When we were much younger my father used to take us frequently to an Argentinian restaurant in Miami, and I think it is here that I learned to love beef. I also learned to love the piquant sauce they put on their meat called Chimichurri. It is a tangy sauce of parsley, garlic, red chili…

When I was much younger and had crushes on boys who didn’t like me, my mom always consoled me by saying “It is better it didn’t work, he wasn’t Cuban, so he wouldn’t understand why you need a pastelito de guayaba.” She was of course kidding but it did, at least on some level, ring…

When I was at Pike Place Market earlier this week I stopped by Beecher’s Handmade Cheese and scored some Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk cheese that was slightly funkier than normal. As my choice of verb indicates I have a love of cheese that borders on addiction! So it was with gluttonous joy that I brought…

I complain a lot about living in Seattle. Some of what I whine about is true; the weather sucks, the winter days are nonexistent, everything closes way too damned early and the city feels more like a very large town rather than a “real city”. Most of the time, however, I really just need a…

Parmesan cheese is a gateway drug . It’s got one of the best marketing campaigns out there. It starts off innocently, in a green, sterile tube, with a major brand label across it to make you think it’s safe to eat. So you take it and you put it on your pasta. It’s an innocent enough…

Nothing says comfort food like mashed potatoes. These are a very simple version I made to go along with the lamb I posted earlier this week. They came out very well and they don’t use all the heavy cream and loads of butter I keep seeing in recipes, and restaurants for that matter. Mashed potatoes…

When I first met my husband he did not eat any meat other than chicken and some fish. I asked him why and he gave me a bunch of reasons that made no sense to me, or to him really. I think it had just never been prepared to his liking. He is a man…

Stock was one of those things that took me a very long time to figure out how to make correctly. I would boil the bones for hours and at the end I was left with a very weak stock that made me wonder how it could be any better than water in recipes. I remember…

Mojo is a Cuban marinade and sauce used in many different ways. From Chicken marinated in mojo and grilled, to pork marinated and cooked in mojo at Christmas; as a salad dressing, or as a sauce for fried yuca. It’s uses in the Cuban kitchen are endless. Actually, when I stop and think about it,…

Tonight for dinner I was craving a huge plate of pesto pasta. However, I have been trying to eat a more balanced diet and my nutritionist has me on a fairly strict eating plan. I get 3 carbs, 3 proteins, 4 fruits, 1.5 tbs of oil and all the vegetables I want a day. Tonight,…