Just as I was lamenting the many long months until my next summer-harvest canning spree, my dad’s lime trees start exploding with more fruit that seems reasonable. Yes! Winter canning commences. In SoCal, we get just magnificent displays on our citrus trees, so now’s the time to dive in and start preserving the lemons, limes and grapefruits, however you can. Try your hand at lemon curd–or lime curd, which is essentially lime pie in a jar–or limoncello, which might also be delicious  made with grapefruit? Try it and send me some. Or, go traditional and make enough marmalade to put Paddington on a bender. I made mine with ginger and my dad’s limes, with just enough sugar to set the gel, but it’s still tart as can be. Delicious on a crumpet, but also works well as a glaze for chicken or fish. It’s good to be canning again. Next up: pickled beets!

I don’t have a specific recipe for the marmalade, since I’m partial to the “throw it in a pot and see” school of canning. But here’s what I did: Read on… »

The best part of Thanksgiving is leftovers. (And togetherness and gratitude and blah blah blah. Mostly, it’s pumpkin pie for breakfast.) But there always seems to be way too much cranberry sauce, and very few ways to use it once the leftover turkey is eaten up. When I found myself with both a half-gone can of cranberry sauce and a bowl of persimmons from my dad’s tree ripening forlornly in the fridge, I decided to try and use them both up at once. Et voilà, this slightly sweet tea cake filled with little bites of persimmon, walnuts and bursting cranberries. The cake is dairy-free, extremely low in fat, and particularly good for breakfast (though not as good as pumpkin pie).

Read on… »

Once November rolls around, I find myself looking for as many ways as possible to use cranberry sauce. It’s my favorite part of holiday eating–I consider turkey a cranberry-sauce delivery system, and pile it on accordingly–and I’m always thrilled to come across unexpected uses for the stuff. (Cranberry-sauce margaritas are a tradition of mine–I’ll post that recipe soon–and I’m trying to perfect a cranberry-sauce-based tea cake…) So I was pretty thrilled when, at a recent breakfast at Follow Your Heart in Canoga Park, I was served delightful fresh pumpkin pancakes topped with maple syrup and, yes, cranberry sauce! The pancakes are standard-issue whole wheat, studded with diced, cooked pumpkin. And the sauce is your typical canned variety, all bursting berries and oozy red syrup. But the overall effect was surprising, not too  sweet, and totally comforting. Forget the holiday rigmarole–serve these tasty cakes with some turkey bacon and a persimmon-rosemary bellini, and you’ve got a Thanksgiving brunch!

Back in ’06, I posted from Spain about the cuttlefish and rabbit paella that I had learned to make there, fish head broth and all. The technique I describe there is truly no-fail, if followed to the letter, and I have since made all manner of variations (rabbit and cuttlefish both being, sadly, extremely hard to find Stateside). This time, though, in honor of my dad’s birthday, I went whole hog–or, rather, whole chorizo-prawns-shrimp-chicken-squid. When it comes to paella, the more most definitely the merrier, and this was one helluva plate of rice.

I followed my previously posted recipe, with just a few tweaks to accommodate the pile of protein. Since I didn’t have a frozen bag of fish heads awaiting me in the freezer, as my Spanish roommate always did, I went to my local fishmonger and for $1 I bought a halibut carcass, which I boiled with onions and garlic to make a potently oceanic broth. The broth is your foundation, and it’s extremely important not to skimp on it–you are shelling out for pricey seafood and saffron (I use Penzey’s Spanish saffron, which is aromatic but not flowery), so why ruin it with nasty packaged broth?

For this variation, I started by dicing the chorizo (Spanish, not Mexican–try Dona Juana’s brand) and frying it in olive oil until browned. I scooped it out with a slotted spoon and proceeded with the chicken and squid as per the posted recipe. In the final moments, I added the shrimp and prawns, so they cooked briefly and finished up during the all-important 5-minute rest period. I served the paella with a simple Spanish-esque salad (they aren’t big on salads over there…), made with Romaine hearts and roasted red pepper strips, dressed with a gently spiced yogurt dressing. Que delicioso!