Happy Easter!

As someone who doesn't celebrate Easter, I have to say, it's one of my favorite holidays. I love Spring--chicks and bunnies, dyeing eggs, Easter egg hunts and deviled eggs. And in Italy I enjoy digging into the dove shaped cake called Colomba di Pasqua and big Perugina chocolate eggs impeccably wrapped.   I'll never forget my first day in Florence, because I got to see the famous "Scoppio del Carro," It's a kind of crazy spectacle with a cart coming into the piazza led by a team of oxen and plenty of pageantry. A wire connects the carriage with the duomo and a mechanical dove travels the distance between the two and when it reaches the duomo the cart explodes with fireworks. After that, it hard to get excited about peeps!  Tomorrow I will be sharing a very cool new recipe I created for deviled eggs with a secret ingredients I will reveal when I demonstrate the recipe at Macy's Union Square at 2 pm . I do hope you can make it! I will share t......

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Coffee Blending & Peet's Anniversary Blend

To create a recipe you have to know your ingredients and to blend coffee, you have to know your beans. At  Peet's  Coffee & Tea they don't just taste their coffee once, but three times, once at purchase, once when it ships and finally when it arrives at headquarters they taste it in the coffee tasting room, where they also roast samples of it. Recently I got to visit that very coffee tasting room, which feels a bit like a cross between a lab and a kitchen with drawers filled with bean samples, multiple kettles, a roaster, espresso machine and timers. I was in the company of a barista and Doug Welsh, coffee buyer and VP of Coffee, who combines beans to create coffee blends at Peet's. At the most basic level blending comes down to three things, says Welsh:  Acidity + Aroma  + Body Coffee tasting is also known as " coffee cupping " and it's not the same as just brewing coffee for drinking, in fact, like wine tasting, y......

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Passover Spinach Ricotta Gnudi

Spinach ricotta gnudi, made with no wheat flour, are my latest recipe, just in time for Passover. This week marks the beginning of the Jewish holiday celebrating the Israelites liberation from Egypt and also Spring, rebirth, renewal, freedom, belonging, ...you get the picture. Since the Israelites had to flee their oppressors quickly they didn't have time to allow bread to rise, so the story goes. To commemorate that time, during Passover Jews eat foods made with matzo meal or matzo cake meal, but not with regular flour. Most other non-wheat flours are also not allowed. Gnudi are a little larger and plumper than gnocchi but somewhat similar. Some people think of them as "ravioli without the pasta."  This recipe is very easy because you use one of those "blocks" of frozen spinach. The secret is getting as much water as possible out of the spinach. You want the dough to be very stiff. Rolling the dumplings in potato starch also helps keep them from falling ......

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Hakka Cuisine

If you want to try Hakka cuisine, head to Hakka Restaurant in San Francisco, or read  Linda Lau Anusasananan 's book, The Hakka Cookbook . I received a review copy of the book in the Fall, and was lucky enough to dine with the author at Hakka Restaurant recently and fell in love with the hearty robust flavors and comforting rich dishes. Even if you have other Chinese cookbooks, it's worth getting to know Hakka cuisine, because it's mostly home style cooking, ideal to try in your own kitchen. In the book Anusasananan traces her roots and shares stories from the people she meets on her journey into her past. Since Hakka people moved all over the world, there are stories about the cuisine from places like Peru, Hawaii and certain cities in the US and Canada. There are classic recipes for Fried Pork Hash Wontons, Salt Baked Chicken (which Anusasananan thinks may have been the creation of a crafty salt salesman) and lots and lots of vegetable dishes includi......

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