I have been trying eat more whole grains lately. I can’t eat gluten and many grains make me feel sick, but I’ve realized that I had developed a bit of an irrational fear that has kept me from eating much grain at all, even the ones that are good for me. A couple of months…
Roasted Radish and Fennel Salad with Walnut Gremolata (Cotton-tail salad)
I love radishes with all my little heart. I love them raw, so I was skeptical about roasting them. Maybe you are too? Roasting brings out the sweet side of the radish and tames the spice, making them palatable to the radish adverse. Roasted radishes are sweet, juicy and retain their crispness nicely. I’ve paired…
Gluten-Free Cardamom Bread
This is a chewy, yeasted bread. It’s not sweet, although it is perfumed with cardamom and studded with walnuts, dates and raisins. It’s best toasted and slathered with salted butter. I like it for breakfast, tea or with afternoon coffee when my husband is kind enough to make me some (I make terrible coffee). It…
Grown Up German Chocolate Cake (gluten-free or not)
Last week, I made myself a German chocolate cake for my 41st birthday. I have fond childhood memories of German chocolate cake, but I suspected that as an adult it would be too sweet. I recently bought some turtles (chocolate covered caramel and pecans) with gleeful anticipation only to discover that they are gross if…
Kook-Kwee Inspired Macadamia and Coconut Shortbread (gluten-free and vegan)
This will be the last of my Hawaii food nostalgia posts for a while. Cook-Kwees Maui cookie company produce wildly popular crisp shortbread cookies. My favourite variety includes coconut and macadamia nuts. I consumed a truly terrifying quantity of these cookies as a child. They were ubiquitous in gift baskets and no meeting that provided…
Cauliflower Roasted with Curry and Cashew Butter
I recently wrote about the foods that I miss from my childhood home, Maui. I decided not to mention an entire genre of delicious hippy cuisine, served up at potlucks, vegetarian and/ or vegan restaurants and health food store lunch counters. This food is a gleeful mash up of vegetarian food from all over the…
Roasted Celery and Buttermilk Soup
When I was in my 20s my friends and I had a game that we liked to play with any new person that we met. We would each list the 10 foods that we would take if we were going to be stuck on a desert island for the rest of our life. You could…
Maui Foods That I Will Miss
This winter, my mother retired and after 31 years of living on Maui, moved back to Canada. Over Christmas and New Year’s I went to home to help her pack up her house, touch all of my favourite rocks and trees and bodies of water and eat my childhood foods one last time. If you…
Lemon Poppy Seed Meringues
I know, it’s Valentine’s and I am supposed to be posting some sort of gooey chocolate dessert. The truth is that I am just not always in the mood for chocolate. Anyway meringues use cooking alchemy to make something special out of common ingredients which I find very romantic on a symbolic level . Also,…
Passionfruit Cream Pie in a Coconut Crust (gluten-free and vegan)
I apologize for my month-long absence! I have been traveling, and truly enjoying not looking at a computer more than for a few moments once or twice a week. Over Christmas and New Year I was on Maui with my mother (see photos above). Then I came home to NYC for four days, during which…
Big Sis Little Dish 