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Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.–Alice May Brock

Alice May Brock was the inspiration for Arlo Gutherie’s album Alice’s Restaurant. She was a painter, designer and owner of Alice’s Restaurant, formerly known as the Back Room Restaurant in Stockbridge, Massachusetts in the U.S.

Front of cookbook from Alice's Restaurant, Alice May Brock on cover. Photo courtesy of Aquarium Drunkard.

To read more about Alice and her cookbook, click here. To listen to Guthrie’s song Alice’s Restaurant, click here.

2 months agoby jonell_gallowayEveryone loves salt and pepper except when it comes to their hair. Hair changes, bodies change. Our comfort zone is threatened. Our mothers didn’t teach us how to act and feel with grey hair and wrinkles. They never talked about how the transition felt. Do the rules change? Do people’s reaction to us change when white starts to show? Is that the end of our sexual attractiveness and the beginning of old age and decrepitude? In any case, I’ve decided to take the leap and blue is my theme color (to match my eyes). . . . . . #goinggray

2 months agoby jonell_gallowayThese lupini clams, brought straight from the boat in Viareggio half an hour away on the coast, were so fresh they were practically howling, and they were plumper and meatier than the often tasteless vongole veraci usually used to make spaghetti alle vongole. I much prefer them. Here I was opening them in a slow-cooked garlic, parsley and white wine broth. Once opened, I removed them and cooked the juices and broth down for 20 minutes with a bit of tomato, after which I added the almost-cooked linguine to toss it briefly with the cooking juices. This is one of

2 weeks agoby jonell_gallowayWhen I was a child, my best friend's mother painted as a hobby. I once made a silly remark that the apple in her Cézanne-like painting didn't look perfect, and she said something that changed my life. "Jonell, beauty is not about being perfect. It's about looking at the scars and imperfections and the things that don't quite fit. Beauty is in the differences." Thank you, Mrs. Miller. Ever since I can't look at an apple without thinking of Cézanne's apples. I see the beauty in the bruises, the irregular shape, the variations in color; I remember that he didn't

2 months agoby jonell_gallowayIt's time to make castagnaccio, a chestnut cake made with flour, olive oil, walnuts, and pine nuts, and manafregoli, a chestnut polenta made by cooking flour in milk, using chestnut flour from the Garfagnana in Tuscany. These dishes are best made, I'm told, with the freshly ground flour, which I can buy straight out of a jute sack at the market. It's so prized that it even has a DOP. In Lucca, chestnuts are often marked simply "neccio," the local dialect, and you also see Farina di Neccio della Garfagnana. I also used it in my Thanksgiving stuffing.⠀ .⠀ .⠀