recipe

I have a confession: for the last couple of weeks, I've been having asparagus for dinner almost every other night.

I am a firm believer in the sense of this kind of seasonal "binging". Sure, we can get asparagus year-round now, but they are really at their best right now, not to mention at their cheapest. Admittedly most of the asparagus we're getting here right now is still imported, but it's still half the price of what it is in other months, and so I'm indulging.

Note: This article has been substantially improved and updated here, but I'm leaving this original as-is for the simpler approach using canned skins.

[Another update: Lower-calorie inarizushi filled with a mixture of rice and hijiki seaweed

For Oscar night, I made these dense brownies. They disappeared very fast. The "double chocolate" part comes from the fact that there are two whole 100 gram (or 3 1/2 oz.) dark chocolate bars in it.

This is an extremely easy recipe. I don't even bother to chop the pecans with a knife; I just bash them in the bag. Same with the chocolate. For this reason, this would be a really fun thing for kids to make I think.

I get cravings for the oddest things sometimes. A few days ago, the craving was for beets. Surely beets are one of the top 10 "eww" foods, especially for kids, and for quite a few adults too.

I’ve got an amazing bottle in my refrigerator now. It’s filled with a mixture that forms the base for just about any sort of Japanese food. It takes all the drudgery out of making a clear soup, or a Japanese style stew, or the dipping sauce for noodles. I can’t live without it anymore.

Julia Child passed away yesterday, at the age of 91. Probably most people who are passionate about food and cooking, and spent any time in the U.S. in the last 30 years or so, have felt her influence. I'm no exception - one of my standby cookbooks is her Way to Cook (a perennial recommended book in my sidebar here).