On the Table

When I was a teenager in Tucson in the ’50s, one of the few places to play or hear live jazz was a dive on the south side of town called "The Hula Hut." It was there I was called to play vibes in a small pickup band backing jazz legend Anita O’Day (the best […]

In the refrigerator Montalbano found a plate of cold pasta with tomatoes, basil, and black passuluna olives that gave off an aroma to wake the dead, and a second course of fresh anchovies with onions and vinegar. Montalbano was in the habit of trusting entirely in the simple but zestful culinary imagination of Adelina, the […]

I take a small bite and I hear the light crackle of the crisp thin outer layer. My teeth sink into finely chopped walnuts supported by a framework of egg white and sugar. In the morsel that now takes center stage in my mouth, the sugar dissolves and creates a substrate over which the walnut […]

In 1990, two years after we moved to McKinleyville, a deli opened across from Cal’s Unocal station. Cal’s wife Ann had alerted us. "They make their own sausage!" So we were almost their first customers. And there were indeed sausages, fascinating ones like a Northern Italian-style with fennel, garlic and red wine, Moroccan lamb sausage, […]

If I were to give to each season its own smell, fall would get the smell of chestnuts. Not only the better-known smell of roasted chestnuts (called caldarroste in Italian), but also that of boiled chestnuts. A big case of freshly picked chestnuts was one of the items my parents would get during our fall […]

It all started with my locavore-restaurant concept, a whimsy that became a column. But readers took it seriously: “When are you opening, what’s the name going to be, who are the chefs?” As though some millionaire had just presented me with a check for $875,000. Of course, folks in the food business know that restaurant […]

Have you ever wondered about the origin of Italian food words that have gained common currency in this country? Even if your answer is no, you may find the following linguistic morsels appetizing. carpaccio I love Venice, I love everything about Venice and being in Venice in any season. And I like the painter Vittore […]

When you leave quaint Ferndale behind for the curves of the rugged Wildcat, the Mattole Valley unfolds against the backdrop of a vast cerulean sea. Home to sufficiency-minded renegades, devoid of restaurants and geographically isolated, the Mattole Valley offers a recipe for creative, home-cooked, local cuisine borne equally out of necessity, political intention, environmental ardor, […]

Last week’s “Table Talk” described how a national aversion to saturated fats was exploited by the National Pork Board in two ways: First, in creating “Pork — the Other White Meat” as slogan and campaign. Second, by breeding and raising pigs in confinement, and with low-fat, antibiotic-laced diets. The column detailed the literally odious methods […]

Once upon a time there was a pork chop: nearly two inches thick, moist with tiny interior seams of fat, seared in butter in a heavy copper skillet; then a splash of Calvados deglazed the pan, and it gently braised until it was the color of burnished cherrywood. It arrived on the plate attended by […]

There has been a shift In the way Americans think about food over the past two decades, a change in tone. At first, only pinpricks of awareness, then — as water doesn’t become viscous on its way to becoming ice — a sudden consciousness that we need to change the way we eat. True, this […]

Who would have thought there would ever be two successful movies about American wine? But following on the heels of Sideways (based on Merlot-tasting in Santa Barbara wine country), comes Bottle Shock, a critically acclaimed comedy based on George Taber’s book Judgment of Paris: California Vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized […]