use real butter

Recipe: stir-fried pork and pickled mustard green

Recipe: chinese steamed fish

My parents are like children on Christmas morning whenever they send me something in the mail. They have called for the past three days to check and see if I received their package – a ceramic knife. It’s a very nice knife and I’m familiar with how wonderful these things are. So when it arrived today, I had to – per my mother’s specific instructions – cut a tomato with it. I felt like a Ginzu advertisement, but I went ahead and took photos as evidence for them. It cuts beautifully – as nice as my Henckels.

feels like a lightweight, but it performs like a heavyweight

it slices, it dices!

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: red beans and rice

I’m not sure how authentic this recipe is or not, but I love making a big batch. It heats up wonderfully for lunch or dinner (or brekkie – yeah, I do that sometimes). Despite how much I love to cook, there are times when it’s so nice to reach into the fridge and spoon some food from a tupperware onto a plate and nuke it up just like that. Jeremy and I are both fans of leftovers because it’s economical and delicious. Jeremy likes his red beans and rice as is (are?) and I like mine with some extra Tabasco… I mean a lot of extra Tabasco.

mise en place your spices

sautée the vegetables and then add spices

**Jump for more butter**

What to do with fresh figs? I bought about two dozen of these babies the other day because I really do like fresh figs. Most of the recipes call for cooking them, and I think that’s a bit of a shame because I really like them raw.

figs are delicate when ripe

Well the California board of fig growers had one suggestion for raw figs – prosciutto. Honestly, I like prosciutto with just about anything and also with nothing. Sounded like a nice and easy starter for dinner tonight which was a repeat of eggplant parmigiana using that second eggplant and yes – covering with foil for the first 35 minutes makes the cheese melt much nicer – so do that and then uncover for the last 10 minutes to crisp it up.

perfect with prosciutto

It’s a hands down winning combination in my book. Too bad fresh figs have such a small window of availability. And you don’t need all that much prosciutto to go with a fig quarter (we didn’t eat all of that prosciutto). It paired beautifully with a fruity sauvignon blanc too. I could have eaten just that for dinner.