*Top Cooking

I’ve always enjoyed lentils as a quick-to-cook legume, and at some point I picked up Tarla Dalal’s “Dals” cookbook. Between that and living near Vik’s Market in Berkeley I had an excuse to try a range of dals (which I realize refers to more than just ’lentils’). Over the past few years I’ve gravitated towards chana dal (small split chick peas), and this general preparation– a hybrid of Mark Bittman’s “Chana Dal, New Dehli Style” and recipes from the above cookbook. Chana dal doesn’t cook quite as quickly as, say, red lentils (~70 minutes vs. 15) but if I’m already making rice or something else, how fast the legumes cook isn’t what limits how-long-until-dinner. And I enjoy the flavor and texture. ...

An excellent and relatively easy dinner. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Salt trout, let it rest 15 minutes, drizzle good olive oil over it, and wrap it tightly in fig leaves (it took about eight big leaves from the tree in our yard, overlapped, to fully enclose two packets without holes). Bake it for about 20 minutes until flaky and done. The fig leaves gave off an pleasant, fruity aroma as they roasted and when we tore them open, and the trout itself was moist, soft, and delicious (with almost a hint of coconut flavor from the leaves? is that crazy?) ...

I’ve made these Vietnamese-inspired meatballs three times, and they’ve been satisfying in a lettuce wrap with piles of fresh herbs, on a bowl of brown rice with a spicy cucumber salad and steamed vegetables, or simmered in poultry stock from the freezer (a good way to use leftover cooked meatballs the next day…): I was inspired by this NYTimes Cooking recipe but have tweaked it each time I make them, my current version is: ...

Earlier this fall I made some delicious tandoori-style chicken for an Indian-themed dinner party. This may be the best-tasting chicken I’ve cooked in a long time. I figured, I have a kamado-style ceramic-walled charcoal grill / smoker that can easily get up to 700 degrees F (which I’ve used to make pizza in the past)– there must be some way to use this as an approximation of a tandoor. I did some reading, and as often seems to be the case, there was an article by Kenji on Serious Eats on this very idea. ...

Another simple meal pattern: legumes, roasted vegetables, yogurt, and optionally meat. In this case, fresh shelling beans ( simmered on medium-low 30-40 minutes with aromatics + herbs), winter squash from the garden and broccoli (both chopped, tossed with olive oil and salt, and roasted in a 400F oven for 20-30 minutes), and a pan-fried sausage and some yogurt (optional: fermented hot sauce). It does take three pots/pans, but only 45 minutes (depending on how long the beans take to cook), so it’s on our roster as a common weeknight or weekend meal with endless variants… ...

Every year I grow a few varieties of fresh shelling beans, and when I’m lucky I find them at the local markets as well. A common even weeknight-fast way of cooking them is to combine beans, salty water, a splash of olive oil, some aromatic (half an onion, a shallot, a clove of garlic), a whole dried hot pepper pod (without seeds if I want it to be less spicy), and a bay leaf. ...

(quick notes, mostly jotted down to remember what worked well) My third try in three years, and the most successful (I got the grill up to 700 degrees, which I’m sure helped): Grill setup: plenty of charcoal below, all air passages cleared of ash, and a pizza stone (porous side up for my glazed/porous stone) raised on two bricks to bring the pizza close to the hot lid of the ceramic grill. I let the charcoal burn for 90 minutes with the lid closed to get the entire grill up to 650-700 degrees (when I tried making a pizza earlier, it burned on the bottom before it fully cooked on the top– I think because the ceramic grill lid wasn’t hot enough– I could also try further raising the stone next time). ...

(from last winter) What do you do when you grow five different varieties of colorful heirloom corn in the back yard? Grind them into cornmeal and make individual corn muffins, of course: Some day I’ll type up some notes on the corn growing itself– it was very fulfilling and an interesting challenge (especially the hand-pollinating due to the small area under cultivation and desire to keep separate varieties from cross-pollinating). ...

The caramelized garlic tart in Ottolenghi’s Plenty is very good. I recently made a greener tart inspired by it that combined: A basic butter pie crust, pre-baked until golden Three heads of heirloom garlic cloves, caramelized with a little red wine vinegar (following the general process in the recipe above) Gruyere and goat chevre A whole bowlful of kale from the winter garden, chiffonaded and wilted / cooked down for a few minutes in a skillet 4 eggs and a little milk and yogurt to fill the tart It worked well for breakfast the next morning, too… ...

For years, I’ve been thinking back to the strawberry ice cream of my youth– made from strawberries picked down the road that day and painstaking hand-cranked by kids and adults on the front porch in a wood bucket leaking salty ice. I finally had a chance to try to recreate it, at a 4th of July BBQ we threw for a few dozen friends and their kids, and it was all I remembered and more: ...

For a savory brunch, we made cornmeal pancakes from some beautiful Floriani red flint corn my sister grew and ground: I took a ‘Johnnycakes’ approach, which is more like a thin griddled cornbread or polenta, with no baking powder or flour. The general recipe (made 12 hearty pancakes, for 4 adults + 2 kids with toppings): Mix 2 cups of cornmeal, 2 cups boiling water, and 1 tsp salt, stir and cover for 10 minutes, to let the hot water soften the cornmeal Stir in between 1/2 and 3/4 cup milk, gradually, stopping when it’s a very thick but spreadable batter (when I did this a few months ago and added too much milk, the batter was too runny and I ended up making thin crisp corn wafers). [update] When I made these again from fresh-ground fine blue cornmeal a few months later, I ended up using about twice as much milk to make this closer to a thick pancake batter Mix in 1.5 Tbsp olive oil Cook in an oiled skillet on medium (or medium-low) heat, flipping when golden brown. I found it took about 4 minutes per side. I made test pancakes with and without egg in the batter, and the one with egg and a bit more liquid made a thinner, smoother, more traditional-looking pancake (on the right)– but while both were delicious we preferred the texture of the eggless, thicker version on the left: ...

For a small New Year’s Eve party, a meal cooked primarily in the smoker (tacos with pulled pork, homemade tortillas, and salsas made from smoked tomatillos and pineapples): 23-hour slow-smoked pork shoulder: A roughly 7lb chunk of pork shoulder (a.k.a. pork butt) from Niman Ranch Dry rubbed with copious amounts of salt and mustard, smoked paprika, and black pepper and let rest in the fridge for 4-5 hours Smoked very low-and-slow at 215-225F for 23 hours over lump charcoal with some fist-sized chunks of apple and pecan wood for smoke, until the internal temperature was in the 195-200 range (for overnight smokes I have a ‘baby monitor’-style wireless temperature probe I rest on the bedside so an alarm will ring and wake me up if the pit temperature gets too high or low and I can adjust the airflow or add fuel) No intermediate basting, mopping, foiling, etc– just keeping it simple Wrapped in foil and let rest for 45 minutes It was so tender I could pull off strands by hand, and with a nice ‘bark’ and smoke ring… It didn’t even need any sauce– I just squeezed a few limes over it. ...

From earlier this summer, a bowl mostly picked from our little urban raised-bed garden: Armenian cucumber, tomatoes, blistered Padron peppers, sliced jalapeno (along with a soft-boiled egg and some sardines). I wish I ate like this all the time.

I had this once at The Dock in West Oakland as a snack– popcorn dressed with flavors similar to a Caesar salad– oil, anchovies, garlic, citrus, and parmesan. And I’ve been wanting to make something along these lines ever since. I found a recipe shared by the chef who created it and generally followed that– utilizing coarse crushed garlic (a smoky, powerful heirloom variety grown by my father), anchovy fillets or paste, and the recipe’s tip to try a little citric acid in place of lemon juice (to get the tartness of lemon juice without making the popcorn soggy)– and it was an addictively delicious savory addition to our Halloween party spread. ...

Relaxing at home by making a few tacos: Handmade tortillas. Quick-pickled carrots, radishes, and jalapenos. A rare ribeye steak. Some sauteed onions and padrones. And then, a few days later, repeating for dinner-for-two, swapping in chicken rubbed in hot paprika and dry-poached, pickles briefly blanched before chilling (more mellow), and grapefruit-mezcal-lime-honey-campari cocktails (Paloma-esque).