What’s Cooking?
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Tomato Sauce
Autumn arrived very abruptly this year. The end of August heralded the end of peaches and almost all the tomatoes, it seems. I have too many years of remembering my mother and grandmother angrily canning tomatoes in a steamy kitchen to get nostalgic about putting tomatoes up. However, that urge to put food by may
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Shrimp Uggie
I almost never cook with ketchup. So when I commend a recipe that contains it, be assured that it’s something particularly worthwhile. Ketchup is waaaay not one of my favorite things in this world, with the exception of the house-made ketchup at the Tap Room. Of course the recipe comes with a story. It wasn’t
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Saffron Pasta with Mussels – A Splendid Summer Supper
Sometimes the bread lands buttered side up. After many years of being a recipe cook, one who mostly cooked out of a book, magazine or newspaper, I finally began to trust my kitchen instincts—sometimes. And Saturday night it paid off. It sounds like one of those cliches, market cooking. But we’d gone to the Tower
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A Semi-Gazpacho
Soup is a favorite treat in our house, both for ordinary suppers and as a first course when we have guests. This time of the year the soups are as apt to be cold as hot, not surprisingly. This one comes from the Elsah Landing Restaurant Cookbook. I tasted it at the original Elsah Landing
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The First Tomatoes
A year ago this time, I was not cooking. We were deep into the creative process of "The Great St. Louis Eats Book," eating out about eight times a week, writing, editing and thinking. We’ve found that finishing books in late summer works best for a number of reasons, but the tradeoff is that much
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Brunch
One of my favorite meals to feed friends is brunch. No one expects a formal meal then, it’s easy to load the table and encourage family-style passing around food, and it’s such a free-form meal that almost anything is usable on the menu. Not surprisingly, then, my cookbook collection has a fair number of morning
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Sausage and…
Every once in a while, something comes along that’s so good you can’t stop eating it. This adventure began when my best friend, Magnificent, loaned me her copy of "The Sweet Potato Queens’ Big Ass Cookbook (and Financial Planner)". Clearly this dealt with two topics of vital interest to me, although I know far more