Crockpot Cochinita (Puerco) Pibil: Yucatecan-style Pork with a Telenovela Twist

The last place I expected to find a good recipe for Cochinita Pibil, was in the comments of an English-language website that recaps Spanish-language telenovelas. If you’re asking yourself how I wound up reading the comments on that site, I have both an easy and a more complicated answer for you. The easy answer is [...]

Super Simple Stir-fry Formula

My first recipe experiments were in a shared dorm hall kitchen during my freshman year of college.  Unfortunately, those meals were mostly forgettable. What I do remember is that my neighbor, homesick for her native Korea, thought I made the perfect taste-tester.  She would cook dishes that were unfamiliar and exotic to my rural Utah [...]

Reinventing Chiles en Nogada Soup-Style

Deconstruct:  To break something down into its component parts. For a recipe, this means looking at the recipe and determining the essential ingredients – the ones that make the dish unique, satisfying, and flavorful. Deconstruction is one of my favorite ways to reinvent a dish when I want to experience its flavors AND tailor the [...]

Super Simple Hummus – With or Without the Chickpeas

Every time I think about posting a recipe for hummus, I stop.  It seems like it is one of those things that everyone covers just because it is so darned simple.  And the core ingredients of lemon, cumin, garlic, and olive oil – and even the distinctive tahini sesame paste – can be mixed with [...]

Ghee Whiz – an “almost-butter” alternative for the dairy intolerant

I’ve been on a food book binge lately: biographies, non-fiction overviews of specific foods, recipe books, etc.  One that I picked up is called Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages by Anne Mendelson. It’s a strange selection for me – I don’t drink milk.  In fact, I have avoided milk for several years [...]