On the Table

The Farmers’ Market is always a feast for the eyes, and some days the feast includes fireworks. Lately I have been admiring the pyrotechnic display of peppers. Stalls are overflowing with specimens of different colors, shapes and sizes. Looking at this bounty, I feel like a child in front of an amazing array of (vegetable) […]

The beef brisket sandwich was as good as everyone promised. The glowing sauce — a bizarre, grainy concoction of paprika and vinegar — took some getting used to, but the whole combination of meat and sauce and pickle slices and icy beer pretty much couldn’t be beat. (Arthur Bryant’s, Kansas City, Miss.) At Cooper’s, you […]

An early vernacular Spanish source for gazpacho — probably 14th century — says, "Gazpacho is a dish of rustic shepherds, or those who have nothing else to eat, because it is made up of garlic, vinegar, bread and water." Well, gazpacho has come a long way from that. In fact, it’s come a long way […]

Whereas*, Humboldt County is renowned for its local dairies, grass-fed beef and fresh fruits and vegetables, and recognized as an emerging center for local family-owned farms in the United States; and* Whereas*, family farmers are a cornerstone of our communities — trusted providers of nutritious food and stewards of our precious natural resources; and* … […]

The rich selection of tomatoes offered these days at the local Farmers’ Market set in motion a walk down memory lane that took me back to a summertime meal featuring pomodori col riso (rice-stuffed tomatoes), one of my mother’s signature dishes. Part of its allure can be attributed to the fact that it is a […]

“We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods… A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life. “May suitable doses […]

I arrived in New York in the late summer of 1960. John Cage, theavant gardecomposer with whom I’d come to study, was already a legendary presence, attracting not just musicians but a dedicated following of painters, poets and what would come to be called “performance artists” (although none of us called ourselves that). Cage’s philosophical […]

In previous articles for the Journal I talked about my mother through her recipes. There is more to come from that quarter, but today I would like to introduce you to my father. He was born in the small village of Poggio Catino, located less than 40 miles north of Rome in a region called […]

I never truly realized what a Caesar Salad was until 1969. We were celebrating a special occasion, and my girlfriend insisted that we go to the legendary Paul’s Duck Press, then the most elegant and exotic restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. Don’t bother to Google — you’ll find only two references to Paul’s Duck Press; […]

Jacques Neukom doesn’t sleep well when there’s thunder and lightning over the mountains. Not in the summer, anyway, when the peach trees in his orchard are laden with sweet, juicy, luscious gems so ripe they would drop from the trees on their own if no one picked them. And he wasn’t exactly having the relaxed, […]

What foods do Americans miss when they are abroad? I never asked anybody, not even my husband. The only person whose food longings I can relate is Mark Twain. I recently read his autobiographical book, A Tramp Abroad , written in 1879 while on an extended stay in Europe. It includes a scathing assessment of […]

My first memory of food is the White Castle in Louisville, 20 miniature hamburgers for a dollar. I was 4, and the aroma — onions grilled in suet, then plopped with a tiny steamed beef patty inside a miniature square bun, in tiny white boxes, all bagged — was heavenly. At the age of 5, […]