July 28, 2018
Potato salad is a signature item for me and when I have company I almost always have a big dish of potato salad ready to serve when family or friends arrive. It’s an easy dish to make and flexible in terms of the ingredients you put in it. This time I had green and yellow beans so I used them but have used other ingredients in other salads. I also like adding crisp romaine to the... View Article
May 18, 2018
A good lunch salad is an art and takes a little imagination but it doesn’t have to be complicated. I was leafing through a Donna Hay cookbook last night when saw a fennel and chicken salad and decided to translate it to a vegetarian version and change the dressing. I liked the croutons idea so went with that. The fennel has to be sliced thinly, like they do in Italy, and then marinated for... View Article
July 5, 2016
I have posted a few watermelon salads before but one more wouldn’t hurt. Watermelon makes a refreshing summer salad and it combines surprisingly well with a number of surprising sweet and savoury things such as raspberries, tomatoes, cucumbers and even some salad greens. Local raspberries are available now, lush, soft and delicious, so why not use them as much as I can? This recipe though is straight forward: watermelon, raspberries, mint, chopped candied nuts and... View Article
September 3, 2015
Vine ripe summer tomatoes are the sine qua non of my kitchen. Can’t be without them and regularly buy more than I can use. After all there are only two of us eating here, yet I buy enough for an army. You want to come over? You’d think that at my age (almost 30….NOT) I’d learn some balance but as the saying goes, A BALANCED LIFE IS A LIFE WITHOUT PASSION, and I cannot be... View Article
June 13, 2015
We don’t have local corn yet but the corn I found in one of the produce markets is very good, so I have been buying and serving it in various ways in the last few weeks. This salad was inspired by an image I saw in Bon Appetit a few weeks ago of a grilled corn salad made with half of the corn roasted, the other half raw. I made up my own recipe but... View Article
June 9, 2015
By the time you read this post I will be well on my way to Central California driving along the Oregon coast and Route 101and hopefully will write from the road. I scheduled a few recipes to intersperse between the travel posts (that I hope to write) because after all this is primarily a blog about cooking. The experiential travel is fun for me to write and hopefully fun for you to read. So while... View Article
April 25, 2015
Not quite summer yet but these tomatoes were nice and sweet wherever they came from so I made a simple and naturally flavoured panzanella style salad. I am going to Italy, remember, so I am beginning to immerse myself in all things Italian. I kept it very simple letting the softness of the tomatoes and crunchy croutons play their part creating texture and the tangy juices of tomatoes mixed with the fruity olive oil and... View Article
September 11, 2014
I am not going to wax poetic about the change of season. Or am I? We bloggers tend to do that. I will say however that summer seems to be retreating and fall is in the air. Mornings are cool, the sun sets early amd the days are shorter. A trip to the farmers market makes you wonder where all the tomatoes and summer berries go. Apples and pear are stacked on the stands now... View Article
September 10, 2014
I attended the BC Pinot Noir celebration last week where the dinner was catered by Chef Mark Filatow of Waterfront Wines restaurant. Chef Filatow needs no introduction here in the valley, he is one of the very best and has three gold medals to prove it. One of the items on Filatow’s menu was a sieglinde potato salad with rosemary and roasted garlic aioli. Sieglinde is a certified organic summer potato, oval in shape an... View Article
August 27, 2014
The tomatoes came in late this year, it was well into August before we saw the first ripe local red beauties. Since they showed up though I have been serving them practically every day in some form or another. I have made gazpacho, salmorejo, bruschetta, tomato salads, tomato sandwiches, pizza, tomato soups, fresh tomato sauce for pasta as well as sliced them into anything else I cook, from green beans to zucchini to fresh beans... View Article
July 24, 2014
Persimmons are quite special. I have seen them at the produce sections many times but didn’t really get to know them until we went to Spain recently. Although it is an Asian fruit, Spain has adopted it and it is now rising in agricultural importance and popularity there. What I heard in Spain is that the persimmon production “saved” their agricultural export. They are grown mainly in Valencia but also in Castellon and Andalusia and... View Article
July 15, 2014
Here is the recipe for the salad I made for the Diner en Blanc. I make a lot of potato salads over the summer and change them often, depending what vegetables are best at the time. This salad holds well for picnics or boat rides and is not too acidic so the greens will stay vibrant even after the pesto is mixed in. I made it with small new potatoes but any variety would do... View Article
