cake, as Greek? Impossible. It tasted like an ordinary, dense, slightly dry cake that might be good with coffee, American coffee, and the kind that millions of non-Greek grandmothers might make all across the country. So, the food was good, maybe not too special, and even though I have no authority to say so, not at all Greek.

So, what do I make of all this? I did some research and read Amazon reviews of this cookbook, which was published in 1990. You may well ask why I am not cooking from a newer Greek Cookbook. Well, Greece has been around a long time, and i would think that an authentic cookbook would not have changed much from 1990 (the year I made that terrible broccoli pasta) and today. Of course, some of the reviews were glowing, some of them were terrible, and at least one of them was very thoughtful.

The review that got me thinking was based on the idea that the yiayias who wrote this book were of Greek descent, but had lived in the United States for at least two generations. These yiayia’s yiayias were likely born in the United States, and they were raised on these recipes which, they were told, were authentically Greek even though they were likely authentically American. Is this a lie? Is this manipulation? Who committed the sin if there is any? The writers felt no need to validate their recipes because they believed they were authentically Greek. The publisher didn’t want to either, because then you’d either have to get rid of a lot of the recipes or put a book out there called “The Complete book of recipes that these people know” or “A book of assorted foods compiled for no particular reason” Or “A Complete book of false bullshit.” I probably would have bought a copy if it had been named that! But between these two reasons was another reason: the average person would not have known the difference. It was like looking at a picture of Atlanta and being told that it was a city in California. Most people either won’t know or care, and others will simply believe without question.

I wonder what else we read and believe because we’ve read it? Is your “trusted” news source the one that affirms your already held beliefs and feelings? Here’s what I do know:
1. I will get rid of this cookbook. Sorry, yiayia.
2. They do have pumpkins in Greece and eat them.
3. Miley Cyrus has a lot of pets, none of whom have ashtma.
Back to school Benji

October 18th, 2025

18 October 2025 Saturday

Is it astonishing that, even when we know our own pitfalls and shortcomings, it is impossible to avoid them, at least occasionally? How many times have I told me, how many times have I written basic rules when preparing food that must be adhered to with religious fervor? A lot. And is it not a thorough schooling when you pull a variation of your own character flaws, half baked, out of the oven. A meal that looked much better than it tasted.

The menu-Pumpkin soup, in the pumpkin

-Stuffed cabbage rolls

-Pears poached in red wine

Sounds wonderfully autumnal, doesn’t it? All things I’ve made before. I was not lacking in attention or care. I allowed enough time, and was enthusiastic about the project. Everything was in good order, except for some reason (or maybe none) I had some anxiety which made its way into the food in a number of surprising ways (or maybe none).

The first thing I did, which I knew not to do, I altered the recipes and some of these alterations resulted in cutting corners. Now look, read, and learn, my friends and see how one decision sets off a cascade of regrets.

For the cabbage rolls, I decided that I would make a version with ground beef and a meatless one. It was ok, because everything else in the preparation is vegan. It starts with a tomato sauce, cooked rice, and of course, the cabbage leaves. So, I’m boppin a long, boiling the leaves, poaching the pears, and I go to make the tomato sauce. I open the fridge and notice a package of bacon I had opened earlier in the week with a few strips left in. I grab it, open it, chop the strips us, and toss them in the pan. I later added the tomatoes and seasoning. A first derivation that meant the sauce was no longer vegetarian. Why did I do this? What possessed me to grab that bacon in the first place? Silly, because now, I had to make another tomato sauce entirely for the vegetarian version. No biggie, but my anxiety spiked when I subsequently approached the pumpkin.

Now this pumpkin was enormous, deep orange, and perfectly globular. A perfect specimen for jack-o-lantering. Painful reminder: the perfect looking pumpkin for jack-o-lantering means it was not bred for its flesh, which was very pulpy and and flavorless, and there wasn’t much of it. So, that. Now, I’ve made this soup before, with stock, cream, and sage. Because I felt weirdly guilty about having put bacon in the cabbage roll tomato sauce, I decided I couldn’t put stock in the soup. Also, I was out of cream, but had a little milk. And I was out of sage, so I substituted it with nothing. Why didn’t I just run to the store and get some? I have no excuse to offer. So, I put in the flavorings, put in the milk which didn’t make it one third of the way up the wall of the pumpkin. So I added. I added……water. Yes, I know. A terrible, terrible idea.

After an hour’s baking. this. Because there was little pumpkin flesh and it was only watered down milk on the inside, this soup was so thin, it broke my heart. It also had the flavor of water. Everything about it was truly disappointing to me. I ate only a couple of bites, and let it go.

Behind the soup in the picture above, you can see the cabbage rolls, which turned out much better, though I only ate one bite because I was tortured by the soup. This is an old family favorite, and I just ate some leftovers for lunch, and they taste better today than yesterday. So, there is some happiness there. I won’t do the bacon again because with the seasoning (which included allspice) made it taste a little bit like Worcestershire sauce.

The pears were fine. I poached them in red wine, cinnamon, and sugar. They turned a beautiful red color like this-

but I don’t remember them tasting too much like pears. I reduced the poaching liquid and poured it over them like a glaze, except then it slid off the pears and candied on the bottom of the dish. So, that.

The pear recipe comes from Richard Olney’s Simple French Food which is a classic cookbook if ever there was one. But I remember a piece of advice that was given in a review of the book many years ago. I paraphrase. Just because something is simple doesn’t mean that it is easy. The ingredients are simple, maybe the techniques are simple, and the flavors may be fresh and honest and whatever, but with food of this nature the devil is very much in the details. If the onion isn’t evenly diced, or the proportions are not correct, it can throw the whole dish off. The pears were successful in this case, but the same rule applies to the pumpkin soup.

Maybe these were good lessons to learn again again, before the holidays descend on us. I promise I will not cut corners. I promise I will not add ingredients just because they are in the fridge. I will not be consumed by fleeting feelings of panic when all I need to do is breathe deeply, keep moving, and for the sake of all things holy, stick to the plan. Yes, we’re gonna stick to the plan.
Victory at the salad bar

August 21st, 2025

21 August 2025 Thursday

There is an appointed time for everything after all, my friends. A time to be born and a time to die, a time for planting and etc. you know. This summer has been a truly eventful one for me. I’ve had great times in the Redwoods and in Ohio, and San Francisco never disappoints in her offerings. I’ve had personal challenges with friends, a 30th high school reunion, my closest teacher and mentor died, and I sustained a minor injury at work, requiring me to walk with a cane for a few weeks. I’ve seen a lot of family, and friends from other times of my life. It’s been a good time for reflection and assessment, a time to think about the changes we can make, and the changes that visit us.

Throughout all this, I have made it from the farmer’s market to the kitchen many times, enjoyed lots of good food. A few notables:

Sorrel soup. I haven’t seen sorrel before, though I’ve heard of it. Here is the thin potato soup loaded with sorrel straight from the farmer’s market. It is very pleasant and citrusy flavored, bright but not sour.

My best batch of bagels yet. I managed to knead them long enough, boil them long enough, and bake them NOT too long enough, which made them super chewy and satisfying.

I’m getting better with leftovers. Yesterday’s roast chicken is today’s chicken pot pie. Yesterday’s boiled rice is today’s stir fry.

Tuna salad sandwiches with fresh tomatoes. Dark Chocolate cobbler. Eggplant Parmesan. Good food makes us happy.

Good food makes us happy yes, but is there any dish better than being right about something? I don’t mean everyone else said turn left and you said turn right and they did and there was our destination. I mean, the longer simmering right. A theory you’ve had for years, and say even written about on a blog called Bingo-Fest all about food and stuff.

My latest trip to Northeast Ohio coincided with my dad’s birthday. His birthday treat of choice is not cake but pie. Elderberry pie to be exact. Now, if don’t really know what elderberries are, and I didn’t, they are smooth, shiny berries that grow in clusters, they look like fresh currants, and they have a particular taste that is sweeter and more pronounced than blueberries, but not as tangy or seedy or raspberries or blackberries. Very yummy. For some reason known only to the cosmos (see photo above), members of our family have varying degrees of affinity for this fruit. My dad likes it on his birthday, and a cousin, whom I refer to as “Elderberry Bernie”, cultivates the trees in his yard and can’t go three minutes of any conversation with bringing up the damn things. I have never seen them in a grocery store, and I bet you haven’t either. You’ve heard of them sure, but we’ve also heard of Sasquatch, and where is he?

Anyway, in order to get the beloved confections, you have to pre-order them and drive a ways to get them. In our case, we drove into the very heart of Ohio’s Amish country. In deference to local custom, I did not take any photographs while there, so you’ll have to use the “cinema of the imagination” for the next several sentences.

We drove down long, wide streets through a small town that had lots of little bakeries and Amish quilt shops and knick knack bricabracks while horse drawn carriages with bearded lads and bonneted ladies went gliding by all the fat people in gas guzzling SUVS idling in the middle lanes. This little town is a huge tourist destination in the region, primarily for the wonderful, farm fresh food and baked goods made by hands that have never held smartphones. The long procession of cars had a destination in the parking lot of Mary Yoder’s Amish Kitchen. This magnificent cortege pulled in and parked. We got out of the cars, went into the restaurant, and waited in line. The same people, almost the same order, this time out of the car.

We were seated in the large dining room and at the far end of the room were three enormous buffets. The first was a cold salad bar, the second was side dishes, and the third, meat and main dishes. I should mention at this point that our party included my parents, my 10 yr old niece, my 8 yr old nephew, and myself. The children were immediately interested in at least looking at the buffet, so I took them up and they looked at it. Chicken tenders? Check. Mashed Potatoes? Check. Orange jello? Check. A child’s food paradise.

Now some time in the past, maybe a year ago, I wrote a blog post about introducing children to vegetables and my own formative experience at the Brown Derby salad bar, and the joy of putting together my own weird combinations and eating the results. I wondered to you, patient readers, if this were something that I could witness someday with other children.

Well, it happened. I was so so very happy that I got to be the first person to take my niece to a salad bar and watch her put her own salad together. A time sow seeds, and a time to harvest what we have sowed. And so it was, we walked up and looked at all the colorful offerings, and she asked, pointing to the baby spinach, “Uncle Ben, can I have that as my lettuce?” And I said, my heart beaming from ear to ear, “Why of course, my dear, you may have whatever you want.” For a brief moment, I was the Willy Wonka of crudites. My nephew too, not wanting to be left out of the make-it-yourself lunch, got his own plate, chock full of fried chicken tenders smothered in orange jello. Everyone is a god at the salad bar.

And so I am grateful, so grateful. For the first time in quite a while, I had something I wanted to write about. “As soon as I get back to San Francisco, I’m gonna write about this”, I said. I returned renewed and invigorated, and in an appointed season of looking back, I began to look forward.

Now, I settle in for a season. There will be, I hope, many good, sound, new theories to put forward, and many new recipes and techniques to discover. The days are getting shorter, we can see them, as summer begins to dress for fall, and that’s OK, didn’t we savor every moment? And wasn’t it glorious?
the joy of boredom

June 19th, 2025

19 June Wednesday

The cookbook on the chopping block: Market Cooking by David Tanis. The menu: Seared Cauliflower with Anchovy, Lemon, and Caper sauce; Shaved Asparagus and wild Arugula salad with Parmesan slices; Roast Chicken with whole heads of garlic; crisp roasted potatoes; corn on the cob black raspberry ice cream with fresh raspberries atop. The verdict: Keep.

OK, a couple of things: The ice cream recipe didn’t come from this cookbook, it came from a Chez Panisse cookbook. I didn’t serve it because it hadn’t set up before people left. My fault, entirely. I looked at it this morning, and it still hasn’t completely solidified, and it may not. I think I may have put in a little too much sugar because I didn’t know the amount of sugar in the syrup. You see, I didn’t have fresh black raspberries, so I used a syrup. It’s really yummy and more like soft serve. Anyway, it’s whats for breakfast.

I served the corn just with butter, it was good for first of the season. The asparagus was the only bunch I found at the farmer’s market yesterday. I served it raw and thinly sliced. It was delicious.

Yeah, roast chicken. yeah, salad. It was all great. I’d forgotten I’d used this book before. It’s easy to forget because everything in it is really so simple. Anway, whoopdy noodle doo. I did something amazing this week, and not a moment too soon.

I cleaned out the pantry. It was a great feeling. Now, everything in there is good and right and there is most importantly, less. Oh the joys of having fewer choices! What did I do? Well, I gathered some surplus items that I was never gonna use in a year and gave them away. Now it looks so sleek and easy to use and comfortable and blah blah blah. I think I just became an old man. I mean, I’ve written about cleaning the pantry out before, but this time it felt different, like I aged whilst writing the sentences. What a nut!

It’s just a slow summer morning. It’s cold outside because this is California after all, and the coffee is cold and the kitchen floor is cold. And that ice cream is cold. It’s that slowness and joyful boredom that I love and treasure. It has been my life’s aspiration. To be quiet, and have not a lot that matters, and review cookbooks with arugula salads and other boring things that boring people like me do.

So now what do we do? My parents are coming next week and I’d like to have a few little parties. Like for instance, a fondue party. That’ll take them straight back to the 70s. They’ll love it. They were actually eating out of those fondue pots back then. We’ll see.
Authenticity again

May 14th, 2025

14 May Wednesday

It was an evening much like any other. We were strolling around the grocery store, not knowing what we’d have for dinner. I guess because they were on sale and we were getting tired, we settled on flank steak and broccoli for a stir fry. Beef and Broccoli, Broccoli Beef. We’ve done this before, there is nothing to it. Home we go.

Still in the stage of my Chinese cooking where I need to know the proportions of sauces and flavorings, I hied me to the library and found several recipes. Of course, this is not a really complicated formula, it’s the usual combinations of ginger, garlic, soy sauce, oyster sauce, Shaoxing wine, Sesame oil, and spring onions. The only difference really is how and when the ingredients are added. I decided on the one in The Wok by Kenji Lopez-Alt.

This Broccoli Beef begins with a technique of aggressively rinsing the beef in cold water and squeezing it tightly to get all the water out of it. Then, cornstarch is worked in with the hands, then a marinade is poured over. The water is boiled, the broccoli blanched, the peanut oil swirled into the hot wok, the beef added, then broccoli, then sauce, then serve.

Now there were a few little oversights which didn’t contribute to a great dish but certainly an edible one. Maybe the wok wasn’t quite hot enough and maybe the broccoli was a little crunchy. It was something we got right that I didn’t like. It was the washing the beef and working the cornstarch in. It made the beef tender, disturbingly so. I have had this texture before in Chinese restaurants, and I have to confess, I don’t think I like it. It takes a lot of the flavor out of the beef and it’s too soft. It isn’t slices of steak, like we’d have in a steak salad. That’s tender, it’s just tender for beef. Perhaps it was because the wok was a little cool that the beef ended up being super soft on the outside and super chewy on the inside which made it extra revolting, but I wasn’t happy. We need a redo.

As it happens, I bought enough flank steak to do this again if we wanted. Honestly, I didn’t really want to, I’m a little beefed out, but whatever. I would choose another recipe, I thought, and we can compare.

The photo on top is the first one, the one I didn’t particularly like. The one below is the recipe from Stir Frying to the Sky’s Edge by Grace Young. Her recipe was very much the same as Lopez-Alt’s except with the addition of Black Bean paste and the subtraction of the beef washing and cornstarch. There is cornstarch in Young’s, she uses it as a thickener for the sauce, not to tenderize the meat. I LOVED this one, and it will be my go-to whenever I make Broccoli Beef. The beef was steaky just like I like it, or like we like it. Strangely, it seemed more, well, what’s the word, American?

I began to wonder which of these recipes was more authentic Chinese. Then I wondered why I cared which one was more authentic. Then I wondered what other people would think if I told them that I liked the recipe that was less authentic. Then I wondered why I cared if people thought I was plebian for liking inauthentic Chinese food. And why is it important?

For the last couple of centuries, new cultures and cuisines have made their way to the USA and became part of our national cuisine. Think Chop Suey, Spaghetti and Meatballs, Pizza, Tamales. All these foods have roots in the flavors of the countries they come from, but they were all Americanized, and some of these became “types” of cuisine on their own, think “Jersey Italian” or “Tex-Mex”. After World War II, people began coming more from Non-European countries like India and Japan, there was more access to ingredients from around the world, and eating became more of a pleasurable pastime for more people. Hell, even mom got in on taco night. Thai restaurants and sushi became very popular and that was it, people were interested in food the way it is eaten in the country of origin. It even became a social taboo to like less than authentic versions of dishes. This was particularly true of Chinese food. Who eats Chop Suey or Egg Foo Young now?

So I did a little research, and found that indeed, it is “authentic” to wash the beef, and only beef, by the way, this should NOT be done with chicken apparently. I usually don’t eat beef at Chinese restaurants, and I would be open to cooking it again the washed way, but I must say, as a Westerner, I am accustomed to enjoying my beef a certain way, and I probably will always prefer that chewy, American steak in Chinese flavored sauce.

Now I feel guilty for having written that. Now I feel like everyone will think less of me for not having kept that to myself. Now I feel horrible for writing that I feel horrible because I’m worried what you’ll think of me now that I’ve shared that with you. Now I feel really awkward because I am thinking that you may have been liking this little essay until this part when I started feeling really self-conscious about how i come across in writing and how you may be judging me for coming across that way, which is not my intention. I just wanted to eat dinner.