Tag Archives: Berkeley chef

Your New Favorite Winter Salad — And It Doesn’t Involve Kale

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A simple salad that hits all the notes.

A simple salad that hits all the notes.

 

From get-go, you know you’re in for a cookbook packed with thoughtful culinary wisdom and wicked, sly humor when it’s entitled, “Almonds, Anchovies, and Pancetta: A Vegetarian Cookbook, Kind Of” (William Morrow).

After all, anchovies and pancetta are as far removed as you can get from being vegetarian. But they are flavor boosters like no other, adding salty, meaty umami notes to anything they touch, even in minute proportions.

And who knows better about that than a chef who cooked at Chez Panisse for 22 years? Cal Peternell is now a best-selling cookbook author and the creator of the marvelous podcast, “Cooking By Ear.”

Almonds Anchovies and Pancetta

Peternell’s newest cookbook will make you a better cook — by offering up easily doable recipes, all written with mouth-watering descriptions, that teach you why certain ingredients work so well with others, and how a dish built around just a handful of items can truly sing. Enjoy everything from “Steamed Clams with Almond and Parsley Butter and No Linguine” to “Caesar’s Gougeres” and “Almond Granita.”

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Brown-Butter Mochi Muffins

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Made with dark brown sugar, coconut milk, evaporated milk and mochiko flour, these little treats are gluten-free.

Made with dark brown sugar, coconut milk, evaporated milk and mochiko flour, these little treats are gluten-free.

 

Anyone who has followed my blog for awhile knows about my love for butter mochi.

I can’t resist this Hawaiian baked good made with glutinous rice flour, which gives it a wondrous chewy texture like a big gummi bear.

For those with celiac disease, it has the added bonus of being gluten-free, too.

So when I spied a recipe for “Brown-Butter Mochi” in the New York Times a few months ago, I tore it out, eager to try it.

The recipe is from Berkeley’s Samin Nosrat, a writer, cooking teacher and former cook at Chez Panisse, who recently wrote the seminal, best-selling “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking” (Simon & Schuster).

She first learned to make butter mochi in a standard large cake pan from a friend’s recipe. But then she started tinkering, rejiggering the recipe to use two muffin tins instead. She also incorporated brown butter, which of course, is always a worthwhile addition.

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