Believe it or not, these Turkey, Bacon Lattice and Havarti Panini are the first sandwiches I’ve grilled in more than 7 months. I have been waiting for the right inspiration, and I got it this weekend when a fabulous new bakery, Manresa Bread (the first retail outpost for the two-Michelin starred restaurant Manresa), opened near me. I want to devote a whole post to Manresa Bread soon, but in the meantime, just gaze at the gorgeous levain I bought there on Saturday morning: This…
My butter experience has changed, and I’ve been telling everyone about it. The initial shift happened during my 40th birthday dinner at Coi, in San Francisco. When it was time for the bread course, about an hour into our tasting menu, our server bothered to mention that the little individual loaves of Japanese milk bread he was setting on the table were accompanied by the restaurant’s housemade cultured butter and Maldon sea salt. The butter wasn’t just some anonymous off-white spread in…
There’s a memorable scene in Chef — if you saw the movie this summer, you know the one — where John Leguizamo sways to Cuban music, massaging mojo marinade into a pork shoulder in a manner that probably deserves some privacy. When it’s falling-off-the-bone roasted, Jon Favreau, like a surgeon, shaves off a few test pieces…and determines it’s pretty perfect. It can’t be possible to watch that movie without desperately wanting to get into that roast pork and the Cubanos…
Because I’ve made them many times over the years and they’re the best pumpkin muffins I’ve tasted — fluffy, flavorful, unfussy, nice doming. Because even though baking with pumpkin can be kind of a seasonal fad, it’s a delicious one, so pumpkin on! Because now that it’s October you’re undoubtedly going to need to bring a crowd-pleasing, autumn-appropriate dish to school/work/church/soccer, etc. Or you’re simply going to want one at home on a brisk autumn afternoon. Because you can easily…