Hammy Holidays, Plus A Snake River Farms Giveaway

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A bone-in ham to put all others to shame. From Snake River Farms.

A bone-in ham to put all others to shame. From Snake River Farms.

 

I often keep old Christmas cards, and sometimes the gently-used ribbons and bows, too.

But one thing I make a point never to discard is something all together different.

Bones.

From the Thanksgiving turkey. From the Christmas ham.

They are always wrapped carefully with aluminum foil, then tucked inside a heavy-duty plastic bag in a safe place in my freezer.

Until January.

That’s when I take them out for their intended purpose, one that I look forward to every year after the holiday season.

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Rosemary Pear Pie (And It’s Gluten-Free)

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Poached pears worthy of your holiday table.

Poached pears worthy of your holiday table.

 

A friend of mine once rolled her eyes at her then-boyfriend for ordering poached pears for dessert at a restaurant.

In her mind, she couldn’t fathom why one would waste perfectly good dessert calories on simple, cooked pears, of all things.

I can see her point. After all, if you’re going to venture out to a white-tablecloth restaurant for dinner, you want to live it up. You want to eat with abandon, and finish it off with decadence. You want chocolate. You want butter. You want fluffs of cream, ganache and mousse — preferably in a take-your-breath-away form.

Pears don’t immediately muster that kind of response.

But transfer them to the finale of a comforting, home-cooked dinner, and I think even my friend would have a hard time passing them up.

Juicy, sweet, wine-y pears fanned out across a rustic tart that’s put out in the center of the table is just the type of dessert made for entertaining at home.

That’s what you’ll get with “Rosemary Pear Pie” from the new cookbook, “Home Baked” (Abrams), of which I received a review copy. It’s by Yvette Van Boven, a food stylist and recipe writer in Amsterdam.

Home Baked Book

The book is filled with more than 150 recipes for sweet and savory goodies such as “Poppy Seed Popovers,” “Verbena Cake with Fresh Fruit & Verbena Gin Syrup,” and “My Favorite Chili with A Thousand Beans, Chorizo, Chocolate, and Corn Bread.”

One glance at this pear pie in the book and I was enthralled. Who wouldn’t be with the pears arranged just so prettily atop a simple, smooth, custardy filling?

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Bar Crudo Celebrates 10 Years

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Avocado toast -- and with uni -- at Bar Crudo.

Avocado toast — with uni — at Bar Crudo.

 

For folks like my husband, the antidote to too much fancy food is a good ol’ burger.

For folks like me, it’s fish.

Raw fish, to be exact.

So when I was invited in as a guest recently at Bar Crudo in San Francisco, I jumped at the chance.

After all, with the overload of cookies, rich appetizers and big hunks of meat at this time of year, what better way to give the body a rest than with raw fish — Italian-style.

Plus, the restaurant is proudly celebrating its 10th year.

The packed dining room.

The packed dining room.

You can sit at the bar, too -- if you can snag a seat.

You can sit at the bar, too — if you can snag a seat.

I still remember its teeny-tiny, original Bush Street location. Now ensconced on Divisadero Street, it’s still not huge. But the long, narrow quarters here definitely offer more breathing room.

On a recent Saturday night, it was packed inside, with even more folks outside, hoping to snag a table.

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Sugar and Spice, And Apricot-Ginger Cookies That Are Oh-So-Nice

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Start your ovens, people. It's cookie time.

Start your ovens, people. It’s cookie time.

 

Say good-bye to turkey, and hello to cookies.

With Thanksgiving over, it’s now the serious start of cookie baking season.

What better treat to get you in the mood, too, than “Big Chewy Apricot and Ginger Cookies”?

Nothing says winter holidays quite like the fragrance of cinnamon, ginger and molasses wafting from the kitchen. And this cookie has ginger in spades. Three kinds: ground, fresh, and crystallized. It’s ideal for a ginger fanatic like myself.

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Forget Black Friday; Make It A Brown One (As In Chocolate) Instead

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Yes, this is pretty much how I ate this fantastic spread.

Yes, this is pretty much how I ate this fantastic spread.

 

See that hazelnut spread above?

I’d like to tell you that I came up with all sorts of inventive ways to use it in baking. But the truth is that I ate that entire jar of Nuubia Hazelnut Spread simply by the languid spoonful, day after day, until it was emptied.

I’m not ashamed. Because it was that irresistible.

So forget braving the malls today. Just do yourself a favor and go Nuubia’s online site to order a jar instead — for yourself or your chocoholic friends. Or take a trip to the Nuubia store/cafe, which just opened this year in the lobby of the Twitter building in San Francisco, or to its Pleasanton headquarters that has an artisan kitchen.

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