OUR DAILY BREAD

Thank you Breads Bakery (in Union Square) for the free starter yeast you gave me yesterday, a critical ingredient for this nectarines and peaches sourdough pancake to work today. Thank you milk and flour for fermenting overnight. Thank you brown eggs, salt and sugar for completing the batter. Thank you butter for caramelizing the fruits. Thank you recipe (from the Times) for rising and remaining dense, giving us bread as cake, holy be your work. And lead the maple syrup through the steaming fruits. Forgive my appetite and let it not be alone, and deliver my coffee. Replicate starter yeast everyday (a mother portion has been saved in the fridge) and give us our daily rustic pancake. And hollow be when you set, holding together such deliciousness. Oh man.

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Me Tartine, You Spain

Sunday "Branch":

Apple (cinnamon-brandy) Tart


Me tossed the fruits in orange and grapefruit juice bath, with the powdered spices (in addition, a Saigon cardamom), the cognac, brown sugar and orange zest; a little salt and pepper. Refrigerate before baking.

(That's actually a mascarpone cheese.)



and (fried) Empanada de Bilbao, with greens

You push the limits. Was making the dough for the tart - might as well make two. This time the butter content is half as much as the former; to balance, add olive oil. Roll pin a 9-in across dough an eighth of an inch thin and cookie cut it with an espresso cup; extend cut empanada wrapper between floured palms like a mini pizza dough, and stuff and crimp edges with water. You stuff it with boiled spinach and Sicilian tomatoes (in thyme water) and cool, then food process with moldy blue cheese, and tons of black pepper; to rough paste. Fry in olive oil. And make a salad.


(Cooking is kinda autopilot for me. But you can definitely "[s]wing it.")

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"Past" Food

"There are moments when pure chance can flick a switch and change the direction of your internal [life]..." 

                                                                     ~Lawrence Osborne, City of Spirits

Hydra, Greece


I arrived on the island October 31, 2016 on a writing sojourn. Around this corner, the ferry gently approached the port where mules and their handlers await your bags. Modernity ends at that exchange. You walk to your lodging (and the rest of your time), and the animals oblige quietly and help your way. That is the Gulf of Saronic, reaching the summit monastery on Mt. Eros, over a mountain vegetation of olives and sage. A terroir absent carbon pollution, the island itself supplies what the sea gives - there is a pristine organic exchange of nutrients at the ecotones (the coastline), not degradation. And the beneficiary is food. Only known by the Greeks is the secret of the one and only calamari of Hydra, prepared at no cost to the indigeniety of the squid; grilled or fried in olives and sage, your lemon is your lemon, and this dish is your juice of all. Cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, more olives and capers and cubes of feta cheese (Fall is its season - goat's milk at its ripest), you have your staple salad for the table oil. White wine and I kicked back. I just barely arrived in this present.

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15 Degrees of Separation

*New York, March 4, Outside Temperature Dropping to Fifteen*


Granola-Yogurt-a Shot of Expresso Scone : I have whole milk yogurt but not heavy cream. Not enough sugar but enough granola cereal (sweet and tart with the berries). I always have butter and flour and baking powder and raw honey and whole nutmegs and Meyer lemons. Let's do it. Let's put breakfast-on-the-go in the scone.


What else do I have in the fridge? Soppressata-Roasted Onion "Paella" Naan Burrito - with lots of basil. Naming my a-day-old leftovers (sushi rice, herbs, chopped onions, cured meat) to "evolve" again is one of my favorite things to do as a home cook: because I'm conscientious of not wasting to throw any of them. I get hungry again for new food.  

Grapefruits are a mainstay at home. It's like I've been eating them since I was born. When I toast the naan bread with butter all over its face, then slap a ladle of paella on top and shave some asiago, and roll the burrito and then a big bite - the richness of my breakfast is cut by the fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice power, and always makes me happy.

A couple of days ago was 60 degrees. Now this. Glad I'm home.

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