piece meal

For an interesting diversion from oil-based vinaigrettes, try this utterly delicious light-weight dressing that delicately coats leaves with a fresh, herby tang. While optimal on little gems, romaine, or other hearty lettuces, it is not overly viscous and thus also in good company with field greens. Salad additions such as sliced tomatoes, avocado, sweet onion, grated carrot and cucumber really make this dressing shine....

Tender, glossy, and lightly sweet, these transcendent short ribs melt in the mouth and satiate to the core. Though highly competent on their own, buttery mashed potatoes or creamy polenta provide choice beds in which to nestle the ribs in the savory sauce rendered from the reduction of meat stock, apple cider, onion, and thyme.

This dish can be prepared up to two days in advance. The ribs do cook down considerably, so play it safe with three to four me...

A quick and easy roasted tomato salsa made freshly at home is still better—and cheaper—than anything available at the store. This is a single pot job that requires almost zero precision, as it all gets thrown into a blender or food processor after a short simmer.

INGREDIENTS

1 14.5 ounce can diced fire-roasted tomatoes

½ onion, diced

1 Serrano pepper sliced horizontally (remove seeds for a mild salsa or leave them in for medium)

1 large clove garlic, roug...

Eating asparagus is one of the sacred rites of spring. This holy vegetable deserves ritualistic consumption, ideally as often as possible while in season and thus at its most divine. We offer three vestment changes; each incarnation can be served as a side dish, a starter, or even a light main course. Though asparagus is often served warm, it is equally heavenly served chilled or at room temperature when adorned with fresh herbs and creative sauces.

Co...

A noble hors d’oeuvre, a proud sandwich, or throning atop simple field greens, halibut salad is an elegant multitasker that can go casual or dress to kill—whatever the occasion calls for. If you conceive of halibut salad as no different than tuna, just with a substitute fish, then think again. Chopped boiled egg compliments halibut’s unique flavor and adds a light fluffiness to a salad that would otherwise run the risk of bearing a dense or pasty textu...

The only splash of color broadly visible in nature this time of year is imparted by those tiny little red berries sustaining the birds squatting in evergreens through the otherwise barren winter. Though a little smaller and more vermillion than crimson, they’re a visceral reminder of the cranberry—one of the only berries harvested in the fall and winter in North America.

Though cranberries make their debut around Thanksgiving and fade out just after Ch...

Blessed to be a little island floating merrily in the Mediterranean Sea, Corsica reaps all the benefits of its French birthright and its fortuitous proximity to Italy and Spain. Its cuisine bears testament to its enviable geographical location; it is an amalgam of ingredients and styles of French, Italian, and Spanish cooking—undoubtedly three of the finest cuisines in the world.

Our recipe unites the indelible influences of Corsica’s neighboring count...

At some point during the weeks leading up to Christmas, our kitchen turns into a Jewish Benedictine monastery. We bake brandy-laden fruitcakes wrapped in brandy-soaked cheesecloth with Barbra Streisand belting out “Ave Maria” in the background.

Fruitcakes bore the brunt of Christmas gift jokes for so long that people eventually just stopped giving them. That’s when we became interested in real fruitcake. Not the kind Jews buy at Gelson’s, but the kind...

Insalata Tricolore appears on just about every Italian menu one can find. It usually features a combination of arugula, Belgian endive, and radicchio, tossed in vinaigrette and grated Parmesan cheese. The salad, while totally pleasant, is rarely particularly interesting. Given the confines of salad creativity in the winter, when most fruits and fresh vegetables are out of season, we hearken back to the tricolore, looking for a way to breathe life into...

This aromatic craft cocktail is a winter wonderland in a champagne flute. Star anise swirl woozily around a sparkling, fragrant spiked roasted pear puree scented with heady spices, vanilla, citrus, and ginger. Hints of malt and caramel add heft and complexity. Presented in a punch bowl over a large ice block, your guests will want to dive in head first and herald the Second Coming.

This recipe comes to Piece Meal courtesy of master mixologist Anne Carl...

Even the decent Thai restaurants in this country mostly offer the same monotonous menu items. When not ordering pad thai, the customer is usually asked to choose a protein they wish to drown in red, yellow, or green curry. Most of the time, the protein of choice comes in the form of a thin, tough nugget of meat that would be flavorless and unappetizing were it not swimming in sauce and flanked by crimped vegetables.

Soi 4, a Bangkok eatery in Oakland,...

We love the idea of serving intriguing cocktails over the holidays, but find ourselves too overwhelmed with all the cooking to devote time to preparing fresh juices, seeking out rare liqueurs, and rimming glasses with demerara sugar. If you’re like us, you want an easy yet impressive cocktail to serve over the holidays that will appeal to a wide range of palates; the Tart Cherry Martini is a simple, beautiful, and gender-neutral concoction. What is mor...

If you’re already suffering from pie fatigue and it's not even December yet, homemade ice cream is a great alternative. Unlike your typical ice cream flavors who are wingmen to cake or pie, Nesselrode is complex enough to proudly stand on its own at the holiday table. Amongst guests over 60, it’s apt to incite nostalgia for the days of yore, whereas younger family members will have the privilege of discovering a vintage treasure.

About Nesselrode

Nessel...

When the English colonized India, they brought their milk and sugar with them. Masala chai, a combination of black tea, Indian spices, milk, and sugar or honey, is the cultural melding of Indian tea plant-use (traditionally for medicinal purposes only), and the British fancy for recreational tea drinking. Spices used in Indian cooking made their way into chai, producing a flavor-specific tea beverage that has gained international popularity.

Initially...

Green vegetables are glorious in the spring and summer. Asparagus, artichokes, English and snap peas, fiddleheads, haricots verts, zucchini… the list goes on and on and they’re all so naturally tender and delicious that they require only a gentle steamingor sautéing to do them justice.

When fall and winter roll around, we must resort to a heartier lot—collards, kale, beet greens, kohlrabi, Swiss chard—the kind of vegetable that comes to mind when you h...

When an unfamiliar food appears at the family dinner table, often this sacred place of communion summarily shifts to a hostile battleground, pitching parents against their young kids in the struggle to nourish them. Amongst the various domains of child rearing, the inculcation of good eating habits is one of the most common sources of frustration, falter, and perceived failure for parents. Even children willing to eat a broad spectrum of plants typica...

The consummate egg soufflé emerges from the oven—which dare not be either prematurely or belatedly opened—a puffy cloud cloaked in heat-kissed bronze and barely trembling in the center.

Eggs are a delicate, finicky protein, prone to scorching yet nearly inedible in their gelatinous state. Learning how to cook the egg properly is a study in precision, method, and detail, the result of which is total sultry delicacy.

Unlocking the key to the chicken egg’...

Israeli chef Michael Solomonov is both informative and pure fun today in an interview on NPR’s ‘Fresh Air.’ Talking with Dave Davies, Solomonov discusses Zahav—his modern Israeli restaurant in Philadephia, recounts tales of his former struggle with drug addiction, and shares a recipe for tehina, the mother sauce of Israeli cuisine.

Listening to this interview makes one think twice about buying store-bought hummus, or even serving it chil...

On September 12, Mark Bittman announced his departure from the New York Times food editorial section, at least as a standing columnist. Bittman is moving on to greener pastures—quite literally—having relocated to the Bay Area and joined a food start-up devoted to making “it easier for people to eat more plants.” Bittman also adds in his farewell article that he believes he has fully aired his views on social issues concerning food (sustainability, the...

Like the promise of paradise in the afterlife, the reward for enduring a scorching hot summer day in California is the exquisite pleasure of the balmy evening that ensues. When the sun has finally set but daylight still lingers, few activities surpass the sensory experience standing barefoot in the grass with a frosty cocktail in hand, inhaling the warm, tantilizing smoke emanating from the grill.

On such evenings, instead of darting back and forth bet...

A few San Francisco locals join the crowd of hungry tourists starting to queue around ten in the morning. After an expectant half hour, the door finally opens and uncompromisingly fresh, unadorned seafood is served up at the twelve-seat, no-frills countertop at Swann Oyster Depot.

This San Francisco institution has been dealing in some of the best seafood in the country at this same location (1517 Polk St.) for over a hundred years. Purchased in 1946 b...

Those who find themselves in the San Francisco Bay Area this summer would be perspicacious in taking a detour to bucolic West Marin—whose beautiful and abundant preserved land is worth the trip alone—and splurging on a unique agritourism experience.

West Marin Food & Farm Tours, operated by Elizabeth Hill, offers a wide range of tours and private tastings featuring the artisanal bounty of farms and purveyors in and around the Point Reyes area.

From dair...

There's no big secret behind marinated feta. Transforming a brined sheep or goat milk feta into marinated feta requires nothing more than some olive (or safflower) oil, herbs, and garlic.  The result is a wonderfully soft and rich cheese, as the oil irradicates the dryness from brined feta.

Feta is naturally low in fat and the dry, crumbly version in brine provides a perfect counterpoint to rich, fatty meats in dishes such as l...

When the “Paleo diet” emerged, it sounded like another low-carb fad, conjuring memories of the Flinstones and mental images of raw meat on the bone. As it turns out, a true Paleo diet adheres to a comprehensive set of the most admirable, environmentally sustainable, humane, and socially responsible omnivorous eating tenants in existence.  

The “Paleo Approved” certification requires the same criteria many small, independent farms across the country hav...

 Harvesting Chinese mustard microgreens.

“With a few pots on hand, the home chef can reap a variety of microgreens to spruce and sprinkle on every meal.

Victory gardens are worthy endeavors, deserving of all the accolades they amass, but they also yield dishearteningly little produce relative to the effort and expense involved in keeping them. Growing one’s own garden is a noble and enjoyable project in and of itself. It fosters a number of healthy hab...

All good cooks are hedonists on some level, as the devotion to preparing food is driven by the desire to maximize the pleasure of eating. There is no shortcut to becoming a good cook. It takes hours of trial and error in the kitchen, which only those who truly care about what their food tastes like would bother to invest. It’s no coincidence that three top Western cuisines—French, Italian, and Spanish—hail from countries that take their meals seriously...

Piece Meal posted about beloved buffalo milk cheeses from Italy on December 4. We are now re-angling the limelight on another buffalo milk revelation—Double 8 Dairy’s farmstead gelato.

Buffalo produce the richest, creamiest milk imaginable, which is why Double 8 in West Petaluma makes their gelato only with milk, no cream at all. Buffalo milk has a higher butterfat content than cow’s milk and is naturally homogenized. Whereas traditional cow’s milk ice...