As part of my resolution to eat more salad, I am trying to buy ingredients that can be turned into a salad without too much fuss. You practically need to buy tender salad greens every day so I've been buying crunchy vegetables and hardier leafy greens instead. On my shopping lists these days are daikon radish, carrots, celery, fennel and red radishes. Shaved thin, they all are great salad fixings. I also buy avocados, and some citrus fruit to gussy up my salads.

I made this particular salad one night when I wasn't hungry enough for dinner and I had very little in the house to cook anyway. I loved it so much that I keep going back to the store to buy the same ingredients so I can make it again! It's based on my very faulty recollection of the Grapefruit Jicama Salad from the Slanted Door.

I particularly like the combination of Napa cabbage and radicchio. They are sturdy crunchy greens, (ok, technically not green at all!) but less hardy than red or green cabbage. I used O Clementine olive oil. It's just lovely, but any citrus infused olive oil would be fine if you have some on hand, otherwise use any extra virgin olive oil you like. The salad also includes candied pecans. I have made candied pecans hundreds of times and this is the easiest method of all.


Grapefruit Radicchio Salad Serves 2 as an entree or 4 as a starter

Ingredients

2 cups radicchio, shredded
1 cup Napa cabbage, shredded
1 grapefruit
1/4 cup pecans, chopped
2 teaspoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon smoked paprika
2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or citrus flavored olive oil
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

Instructions

In a small frying pan combine the pecans with the sugar and a teaspoon of water, cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly. When the sugar gets very brown take the pan off the heat and sprinkle the nuts with a pinch of salt and the smoked paprika, stir and let cool in the pan, making sure the nuts are separated from each other so they don't clump together.

Toss the radicchio and cabbage in a bowl. Peel the grapefruit using a knife to remove all the pith. Cut between the membranes to remove only the segments and drop them into the bowl with the salad. Using your hands, squeeze the remaining juice out of the grapefruit membranes and core, onto the salad. Add the olive oil and vinegar and toss. Top with the cooled candied pecans. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

The most challenging thing about quinoa is learning how to pronounce it, "keen-wah." After that, it's smooth sailing. A super healthy Peruvian "grain," quinoa is as delicious as it is healthy. While quinoa tastes and cooks as if it were a grain, it's actually a seed and has a light, mild flavor and somewhat chewy and creamy texture. It does a wonderful job of absorbing the flavors in dressings or vinaigrettes. Think of it as a healthier version of couscous that you can serve hot, at room temperature or cold.

I used to visit a shop on Grant Avenue in North Beach that had lots of vintage ephemera. The postcard that said "California, land of fruits and nuts" always cracked me up. Fruits and nuts. You have no idea. California is such a magnet for weirdos, and I mean that in a good way. As an agricultural state, we also happen to have lots of actual fruits and nuts. We are the top agriculture state, and the nation�s sole producer (99 percent or more) of a large number of specialty crops, including almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, grapes, raisins, pistachios, clingstone peaches, dried plums, sweet rice, pomegranates and walnuts, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

I used the sunny California combination of almonds and tangerines in this salad, but you could use segments of navel orange, clementines or any other sweet citrus fruit. This salad is good at room temperature. It would make a perfect accompaniment to grilled fish or roast chicken, but it would also be a good potluck dish. You could go even more "California" and serve it piled high in an avocado half. It will keep for a day or so, but it best eaten soon after you make it.

Note:This recipe calls for the juice and zest of half a lemon. Zest the lemon while it's still whole, then cut it in half and juice it.

Citrus Quinoa Salad with Toasted AlmondsServes 4

Ingredients

1 tangerine, peeled, seeded and cut into chunks (remove as much of the membranes as you can)
1 cup white quinoa, rinsed well
1/2 lemon, preferably organic
2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 medium scallions, thinly sliced
1 Tablespoon flat leaf parsley, minced
1/4 teaspoon sriracha, or more to taste
2 Tablespoons thinly sliced toasted almonds

Instructions

Rinse the quinoa thoroughly, then toast it in a dry pan over medium heat for a few minutes until it is fragrant.

In a medium saucepan, bring 1 3/4 cups water, the quinoa, and 1/2 tsp. salt to a boil over high heat. Cover, reduce the heat to medium, and simmer until the water is absorbed and the quinoa is translucent and tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Spread out the quinoa on a baking sheet to cool to room temperature.??

Finely grate the zest from the lemon and then squeeze the juice into a mixing bowl. Add the olive oil, scallions, parsley and sriracha. Fold in the quinoa and tangerine pieces, season to taste with salt and top with almonds just before serving.

Enjoy!

Happy New Year! It's hard after the holidays not to want to take a break from all the indulgence and make sweeping resolutions. My diet resolutions this year are simply to eat more soups and salads. Sure, I'd love to eat healthy, exercise more and lose weight but I'm trying to be realistic.

When it comes to soup, there is no problem. I probably eat soup for dinner once a week. While I grew up eating salad every night, it's just not all that popular around my dinner table. I have a couple of ideas to shake things up. I am going to try to develop more interesting salad combinations and recipes. I am going to get creative with salad dressings and I am also going to try eating more salad for lunch.

This is a salad I served on New Year's Eve. It is very festive looking, don't you think? The salad is light and healthy, but has a good variety of flavors and textures. The Napa cabbage adds color and crunch, the pomegranate adds color but also sweetness, which is balanced by the saltiness of the miso dressing. The dressing uses white or shiro miso, which is less salty than other darker miso. I've added a few teaspoons of tahini which I always seem to have on hand for making hummus. I don't use it for anything else! Perhaps finding more uses for pantry staples should be another resolution...

Avocado Pomegranate Salad with Miso DressingServes 4-6

Ingredients

8 leaves Napa cabbage, shredded
8 cups mesclun or spring greens
1/2 cup pomegranate "seeds"
1 avocado, peeled, pitted and diced

Dressing
3 Tablespoons rice bran oil
2 Tablespoons rice vinegar
2 Tablespoons white miso
2 Tablespoons water
2 teaspoons tahini
1/4 teaspoon sugar

Instructions

Whisk together the salad dressing ingredients and taste for seasoning.

Toss the cabbage and greens and dressing to lightly coat. Garnish each serving with pomegranate and avocado. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

December started out chilly with a quick weekend in Montreal and ended back in San Francisco after a glorious week on Oahu. There was lots of good food in both places, stay tuned for more details!

Some of my favorite posts on the Epicurious blog were about cognac and brilliant (non-alcoholic) bubbly beverages. I also ran an interview with Elizabeth Andoh, author of the gorgeous book Kansha. One of my more popular posts was my best tips for making macaroni and cheese.

Speaking of tips, my somewhat controversial post on travel tips ran on Between Bites, there was also Dorie Greenspan's shopping guide to Paris (you'll want to bookmark it for your next trip!). Last but not least I also had a piece about the sweet treats you can eat in Louisville.

Finally I have some big news to share, as of January I will be the San Francisco editor of BlackboardEats.com. I hope you will poke around the site and sign up for great restaurant deals in Los Angeles, New York or San Francisco as well as the "everywhere" edition. I will continue blogging here and there.

Happy New Year!

I love reading trend reports and like a horoscope I scan to see what I agree with and what I don't. I hope you enjoy my predictions for what and how we will be eating and drinking in 2011! Agree or disagree, let me know your predictions and opinions in the comments section.


1. Farmers and other producers are stepping further into the limelight as we grow weary of celebrity chefs. Did I just say that? Without naming any names, let's just say some chefs seem a bit overexposed. Lots of cookbooks in 2010 featured farmers, farms and locally grown produce. Farmers markets and eating local continued to grow in popularity as people discovered how good truly fresh produce tastes. Some of the best cookbooks featuring farmers this year were Growing Roots: The New Generation of Sustainable Farmers, Cooks, and Food Activists, Edible: A Celebration of Local Foods, Eating Local:The Cookbook Inspired by America's Farmers and my favorite, Harvest to Heat: Cooking with America's Best Chefs, Farmers, and Artisans.

2. Wild ingredients. This might be the next big thing after eating "local." Some are calling it "forest to table." Foraging won't be limited to mushrooms, but will include all kinds of unfamiliar ingredients from sea rocket to miner's lettuce and cucumber root. Haut cuisine chefs are already seeking out obscure but local wild ingredients. Daniel Patterson and Noma chef Rene Redzepi captivated their audience in San Francisco earlier this year when they spoke on the subject and handed out samples. Look for classes on wild ingredients and foraging expeditions.


3. Unorthodox dining options. Pop ups, food trucks, market stalls, underground supper clubs. It's not new, but the phenomenon just keeps growing. The difficult economy has inspired great creativity when it comes to tweaking traditional food business models. In San Francisco the restaurant within a restaurant took hold in the form of Mission Chinese Food, in residence at Lung Shan. Both entities seem to be thriving under the new arrangement. And pastry chefs have been branching out beyond restaurants to offer all kinds of exciting treats including ice cream, candy and cookies, find them at farmer's markets, pop ups, ice cream shops and more. A good example? William Werner's Tell Tale Society that offers a CSA-like monthly package of assorted sweets.

4. More interesting cocktails, beyond just vodka drinks. I think whisky and gin will continue to gain in popularity, but also the full range of browns--bourbon, rum, rye, tequila, and cognac. Rum in particular seems poised for a revival, punches and Tiki bars and tropical drinks are definitely back in vogue, examples include Smuggler's Cove in San Francisco and The Hurricane Club in NYC. Now will someone please let Miami know? Drinks there are stuck in the 80's!


5. Technology is making inroads into the dining room. Some examples include Qsine the Celebrity cruise line restaurant where iPads are used as menus for food and wine, location aware check-ins and online dining discounts being offered by start-ups like Groupon and BlackboardEats, and an OpenTable iPhone app for making restaurant reservations on the fly.

6. Fusion is back! Actually I'm not sure it ever went away, but right now, it's not a dirty word. It's not just high end cuisine that is combining French and Japanese, you'll also find it often with street food, and in more everyday restaurants too. David Chang makes bacon dashi and Dennis Lee of Namu makes Gamja fries with kimchee relish, teriyaki, and chopped short ribs. Other favorite bites in this category include Korean tacos, mole duck sliders, Japanese ceviche, ube red velvet cupcakes, Indian pizza.


7. Offshoots, gastropubs and burgers. Even the most high end restaurants need something to appeal to the masses. Look for more big name chefs and restaurants to open accessible restaurants, cafes and even airport kiosks. The tastiest food I bought in an airport this year came from Icebox Cafe in Miami, a trendy Lincoln Road favorite.

8. More ethnic fast casual. Call them chains or just multiple outlets, these restaurants have hit on a formula that resonates. Local examples include Out the Door, King of Thai Noodles, Papalote and Pica Pica. I can only hope we will see more Japan-based high quality ramen shops open up as they have in places in Honolulu.


9. Savory sweets. I'd love to tell you that cupcakes are going away. But they aren't. However they are morphing as are other trendy desserts, and taking on adult and savory profiles. Butch Bakery makes cupcakes flecked with bacon, and infused with everything from beer to brandy. Foie gras ice cream has appeared in San Francisco, LA and in Montreal, meanwhile soft serve vanilla ice cream topped with olive oil and salt is becoming a dessert menu standard. At last year's Winter Fancy Food Show Fabrique Delices was sampling savory macarons then at Boutique Point G. in Montreal I discovered crazy but delicious flavors including white truffle, parmesan and green olive. New York based Little Oven sells olive oil and balsamic macarons.

10. Sustainable meat. While offal has been trendy there often isn't that much of it available. With the concern over health, safety and the general nightmare that is concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO), I think there will be renewed interest in rabbit, animals that graze such as pasture raised lamb, bison, venison and goats as well as organic and grass-fed beef. I also think less used cuts will be more popular such as veal breast and lamb riblets.

I'm not much of a coffee drinker but I love hot chocolate and I love tea. I enjoy the richness of hot chocolate, but sometimes it's a bit too much. I certainly couldn't drink it everyday. I have tried quite a few chocolate flavored teas and while some of them are pretty good, I've discovered a more satisfying solution. I make hot cocoa with equal parts tea and milk.

On the surface this might seem like a weird thing to do, combining cocoa and tea but it's really quite delicious. I learned from chocolate authority Alice Medrich that the fat in dairy products coats your tongue so the flavor of chocolate is sometimes muted in very creamy preparations. She said you can make cocoa with hot water, but I have found that tea provides an amazing addition of flavor. I like a little bit of milk to add some texture. The result is a beverage that is richer and more viscous than tea and milk, but not quite as cloying as hot cocoa can be. In the Winter, I could drink it just about everyday!

The types of tea that work with chocolate vary. I've tried it with herbal, green and flavored black tea. I like it with Earl Grey, herbal peppermint tea, but my hands down favorite is with jasmine tea. I've had chocolate confections that were flavored with citrus, peppermint and jasmine so I was fairly certain each of those flavors would work nicely. But it's certainly worth more experimentation. There could be other types of tea that are wonderful with cocoa too maybe chai or vanilla tea? Let me know what types you try!

Note: The amount of cocoa will vary based on the brand you use. You want to use enough cocoa to make a cup, but replace part of the milk or water with tea. You could also use a sweetened cocoa if that's what you have on hand just adjust the sugar to your liking.

Tea-infused Hot CocoaMakes 1 serving

Ingredients

1 teaspoon tea or a tea bag
2 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (I am currently using Hershey's)
1 1/2 Tablespoons sugar, or to taste
1/2 cup milk (I use whole milk)

Instructions

Make a cup of strong tea as directed, use a little less than the usual amount of water, no more than 6 ounces. In a small saucepan whisk together the cocoa powder, sugar and a few tablespoons of brewed tea, to make a smooth paste with no lumps. Whisk in the milk and about 1/2 cup of tea. Heat gently until hot, but do not boil, serve.

Enjoy!

When it comes to cookbooks, there is one for just about everyone. There are also certain categories like baking and pastry where it is impossible to pick just one.

SWEETS
Baking is not easy, but some cookbook authors explain it effortlessly. At first I was going to call this section "bakers" but it's really more than that. These are books for anyone who appreciates sweets. Even non-bakers will find something to love.

Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunch Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies
Alice Medrich is a goddess of baking and chocolate. She is like a perfectionist, scientist and genius pastry chef all rolled into one. Her recipes are simply marvels. In this book Medrich works with different flours, and often scales back the sugar and fat so flavors really shine.

Bookmarked recipes: Wheat-free toffee bars, Breakfast biscotti, Pebbly beach fruit squares

Why? Because these are not just your standard run-of-the-mill cookies. There are lots of originals you won't find elsewhere

Who? Any passionate baker or cookie appreciator








Ready for Dessert
David Lebovitz, blogging phenom and former pastry chef at Chez Panisse has written several cookbooks, but this might be his best yet. It's a compilation of all his favorites--from ice cream to cookies to cake and fruit desserts. You will also enjoy the notes with each recipe that tell stories, share tips and often produce giggles.

Bookmarked recipes: Bahamian rum cake, Chocolate crack cookies, Watermelon sake sorbet

Why? You've read his blog, and probably tried his recipes for free. Now it's time to pay the man!

Who? Anyone who appreciates well-written and well-tested recipes in the specialty where you need them the most. Lebovitz is not working in a professional kitchen so these recipes should work as well for you as they do for him.





Bon Appetit Desserts
You know why you read Bon Appetit, you are looking for fresh, solid recipes that you can serve to friends as well as family. In this massive volume there are step-by-step photos, ingredient and equipment notes and plenty of tips.

Bookmarked recipes: Banana caramel napoleons, Oranges with pomegranate molasses and honey, Black forest boule-de-neige

Why? Creative, impressive recipes and plenty of them, 600 to be exact.













SPECIAL INTERESTSGluten-free? Italian food fanatic? Flavor freak? Science geek? Guy with only bacon in the fridge? I got you covered. These are books for special audiences and special needs.

Gluten-free Girl and the Chef
The book is about Shauna James Ahern, the gluten-free girl and Daniel Ahern, her husband, the chef. It's filled with recipes that mostly would appeal to anyone, gluten-free or not. But there are also recipes for those who cannot eat gluten. Embracing life and love and good tasting things are what the 'girl and the chef are all about and so is the book.

Bookmarked recipes: Bacon-wrapped pork belly, Watermelon gazpacho, Creamless corn chowder

Why? The stories and the recipes will help you find or rediscover the joy that comes in the kitchen. The tips on gluten-free baking alone are priceless.

Who? Well, gluten-free first and foremost, but anyone who cooks for someone gluten-free would appreciate this book too.








Ethan Stowell's New Italian Kitchen
Ethan Stowell is to Italian food what David Chang is to Asian food, not a purist but a flavor junkie and a stickler for quality. Both make big bold food and manage to coax the most flavor out of everything they make. They seduce you with texture and intensity. They are not about authenticity, but about creating fantastic food. Hallelujah! I love Stowell's restaurants and am excited to be able to make some his most memorable dishes at home.

Bookmarked recipes: Sardine crudo with celery hearts, pine nuts and lemon, Spaghetti with garlic, chile and sea urchin, Rhubarb soup with prosecco

Why? Ethan Stowell is one of the most exciting chefs around and even if you don't follow his recipes, you may be inspired by his approach

Who? Anyone who appreciates gutsy, sexy food and is willing to seek out some ingredients you won't likely find in the supermarket






My Calabria
Americans love Italian food and yet our repertoire is terribly limited. We know so little about Italian food and most Italian cookbooks rarely if ever cover Calabrian food. Cooking teacher and Calabrian native Rosetta Costantino has shared her family recipes and a glimpse into a different way of life.

Bookmarked recipes: Creamy chickpea soup with shrimp and anise seed, Cooked red onion salad with oregano, Potatoes layered with artichokes and breadcrumbs

Why? Because there is so much more to Italian food than pizza and pasta!(but yes, there are some great recipes for pizza and pasta in this book too)

Who? For anyone who adores Italian food, and wants to experience a bit of a lifestyle filled with gardening, foraging and preserving in addition to cooking what is in season





Recipes Every Man Should Know
I have a thing against little bitty books. Except if you are a guy and you're intimidated by cooking, perhaps a little bitty book is just the ticket.

Bookmarked recipes: Better-than-IHOP pancakes, Greens with bacon, Lobster with beer and butter sauce

Why? Because these dude-friendly recipes by the lovely writer and recipe developer Susan Russo will coax even the most reticent man into the kitchen

Who? Any guy who isn't sure where the kitchen is, let alone what goes on in there.












Cooking for Geeks
This is a book for people who want to know how stuff works. It's not extremely practical because of the way it's organized, but you can always look things up in the index (if you want practical you should get The Keys to Good Cooking). The volume is a mishmash of articles, interviews, science experiments and more.

Bookmarked recipes: Honestly? There are recipes, but it's not really about that.

Why? For the fun of it

Who? Science majors and those who wish they were