Culinary Adventures with Camilla

As February begins, I am forging ahead with my renewed  Foodie Reads Challenge . A friend loaned me her copy of  Love in a Dish...and Other Culinary Delights  by M.F.K. Fisher.* I was only one chapter in when I hopped on Amazon and ordered a copy for myself; this is definitely one of those books I want to have on my bookshelf! On the Page... I have long been a fan of Fisher's writing. And I had never heard of this book which is a curated collection of Fisher's writing, selected and edited by Anne Zimmerman. Fisher writes about potatoes... "Baked slowly, with its skin rubbed first in a buttery hand...with a fat jug of rich cool milk or a chunk of fresh Gruyère, it fills the stomach and the soul with a satisfaction not too easy to attain. ...Although few realize it, to be complementary is in itself a compliment." She writes about eggs... "Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg until it is broken. ...It is a poor figure of a ma...

To go with the warm lobster salad for my dad's birthday dinner, my mom requested braised lamb shanks. I had done them for Thanksgiving last year . So, I did a variation for last night. This time - inspired by a story I'm writing - I decided to braise them in an earthy mixture of coffee, beer, and the soaking liquid from the dried mushrooms. I made a smoked paprika-cherry glaze for my dad's party; for what we ate at home, I left it as a mushroom demi-glace. Ingredients 6 Tablespoons olive oil 1 onion, peeled and thinly sliced 1 leek, trimmed and thinly sliced eight 3/4- to 1-pound lamb shanks white whole wheat flour mixed with 1 Tablespoon ground cardamom for dredging 2 cups coffee 2 cups beer (I used a coffee stout) 1 Tablespoon honey 1 Tablespoon ginger syrup 1 cup boiling water 1 cup dried shitake mushrooms 2 cups sliced fresh oyster mushrooms freshly ground sea salt freshly ground pepper Procedure Place dried shitake mushrooms in a bowl an...

I signed up to test this dish for Food52 , thinking that it might be a contender for my Thanksgiving table. It surely was! adapted from Alexandra V. Jones' Wild Mushroom Couscous This dish comes together quickly since the couscous cooks in a mere five minutes. And it easily serves four as a side dish, two or three as a main dish. I used some local oyster and shitake mushrooms in my version; those earthy flavors blended well with the airy couscous. It was a marriage of layered, elegant flavors and has cemented its place on my table with its lovely texture and complexity of its taste. Couscous: 1 C couscous 1 handful dried shitake mushrooms 2 C organic chicken stock 1 T olive oil freshly ground sea salt Sauteed mushrooms: 1 C sliced fresh oyster mushrooms 1 C sliced fresh shitake mushrooms 1 shallot, minced 2 t soy sauce 1/4 C dry white wine 1 T butter 2 T fresh chopped parsley cracked black pepper, to taste Boil two cups of stock w...

Yesterday an ad for wild coho salmon enticed me to WholeFoods. And while I was waiting for my salmon to be wrapped, I noticed a pile of Drakes Bay oysters on ice. I was reminded of a birthday trip to Inverness a few years ago when Jake and Riley took to Tomales Bay in a kayak while Dylan and I hiked out to the Drakes Bay Oyster Company. So I bought a few oysters and had Jake toss them on the grill for an appetizer. Once they popped open, all they needed was a squeeze of Meyer lemon. I just love the bounty from my CSA box. Delicious!