a recipe: italian red torpedo onion gratin with fresh herbs

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Onion gratin with fresh herbs is one of those special indulgences: fragrant, rich with cream and herbs.  It’s an old-fashioned dish with no pretense.  It’s comfort food at its best: sweet and savory and salty all at once. Warm for the growing chill of mid-September, onion gratin, humble as it is, deserves a place on the [...]

I drink real milk: fresh, raw, local and full of fat.

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I drink raw milk. I drink fresh, raw milk.  Really fresh, really raw and always in season. In essence, I drink real milk.  I’ve waxed poetic about my love of fresh cream before, but now it’s milk’s turn. My milk is fresh, in season, grass-fed, full-fat and locally produced.  It is rich, and luscious and [...]

Rabbit in Riesling with Winter Vegetables & Fresh Herbs

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It’s cold where I live. Very cold. Very very cold. But beautiful, too.  And here, where snow graces our mountain town nine and sometimes ten months of the year, you learn to make a lot of soups and stews – warming dishes that nourish the body, satisfy the tastebuds and sustain your will through the [...]

a recipe: potato & swiss chard frittata

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Frittatas with fresh herbs or seasonal vegetables are a main-stay of our diet, and we often serve them on the weekend for a late breakfast or early brunch.  In the summertime, we serve them with fresh tomatoes or roasted peppers and goat cheese; in the spring, we serve them packed with garden herbs or occasionally fresh [...]

A Recipe: Fresh Fig & Yogurt Tart with Almond Crust

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A fresh fig tart, earthy and mildly sweet, is a hard thing to resist.  And when fresh figs are paired with honeyed yogurt and almond meal, it’s even harder to resist, especially for four-year-old fingers.   So when we made this fresh fig tart, filling an almond flour tart shell with honey-sweetened strained yogurt and slices [...]

A Recipe: Melted Apricots with Fresh Raspberries

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I like my desserts simple. So simple that it almost pains me to share them – as though you might read this post and think to yourself, “Apricots, butter, cinnamon and raspberries? Really?  That’s all? Man, I could have figured that out!” What can I say, I like simple food.  The summer season is in [...]

A Recipe: Fresh Herb Frittata

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Herb Fritattas, fluffy and light, are remarkably versatile and when hens in the valley are producing at their height and the farmers market is chugging along, we often find four dozen (or more!) eggs in the kitchen each week.  And, as the season progresses, that number dwindles until the darkest days of winter when we’ve [...]

Baked Garlic with Thyme

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Baked garlic, savory and sweet, finds its way into our kitchen more often than it should – weaving its way in and out of sauces, breads and soups.  And, without a doubt, we enjoy it in its own right – unctuous and smooth, intensely garlicky and scented with fresh thyme.  Garlic, mellowed but simultaneously made [...]

Mandarin & Cranberry Relish

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Friday afternoon, a heavy box brimming with satsuma mandarins courtesy of Chaffin Family Orchards greeted me at the post office.     I’d anticipated their arrival all week – eager for something fresh and vibrant after a month when no other fresh fruit was available from our CSA but for apples.   These beautiful mandarins [...]