Category — Appetizer + Snack Recipes

Whenever I cook for vegetarians, I sometimes struggle to figure out what to make that will be a filling, satisfying meal. Lately, I’ve been making this frittata a whole bunch, and not even missing the meat. It’s a great way to highlight this summer’s fresh zucchini, and it looks pretty impressive considering how easy and quick it is to make. Plus, with just one pan in the mix, doing the dishes is a snap.

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This is one of my favorite holiday snacks – crunchy sugar-coated nuts with balancing hits of salt and spice.

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(Note: This happened several months ago, but I couldn’t find the recipes I wrote down, so I hadn’t posted about it. I found them wadded up in the bottom of a drawer recently, so here goes.)

My Dad and I have birthdays a week apart, and often do things together to celebrate. When I turned 6 and he turned 40, I asked my parents if we could eat at Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center. (We lived in New York at that time.) I guess at that point my parents realized they had a strangely fancy food-obsessed kid on their hands. I don’t remember much about the food, but I do recall going to the bathroom with my sister, who was 10, and being thoroughly confused by the presence of a restroom attendant. When I turned 16 and he 50, we donned our tuxes and prom dresses and got the best seat at Julius’ Castle, a venerated old dining institution with views of San Francisco Bay. Of course neither of those places is still in business, sadly, but we still try to do food-related birthdays together.

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Last weekend I had the great fortune to spend some time in Yosemite. I went with some friends who are really excellent cooks and hosts, so I wanted to impress them by showing up with homemade granola bars for our hikes so I could seem like one of those overachieving perfectionist-types. Of course, these guys have known me for about ten years, so we all knew I wasn’t fooling anyone! Still, the end result for all of us: homemade granola bars with dried cherries, almonds, and cocoa nibs to fuel us through our very non-strenuous and pleasant hikes.

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I used to think eating granola was healthy. I would eat a big bowl with milk for breakfast, feeling virtuous about starting my day right with one of those “balanced breakfasts” people are always going on about. Several years back, I took a temporary job making granola for a high-end, organic boutique granola business. I was more than mildly surprised to learn that this expensive, hand-crafted, and much sought-after granola was loaded with Wesson oil. I mean, we’re talking bottles and bottles of the stuff for a reasonably small batch. Virtuous? Hardly. I might as well be eating a giant plate of french fries dipped in mayo for breakfast. An order of large fries from McDonald’s has fewer calories than a cup of most kinds of granola! Of course some of the granola’s calories come from the sweetening and the nuts, but the oil is definitely not helping. So why not make your own?

The weird thing is you can make really terrific granola with no oil, so it’s unclear to me how that practice got to be so commonplace. You do need something sweet, or else you just have some dried-out oats, so let’s not be crazy here. But you actually don’t need very much sweet stuff to make good granola. Also, making it yourself is really cheap, especially if you’re like me and you use it as a way to clean out the hodgepodge collection of nut remnants that lurks in your freezer. (Or am I the only one who has miniscule amounts of 15+ different kinds of nuts leftover from other projects?)

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In San Francisco, we suffer through a cold and foggy July and August  in anticipation of the warm, sunny Indian summer days that arrive during September and October. While our East Coast counterparts are thinking about pulling out winter coats and boots, in the Bay Area we’re just breaking in our shorts and flip-flops to soak up these late-arriving rays. The heirloom tomatoes are perfectly ripe and the sun is out, so what better time to make cool, creamy gazpacho?

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Every year, it seems like all of the restaurants get together and decide they’re going to put some new food on every single menu in town. Whether it’s purslane, chicories, Calabrian chiles, or ramps–I’m quite convinced that the restaurant mafia is constantly figuring out how to promote some non-mainstream produce item that suddenly shows up everywhere. A few years ago, you couldn’t eat out in San Francisco without being offered roasted Brussels sprouts (not new per se, but new to fancy food). Years before that, you couldn’t open a menu that didn’t have fingerling potatoes on it. Last year, this nouveau item was padron peppers (or sometimes, shishito peppers, which look pretty similar.)

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I mostly prefer to eat my tuna raw or seared, but I make an exception and eat it fully cooked when it’s prepared this way. You need to plan ahead, as the tuna has to marinate in an oil mixture for at least 6 hours, but all told it’s a snap to make. Instead of buttering or oiling the toast that holds the confit, I was inspired to add the avocado smear instead after eating a fabulous avocado toast with boquerones at Beast and the Hare.

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This is a tart that practically screams “SPRING!!!!”–and as the springtime is rapidly coming to a close for this year, I’d better share the recipe for this seasonal favorite.

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When I walk by those cute little baby artichokes in the store, I can’t resist them. They are adorable! Plus, unlike fully mature adult artichokes, they don’t actually have a “choke” to contend with, so they’re a bit easier to prepare. I like them parboiled and sauteed, then simply tossed with balsamic vinegar, a squeeze of lemon, a splash of tabasco, a handful of parmesan, and some savory garlic chips.

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