Ok so I've never had a Bloody Mary, but this past Friday I was very drunk at a brewery and my scientist friend told me about how Bloody Marys cure hangovers for alcoholics because the alcohol replaces formaldehyde with ethanol, or something like that, in your brain, which makes it feel happier? Ok obviously I didn't listen very well, but the next day, BAM! Hangover! I vaguely remembered someone smart telling me to eat a Bloody Mary (as if that were even possible), so that's what I did! The result: Eatable Bloody Mary in the form of homemade pasta and a sauce inspired by the cocktail.
Read MoreIn my partnership with Tabanero Hot Sauce, I decided to create a riff on the classic Israeli shakshuka, simply by adding some hot sauce to it and serving it over baked tortillas instead of pita or flat bread. I'm calling it shakshuka chilaquiles, which I know is nonsense, but I just like it, ok?
Read MoreAnd I'm back! After a crazy couple of holiday weeks traveling all over the East Coast and gaining 15 pounds, I am happy to inform you all that I have returned and am ready to ruin all of your weight-related New Years resolutions. To kick things off, I made some hot sauce pasta dough!
Read MoreWings + pasta = Buffalo chicken pasta!
Read MoreAnyone who knows me even a little bit will know that I know how to say "Where is my pizza?" in 50+ languages. In any form, it is my favorite food by far. This pizza was inspired by my mom, who tried to make her minestrone soup fancier one day by putting something with a French name (pistou) on top of it. Little did she know that pistou is just pesto without pine nuts. It's so easy to make, not fancy at all, but still vibrant and powerfully flavored. It adds crazy freshness to the plainest of foods. It completely transformed my mom's minestrone, and when I put it on this pizza it was just like Blam Blam! Massive flavor explosion.
Read MoreMaking my own fresh pasta recently became very important to me because I convinced myself that I am very authentic and have a duty to uphold the traditions of my Italian heritage. That concept doesn't really represent my upbringing, which was full of homemade sauce at Christmas time or whenever I visited my grandma, but not too much fresh pasta. But whatever!I convinced myself that it was important to get back to roots, and thenceforth labored to get really good at making fresh pasta.
Read MoreI was feeling gloomy so I made this pear cake for happiness, but still made it look like it was next to a rainy window on a stormy day, even though that is ridiculous because I live in San Diego, and San Diego would never betray me like that...
Read MoreEssentially, I live in Mexico, and I'm soaking up all of the Mexican-American culture I can before all of my wonderful south-of-the-border friends are deported from my beloved San Diego, which owes so much of its charm to their presence, so here is some chicken tortilla soup.
Read MoreEvery single Christmas for my entire life, my grandma has made almond paste cookies. This is her recipe!
Read MoreBolognese is the first recipe I ever cooked out of a cookbook with Jess (wife)! It was my idea to make the sauce, unknowing that Jess was Buddhist and did not eat pork. I just thought, hey, I'm Italian and I have never actually made Bolognese sauce before, so let's do it! Jess, ever the angel, did not mention that she was morally averse to eating or cooking with pork, so she just helped chopping veggies and stirring the flavors together and we talked about Harry Potter.
Read MoreMy friend was in Berlin recently, so I was feeling super German, even though I'm not, and wanted to make pretzels about it. I wanted something super chewy, so I basically made pizza dough, whipped into some pretzel shapes, dipped them into baking soda water, baked them, and called them pretzels.
Read MoreThis lemon tart shizness is sour AF, so get your drool ready and pucker up!
Read MoreThis is the kind of party I can get behind.
Read MoreOk ok ok sorry everyone I know you've been dying to get the recipe for the pumpkin butter on last week's basic bitch basic white bread. I'm sure it was the only thing you could think about all week, so my apologies for not posting this sooner. Sorry if anyone's productivity went down at work. Endless condolences to anyone who spent the entire second presidential debate just refreshing my blog page, hoping that I would post this recipe. I certainly hope no one's children missed meals as a result of my delay. I know you've all been on the edge of your seat waiting for this, so... here it is!
Read MoreThis crusty bread with pumpkin butter and walnuts is for all my basic bitches out there.
Read MoreMy wife (Jess) doesn't eat red meat, but she does when I make shepherd's pie!
Read MoreAs all 15 of you know, I made way too many meatballs last week, and I ran the risk of over-salting my blood if I continued eating Swedish meatballs all week, so I replaced salt with low sodium soy sauce, and bing bang kitchen magic: spicy Thai peanut sauce meatballs in bowls of rice with pickled veggies and lime-tossed peanuts.
Read MoreThe pork and beef at my local grocery store was on sale so.................... I made 85 meatballs! For this smaller batch, I made some creamy beef gravy of the Swedish variety.
Read MoreI found myself in Boston recently with a gluten-intolerant wife, a best friend with Celiacs, three other besties plagued by vegetarianism, and a pescetarian brother. Like, come on, seriously? So I vowed to make some food that everyone would enjoy, and thus were born these vegetarian gluten-free stuffed peppers that actually tasted awesome, I promise.
Read MoreThis past weekend. one of my oldest and only friends Amber got married to her corresponding nerd, giving me the perfect opportunity to fly to Boston and indulge in my only mildly fetishized obsession with tart making. As such, I voyaged to the east coast, drank a bottle of wine that my brother recently procured from a tour of all the wineries in France or something, and three hours later, here was this boozy chocolaty buttery tart that I somehow managed to get to the wedding at a mystery lake 45 minutes away!
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