What I Feed My Wife: Vegan Gluten-Free Double Chocolate Donuts
I make these for my wife – I just throw it together, no recipe, and they always turn out perfectly – and they get a little…
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Sudachi Dashi Pozole – A Mexican Japanese Wedding In Your Mouth
Pozole is one of my favorite soups – if it is unfamiliar to you, the basic recipe is based on white hominy in a rich broth (there is often meat in it, but it is not a…
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Coconut Macchiato – stained with Sriracha
Earlier today I was struck by the following tweet from @Foodmancing: I need Sriracha creamer for my coffee— Charles Powell (@Foodmancing) February 12, 2013 I made a batch of…
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Potato Mochi Cat & Mackerel Sashimi – satirical sushi
Last night I wanted something fun to eat – so I made this sweet cat that I could eat with sashimi and other sushi. The cat is a variation on mochi and since cats love…
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Attention in the Kitchen – What We Notice & How it Affects Our Cooking
If my wife is using the vacuum while I am cooking, I often end up burning things. I will have something under the broiler and I will be working on prepping something while my…
A human being should be able to…butcher a hog…take orders…give orders…
Most of these traits directly apply to working in the kitchen, or indirectly with some imagination: “A human being should be able to change a diaper,…
Human Cognition and Lamb 86 at Alinea – an encounter with Basic Human Categorization
Nope Sopes, Pseudo Panuchos – a Something or Other Tart
Scribal Tradition: Recipe Cards & Gyotaku
Fish as Printing Block: Gyotaku Prints of Sea Bream
C.S. Lewis and Wine Descriptions
I came across Donelan winery today and was struck by this blog post about wine descriptions in C.S. Lewis’ writings. Take this quote from The Chronicles of Narnia…
A Green Juice for the Winter Blues
I really like this juice – the perfect amount of natural saltiness from the celery, a little bitterness from the kale, super sweetness from the Meyer…
Cucumber & Bee Pollen
I’ve been wanting to use bee pollen in a place that would highlight it, and I think I’ve found the right platform: sliced cucumber with kuro…
Sriracha Love – Homemade & Preservative Free!
About a year ago I started making my own sriracha because I wanted to have the pepper flavor without the flavors of potassium sorbate and sodium bisulfate – I just wanted pure chili flavor. I poked around looking at different hot sauce recipes and I ended up cooking up my own.
What I Feed My Wife: Tokyo Noodles
I like making this dish because it reminds me of noodle shops that I love from places that I don’t live anymore. It takes me back…
Cooking is Storytelling and Eating is Reading
In earlier posts I’ve mentioned that categorization underlies all cooking and eating. It is true, categorization is basic in our mental life and plays out in…
Make yourself a better cook: why oyster shuckers & box cutters won’t julienne a carrot
Cooking is an activity that gives you constant feedback about the changes taking place in the ingredients. These are changes described in cookbooks with words like:…
Human Cognition and Lamb 86 at Alinea – an encounter with Basic Human Categorization
well-established trend that crosses cultures, we know that categorization is basic to human experience, we know that variety in flavors and other orosensory factors of food items increases consumption or at least preserves (and maybe increases) appetite for new flavors, and we know that compartmentalized dishes keep different food items separate, isolating flavors. When all of this comes together in a strategic approach to a dish (like Lamb 86), what you get is an opportunity to…
Terrarium Salad – Blown Sugar Glass Terrarium
I made these sugar glass terrarium salads over the weekend – I love terrariums and I’ve wanted to work with sugar glass to bring both worlds…
Beets Reincarnated as Marshmallows – [perfect for roasting]
While it has the color of a Pink Pearl rubber eraser this flame toasted marshmallow tastes like oven roasted beets. That’s because this marshmallow is a…
How Good Food Shapes Our Identities (what is “good” food anyway?)
When you look at it that way, “good food” becomes such a subjective notion – if the way that we engage with food alters our moment-by-moment experience of the world, shouldn’t one of the requirements for good food be that it helps us feel good? Whether “feel good” means that food awakens our senses, or merely satisfies our hunger?
How Eating is like Traveling
The first time I ever ate an avocado I was here: I was eating a sandwich with my friend Molly and her sister. We were spending…
Truffle to Truffle: Metaphors of Dirty Decadence
Did you know that a metaphor is responsible for chocolate truffles? This confection is conceptually structured with the architecture of the mushroom! In preparation for love-fest…
A cook’s responsibility is…to lead
In business, a leader has to make decisions about how to lead – they have to decide if they will listen to the people they lead,…
Nope Sopes, Pseudo Panuchos – a Something or Other Tart
I had about a cup of ground almonds left over from a batch of almond milk and I wanted to use them with masa to make…
Scribal Tradition: Recipe Cards & Gyotaku
After I posted this post on my gyotaku experience with the sea bream and baby octopus it occurred to me that there is a similarity between…
Cooking Better with Fewer Instructions – [making food you're proud of]
They say that practice makes perfect. And since we have to eat everyday, we have a ready-made practice schedule that helps us develop our cooking craft.…
Bitterness Fish – best recipe for Hake
I wanted to make a dish that featured bitterness as a supporting taste element, and I’ve been wanting to work with hake – bitterness fish is…
Fish as Printing Block: Gyotaku Prints of Sea Bream
A long time ago Japanese fishermen wanted a way to keep records about the fish that they caught. They discovered that it was possible to print…
Teas that Make Up for Lost Coffee
Over a year and a half ago I stopped drinking coffee. I decided one day that I had been drinking too much coffee for too long…
Exploring the Edges of Cooking [#3 - Semantics]
The verb cook has a standard definition, one that most people can probably figure out for themselves: “to prepare food for eating especially by means of heat” (intransitive) “to…
Exploring the Edges of Cooking [#2 - Mindfulness]
Part of why we learn to cook is because we have to eat, and we don’t always want to eat the same thing – so we…
Exploring the Edges of Cooking [#1 - Concepts]
I’ve got a small challenge for myself for this new year: I want to explore the edges of cooking. When I say that I want to…
What is KitchenCognition?
Every day I take raw ingredients out of the cupboard, the pantry, the refrigerator, and I do things to them. I select them, I wash them,…
