Culinary Detection: Creole Fritters with Cheese Sauce

Fritz Brenner, as every mystery reader knows, is Nero Wolfe’s personal chef. In any of Rex Stout’s Wolfe books, the famously fat detective seems to spend as much time at the dining room table as he does at exposing murderers. The dishes Fritz creates for Wolfe are no more than tantalizingly described, but faithful readers [...]

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Three California Vegetable Dishes

I’m not a big fan of California cuisine. I feel that too often it throws together too many not-really-compatible ingredients, so the flavors clash rather than cooperate. But I keep looking into it and hoping for the best. An attraction for me of Christine Hanna’s book The Winemaker Cooks was the restrained exuberance of many [...]

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There’s a Meating Here Tonight

I’m a carnivore. I can’t help it: I would if I could. . . . Maybe. I do like vegetables, fruits, grains, cheeses, pasta — all those good things. And I know that, according to current nutritional ideas (which mysteriously change over time, remember), those are the healthful way to eat. But me, I need [...]

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Confessions of a Converted Okraphobe

Even as a child, I hated okra. My mother never cooked it, but one of her friends seemed to serve it, stewed, every time we went to dinner at her house, and I always loathed the slimy stuff. In later years, when I became interested in New Orleans cooking, I would make only filé gumbo, [...]

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