01 Apr 2014 9 Comments
in On the Road, Recipes, Video Tags: ceviche, gooseneck barnacles, humor, Japanese cooking, Malibu, percebes, Spain, Steve McQueen, sweet shrimp, tempura
I’ve always felt an affinity for the sea. Growing up near the shore, it was forever a part of my life. But it’s only been the last decade or so that I’ve begun to feel its pull in a more primal way, like gravity. I need the sea.
Dinner?
Fresh off a week of deep ocean connecting on the bluffs in Puerto Vallarta, we got invited to the bluffs in Malibu for a night with our friends Nadine and Andrew at the Steve McQueen beach house. Which was good, because I was already missing the sea. More
04 Mar 2014 8 Comments
in Pork, Recipes, Video Tags: food, Mexican cooking, Mexican pizzas, Mexico, Oaxaca, recipes, Rick Bayless, street food, Tlayuda
It was a Saturday afternoon, I had a bit of a cold. So I settled into my bed to watch cooking shows on PBS. One of my favorites is “Mexico One Plate at a Time,” with Rick Bayless spotlighting a different region of Mexican cooking each season. This season, he’s in Oaxaca, which is a part of Mexico I’ve never had the privilege to visit.
I often get inspired to cook by things I see Rick talking about on his show — last season he was in Baja, and I found myself trying out air-dried machaca beef, shrimp tacos folded in fried cheese and even an avante garde foamy sea urchin ceviche. And now, lying in bed, I watched as Rick, visiting a sustainable farm in the Oaxacan mountains, dug into something called a tlayuda. More
08 Oct 2013 14 Comments
in On the Road, Starlets, Yoga Students & Quinoa (stories), Video Tags: Boca de Tomatlan, Casa Tres Coronitas, Mario's Fishing & Snorkeling Tours, Mexican cooking, Mexico, Playa Las Animas, Puerto Vallarta
Still aglow from having caught a shimmering silver bonito on a troll line with a neon Tokyo-pop squid lure during our snorkel trip, my pal Nat decided he needed to go fishing proper.
Mario and Flynn hauling in a bonito
It was our last full day in Mexico, and we awoke before sunrise to drive south to Boca de Tomatlan and meet Mario, our amigo and boat captain, for a morning of sailing. The plan was to be just Nat, myself and our two older boys, Flynn and Nat Wes. But the esposas were intrigued and some of the younger kids wanted to go, so we packed all nine of us into the Nissan compact rental, clown-style, and headed out. More
26 Jul 2013 12 Comments
in Cooking Tips, Recipes, Video Tags: Alaska, Copper River, food, humor, Juneau, lox, salmon, Sitka, smoking, vodka
As we prepare for our upcoming family trip to Alaska, I find myself thinking a lot about salmon. The beautiful filets of sockeye and king from the Copper and other pristine rivers I’m finding at the fishmarkets these days have my mind already north. I once saw a river in Sitka so choked with spawning salmon swimming upstream that it seemed as if you could’ve walked across their backs and never touched water. Another river near Juneau was littered with the skinless carcasses of salmon — in bumper years, the bears peel off and eat the skin, and discard the rest.
Spawning sockeye in Juneau.
I’ve oft commented on this blog about how people tend to overcook salmon. And while it is still a delicious fish when cooked all the way through, it is so much better when left medium-rare to rare. Or, as I personally prefer, raw. More
12 Jul 2013 14 Comments
in Food, Humor, Video Tags: cooking, food, humor, James Grasso, naples, pizza, San Marzano, Topanga, wood burning oven
Spicy squid pizza, ready for the oven
James is one of my favorite dudes. He drinks fine wine and rides motorcycles and drives 4WD tractors and builds things and does all those kinds of things I think of real men as doing. But that’s not why I’m envious of James. I’m envious because he’s got a wood-burning pizza oven on the patio outside his kitchen. More
skinny girls & mayonnaise 