Delicious Mauritius

21 Aug 2012 9 Comments

by scolgin in On the Road, Recipes, Video Tags: , , , , , , , ,

“Do you want me to cook Mauritian food tonight?” Maria offered. That is not the sort of offer I turn down.

Maria’s Mauritian shrimp creole

We were staying with our friends, Gary and Maria, in their home along the Tualatin River in an idyllic suburb of Portland, Oregon. Gary is one of my oldest friends from childhood. Maria, whom he met in the Northwest wine industry, hails from Kauai, where we were fortunate enough to be a part of their wedding a few years back. Her father is American, and her mother comes from Mauritius. More

Everything’s Better with Butter

27 Jul 2012 17 Comments

by scolgin in Cooking Tips, Recipes, Video Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Did you ever play that Desert Island game — you know, the one where someone asks you what 10 albums you would choose if you were marooned on a desert island? I like to play this game with food. Which 10 ingredients would I want if I was stranded on a desert island? And high upon my list would be that glistening, glorious gold of the dairy case: butter. I could make a palm frond taste good so long as I had butter.

I’d been meaning to put my infatuation for beurre to words for some time now. Sitting here eating my leftover grilled chicken from a few posts back — basted on the barbie with melted butter — I got thinking about just how important this simple, elemental ingredient is. More

A Guerrilla in Skinny Girl Country

17 Jul 2012 5 Comments

by scolgin in Pork, Recipes, Video Tags: , , , , , , , ,

If you’re going to spend an afternoon with a guerrilla, what better occasion than Bastille Day — a holiday celebrating the storming of a symbol of monarchal oppression by the common man.

The “guerrilla” we would spend Bastille Day with would not be a camouflaged, gun-toting, beret-crowned rebel, but rather our family wine, Wine Guerrilla — and my mother’s long-time partner, Bruce, producer of the wine and himself often referred to as, “The Wine Guerrilla.” More

The Myth of 27

08 Jun 2012 13 Comments

by scolgin in Recipes, Video Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

It’s always been a symbolic number in my life — 27.

I remember sitting with my best friend, Dan, at his house in Topanga close to my 28th birthday. Dan was a few years older than I. “27 has been a really hard year,” I said — tired and disillusioned. “Oh man,” he replied, “I’m just getting over 27.”

Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons in Topanga, 1969

27 is, of course, the year that so many talented young artists perish. Browse the obits, and it truly is astonishing — Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Gram Parsons, Brian Jones, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Heath Ledger, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse. It’s often morbidly referred to as the “Forever 27 Club.” More

More Tiny Little Fishies

05 Jun 2012 10 Comments

by scolgin in Cookbooks, Recipes, Video Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I don’t know what it is about small fish that is so appealing to me.

I remember being in Italy as a child, and looking on in horror as my parents dug into platefuls of tiny fried fish, uncleaned and with heads intact! (Why this was more objectionable to my 11-year-old sensibilities than the squid tentacles I was gobbling with wild abandon that same trip I’ll never know.) Fast forward a quarter century of so, and I can’t get enough of the small fry.

Italian-style “fritto di mare” fried whitefish

I buy teeny, tiny “ice fish” — no longer than a nickel and pale white — at the Japanese market, coat them in a light tempura batter and make fish fries. I buy smelt or other little fish, and recreate the fritto misto that traumatized me as a child in Italy. I purchase silvery sardines to pickle or throw on the grill. I can’t remember when it all changed, perhaps it was the climbing-a-mountain/crossing-a-new-frontier aspect it. But whenever and however, I became a devotee of diminutive dabs. More

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