Kitchen Epiphanies

KITCHEN epiphanies

Exploring diverse foodways...

Tarts and Pies

Tomato Goat Cheese Tart

This Tomato Goat Cheese Tart is my home lockdown project. During the pandemic lockdown, I expanded our small low-maintenance, urban perennial and shrub garden in Chicago by tucking in a few pots of tomatoes and herbs. This small pot enhancement to our garden provided a welcome diversion between streams of on-line activities.   The herbs — …

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Pizza Rustica – an Italian Indulgent Easter Pie

Several years ago, as I was searching through youtube’s food videos in the middle of the night during a bout of insomnia, I stumbled upon a Pizza Rustica recipe on Silvia Colloca’s Cook Like an Italian channel.  What caught my attention was that this pizza was not the usual red-sauced, mozzarella-covered disk, but a crispy-crusted …

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Pissaladière – French Onion, Anchovy and Olive Tart

On a recent visit to my daughter Sophia in New Orleans, I discovered in her pantry nine tiny tins of anchovies she purchased several months ago to add rich umami flavor to certain savory dishes but she was unsure how to use the remaining tins.  Various recipes came to mind for sauces, dressings and pasta– …

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Strawberry-glazed Rhubarb Yogurt Cheesecake

The annual appearance of firm red and green rhubarb stalks in farmers’ markets heralds that winter is finally over. Knowing rhubarb season is fleeting, I usually buy enough to fill my baking and cooking cravings.  This year, it’s time for a Strawberry-glazed Rhubarb Yogurt Cheesecake. My affinity for rhubarb started early.  In our first small …

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Cranberry Cream Tart

I created this Cranberry Cream Tart to highlight cranberries, an underutilized fruit which plays a secondary role to savory dishes and rarely in desserts.  Since learning about the importance of wild cranberries to the diet of Native Americans in my third-grade lesson on the first Thanksgiving and their use by Pilgrims as a ubiquitous condiment, …

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Revitalizing Ukrainian Cooking with Masterchef Evgeniy Klopotenko

The most interesting experiences often arise from serendipity.  I recently shared a kitchen and an evening of Ukrainian cooking with 31-year-old Evgeniy (Zhenia) Klopotenko, winner of the 2015 Ukraine’s Masterchef contest, a graduate of Paris’s Le Cordon Bleu culinary school, a Ukrainian TV personality and producer of jams and marmalades. Young Zhenia is a trained …

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