Ok - Just so I have it in writing.

Don’t schedule your dinner on your mother-in-law’s birthday and then re-schedule it on the same day as Daisy Chain Fields Festival and also David Byrne is playing at the Hollywood Bowl. And while we’re at it - maybe no dinners in August.

That being said, those who were able to attend - THANK YOU - your support means the world to me, and I think we had a lot of fun?

100% repeat guest & harshest critic - my dad - said it was the best dinner yet. So those of you who did not come - you missed out. [love you dad]

We started out in a completely different way than we have before - with an olive oil tasting. This is something I actually did in Spain, so I was glad to try and re-create it at our dinner. We tried four olive oils and it was fun to hear everyone’s opinions, what they tasted, and just start a conversation. I asked each person to pick their favorite oil (ok if repeats), and then customized course #2 with their choice.

Why do an olive oil tasting at all? Well you know, it’s very interesting - but 50% of the world’s olive oils are produced in Spain, and I think that’s a hefty margin - but not every olive or olive oil tastes the same, and you can’t always have the privilege of cracking open bottles at the store and tasting them. This way, my honored guests now know what Arbequina, Hojiblanca, Cornicabra, and Picual olive oils taste like - so they will be able to guess the flavor profiles of those oils out in the wild.

Our second course was Sopa de Ajo, Garlic Soup. Often referred to as a “peasant dish” the soup combines garlic with paprika, broth, and bread that becomes the base of the soup - you stir constantly so the bread breaks up and disintegrates. Then you stir in some egg yolks and sherry or sherry vinegar. I used a recipe that also called for scallions. The whole thing is served in bowls with homemade scallion croutons and topped with olive oil (each person chose their own olive oil based on the tasting!). The soup is really something else. The ingredients are so simple and the flavors are subtle - you aren’t being punched in the face with garlic, but it’s really pleasant to eat.

I did not try this soup when I was in Spain, but I did have a few soups in Spain and loved them all. There are many variations of this soup in Spanish cuisine alone, but also - Garlic Soup exists in other cultures too with endless variations.

With our olive oil tasting and our garlic soup we enjoyed a Biodynamic Cava from Spain (procured at Stanley’s in Los Angeles - a natural wine shop in Culver City where I am finding most of my wines for the dinners) - Azimut Cava Extra Brut from Catalonia made with Macabeo, Xarel-loand, and Parellada Grapes.

The next course was our tapas course. I intended to serve 5 dishes that would come out as they were ready and we would pass everything around the table to share. Of course, what I didn’t anticipate is that I would burn one of those dishes - so I’m sorry, but I’m never attempting carrot croquettes ever again (so much work went into them, and I finally ended up with 15 and then they all were burnt in the re-heating process).

Four dishes it was - plus an exceptional “cocktail”.

The first item I made was the Tinto de Verano - Wine of Summer! This drink is similar to a Sangria, but not the same at all. The base is a lemon-flavored soda, typically La Casera - which I could not find, so we used Pellegrino Limonata. Then you add a fruity red wine on top of that, some ice & you are good to go. At the last minute I thought - what if I made lemon slice ice cubes? I sliced my lemon rounds and popped them into a muffin tin, filled muffin tin with water and made large lemon ice-cubes! They looked very cute & were very practical. The wine I used was Gulp Hablo Vamos! also from Stanley’s, and it was perfect for this drink - since it is best served a bit chilled. We also made a non-alc version with grape juice, which worked out as well!

After the drinks were served and we had a little toast, I served the Tangerine and Chili Olives (store-bought). Although one could buy plain olives and re-marinate them with whatever flavors you want, nothing compares to these olives. I bought two giant boxes of them and we have basically none left. They were certainly a crowd favorite.

Along with the olives came the Grilled White Asparagus with Honey & Sherry Vinaigrette. I purchased the asparagus from La Catedral de Navarra which cans some of the best produce in Spain - expensive, yes? worth it, also yes. - working with raw white asparagus is a task and a half (and a seasonal task at that, and it is no longer the season), and as my favorite barefoot baddie Ina says “Store Bought is Fine”. I drained the asparagus and dried it a bit, and then threw it on the grill with some olive oil. Once it was pulled off the grill - I chilled it in the fridge. Just before serving, I removed any residual liquid, and then poured over a homemade honey & sherry vinegar dressing. The asparagus were perfectly tender, and the dressing was divine. If you didn’t know - Sherry Vinegar comes from Spain!

Next we had Patatas Bravas with Paprika Aioli, my favorite. Who doesn’t love a potato? The recipe I followed had me first boil the potatoes whole, let them cool, cut them and then roast them until crispy with olive oil and salt. Simple enough! I used Weiser farms potatoes - I think they were Amarosa which are pink on the inside. The Aioli, I had to make twice. The first time I added garlic and it only tasted like garlic. The second time I added no garlic and it finally tasted like paprika. I wanted to pipe the aioli on top of the potatoes (similar to how I was served it in Barcelona), but thought - maybe people want to be in charge of how much aioli they want, so I served the aioli on the side.

Last, but certainly not least in the Tapas portion of the evening, I served Pan con Tomate (Tomato Bread). If you’ve been reading my substack for a while, you know I am allergic to tomatoes. Regardless of my allergy, I knew I had to make this dish! First off, it’s peak tomato season here in Southern California. We are seeing every type of tomato pop up at the farmer’s market, and they are nothing short of irresistible. Second, this is one of those dishes that is just so quintessentially Spanish. It had to be done. I bought a grating bowl just to make it (the company I bought it from is not sponsoring me, so I won’t be sharing it here, but if you message me I will happily send you the link). I slapped on a glove so I could grate the tomato without breaking out in hives, and a few moments later we had the perfect tomato mixture for Pan con Tomate.

While we were enjoying the tapas - my dad volunteered to make the second batch of tomate to save me from a hive-related incident, and he was genuinely curious about how the bowl worked! I love it when people want to try new things.

Now, I didn’t mention this earlier in this post - but this meal was completely vegetarian. A part of me wonders if the fact that it was vegetarian could have potentially turned some people off from joining us - but even without animal proteins, we were all very satisfied with the meal by the end of the night.

Next up - the main event. I made a Vegetable Paella - took the recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty cookbook. Someone asked at the dinner “where did Paella come from?” And the answer is that it likely has a history beyond what is recorded, but the more recent history suggests it was a filling farm-workers lunch that combined the ingredients that were available around them - AND originally it was often made vegetarian because meat was not readily available or affordable. So even though you may think we should have made Paella with meat or seafood - I am glad we stuck to tradition.

The Paella is full of beautiful vegetables - many of which came from our farmer’s market - bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic, fava beans, artichokes, & olives! The rice I used is from Spain - almost had it confiscated in JFK when I was flying home, and the recipe calls for quite a bit of sherry vinegar which adds a great bite to the dish. Since I was borrowing the Paella pan from a co-worker, I did not let it get too crispy on the bottom (For fear of not being able to return her pan to her in the pristine condition she lent it to me in). It was so nice to eat this beautiful dish together, I cannot wait to make it again!

Last, but certainly not least - dessert / over two concepts.

I wanted to do a cheese plate because in Madrid I did a cheese tasting and it was really nice to taste different cheeses. But I had trouble finding exactly what I was looking for. [I should also mention here that I worked for several years as a cheesemonger, so I do enjoy a cheese tasting now and then.] What I wanted was an Aged Mahon (had a young one which is fine, but not the same), a Mixed Milk Manchego-Style cheese (got it), and a creamy goat (unsuccessful - ended up with Monte Enebro instead which is lovely but harder for people to wrap their head around flavor-wise). I served the cheeses with Marcona almonds from Spain, as well as Membrillo (Quince) paste. I also got the sweet torta crackers, and my husband picked up some other tapas crackers that he saw at a cute Spanish store in Malibu. The group enjoyed the cheese plate while I fried-up the churros.

Churros from Spain are not the same as churros from Mexico (which is what we, here in Los Angeles, are used to), I found the Spanish churros to be less sweet, and a little crunchier than the Mexican churros I am used to. I’m not going to talk to you about how the churros I made almost did not come together, but I made it happen… The result was exactly what I was hoping for. I made some chocolate - spiked with cinnamon and star anise, and thickened with a bit of cornstarch - best consistency for dipping the churro.

We enjoyed the cheese course & churros with some Asturian Cider which was a final fun sip to enjoy with out meal.

We ended our evening with a telescope-viewing of the Moon from our back “courtyard” and everyone went home with some Rabitos Royale to enjoy later.

All in all, a lot of work, but totally worth it for an excellent end result.

The next dinner is coming up in October - mark your calendars for October 10th.

More on that soon.

Love & Happy Spatulas,
Alyssa

Reasons to come:

1. Tinto de Verano - this summer staple is wine mixed with lemon soda, it may sound strange, but it is totally refreshing and lovely - almost like a variation of Sangria. I will also have a non-alcoholic version for those who don’t drink wine.

   

2. White Asparagus - I have some of the best imported White Asparagus from Navarra, Spain. We are going to be grilling it off and topping it with sweet honey, Vinagre de Jerez, and a flaky salt.

   

3. An Olive Oil Tasting?! Yes! We have four olive oils which I brought back with me from Spain to taste. They will all taste different and it will be a fun way to open up our evening.

4. Everything is Vegetarian! (Say what now?) Yeah. Everything is vegetarian. It’s summer, and the produce is just gorgeous right now at our farmer’s market - I want to feature that as best I can. While Spain may be known for Chorizo, Iberico Jamon, Seafood, and more - I thought it would be nice to share the vegetarian side of things - lighter meal, lighter price, and more room for…. #5

5. I’m making Churros! Yes. You cannot resist them.

   

6. Can you say Paella? I’m making a vegetarian Paella (yes, I’ve made it before when I worked full-time as a chef). Someone has graciously lent me their paella pan, so we are going to have it family-style as our main course. It will be full of summer produce, saffron, and rice that they almost took from me at the airport (Whoops).

   When we’re eating the Paella, perhaps I will share with you all of the foods I have brought into this country from my travels over time - what to pack in your suitcase instead of your carry-on, and where to source imported ingredients from Spain right here in California!

7. My dinner is less expensive than an actual trip to Spain, but we can talk about what that may cost, and how to make it happen for you if it’s a destination you desire to visit (when is the best time to go? what cities/regions to visit? etc.)

8. We won’t be eating as late as they do in Spain. In Spain it is common to start dinner around 9 PM! While embracing this Spanish tradition would prepare you for a trip to Spain, we are starting at 7 pm with a glass of Cava and an Olive Oil tasting, and then moving into our tapas - this will prepare your tastebuds instead!

9. Last, but certainly not least, you will meet cool people from all walks of life, you will eat great food, and I hope you will learn something new. If you’ve been to Spain before or not, you will have something special to bring to our dinner table.

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

PS. Curious how to RSVP? It’s simple - just send me an email - avesilves@gmail.com

Last year I was lucky enough to travel through parts of Spain on a work trip. It was my first time visiting Spain, so I was determined to see as much as I could [in the cities on my itinerary] in the short time I had.

I started my trip in Barcelona - arriving early in the morning after a long long long night of travel, I worried I would be too tired to do anything. Luckily, the hotel had my room ready for me! After a shower and quick refresh, I hit the pavement. I started with Brunch across the street from my hotel, Smoked Salmon Eggs Benedict on a Bagel. Not your typical Spanish fare, but it was late in the morning, I was hungry, and I needed some protein and some carbs.

Then I walked uphill through the Jardins de Laribal in Montjuïc to the Fundació Joan Miró. Miró is one of my all-time favorite artists, so visiting this museum was of great importance to me.

I was determined to then go to the Picasso Museum, but I went to my hotel and immediately fell asleep. I woke up just in time for my evening food & walking tour of Barcelona. My guide was actually from France, but she’s been living in Barcelona for quite some time! We visited four stops to try some local / regional specialties. Much of what we had on this tour is inspiration for my dinner next month!

We started with Patatas Bravas with Aioli & Beer at a craft brewery Fàbrica Moritz. I love potatoes in pretty much every form, I could have eaten the entire plate served to us, but was happy to share with my fellow tour-mates. Next we went to a locals Bar/Bistro Bar Calders (while passing by the Mercat del Llibre Dominical de Sant Antoni for a little history lesson on Barcelona).

We started with Tinto de Verano - a sort of simplified Sangria, red wine with sparkling lemonade. It was a bit warm (even for February), so I was glad to have a cool drink. Even with my tomato allergy, I knew I could not get around tasting Pan con Tomate - it is the thing to have in Spain besides Iberico Ham. If you’re thinking Bruschetta - think again, it may not look like much, but the flavor of the fresh tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil on bread is perfection. We tried several Croquetas, another popular Tapa in Spain, Spinach & Cheese, Quince & Cheese, Shrimp & Mushroom (I passed on this one), and Ham & Cheese (I had one bite since I don’t typically eat pork). I could have stayed all evening happily at Bar Calders, but on we went to La Esquinita de Blai in the Blai neighborhood of Barcelona for a true Pintxos experience.

They actually count how many “picks” you have on your plate when you’re done eating, and that is how you pay. I was so overwhelmed with choice, I don’t even remember what I ate (and somehow, I was also getting really full!). Plus I knew dessert was coming.

Our final tour stop - Dessert - We ended up at Forn D’en Pau for Churros and Chocolate, and the perfect end to our evening.

The next day was my only full day in Barcelona, and my goal was Gaudí.

There are at least 12 buildings attributed to Gaudí in Barcelona proper, and I was determined to see as many as possible. I knew I would not have time to go inside to each house that has indoor access, but even from the outside the buildings are magnificent.

I started at the Güell Pavilions. You cannot go inside, but the gate guarding them alone is a masterpiece - a dragon with his mouth wide open. Some of Gaudí’s first creative works were iron-work lampposts - and while he is known a lot for his buildings, it’s some of these smaller iron design elements that make Gaudí’s work so special and memorable. From there I walked to the Finca Miralles Gate - almost snakelike along the boulevard, it used to be the entrance to the Miralles family home, but that home no longer exists and has been replaced with apartment buildings. Here there is also a life-sized statue of Gaudí which was added in 2000.

After this I met a small group at Park Güell for a guided visit. I did not do a lot of research before this tour, but I was so happy to learn so much about the space. Originally, the land was supposed to become a private community for “healthful living” with 60 houses across 40 acres and no more than 500 residents. After two houses were built, the project ran out of money, and eventually was sold to the city of Barcelona (And thank goodness for that so we can all enjoy it!). I loved walking around the space, but I was also very overwhelmed, and we didn’t have a ton of time here since we also were going to Sagrada Familia next. You could easily spend a full day walking around here exploring around every corner, looking at each mosaic, and learning about the imagery Gaudí chose to include.

We moved onward to Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família. If you are going, I highly recommend booking a skip-the-line tour so you can use a separate security entrance from the main one, and essentially “skip the line”. Do not show up without tickets, you will miss your entire day. The church is still incomplete 144 years later, and 100 years after Gaudí’s untimely death in 1926, but there is much to see and appreciate. I hope you are able to visit at the right time of day, when the sunlight is just hitting the stained glass, it creates an almost aurora borealis on the walls of the church. The current prediction for completion of this masterpiece is 2034 — we’ll see!

After the tour I walked to Eixample to see a few more Gaudí houses. I started with Casa Calvet which I think a lot of people probably skip. It is one of his earlier projects, and you can tell it is Gaudí by the beautiful ironwork balconies on the facade. From there I headed to Casa Batlló which you can go inside of, but I chose not to go in due to time constraints. The building is on the main Passeig de Gracia, it was an existing building that Gaudi renovated between 1904 and 1906. The exterior is incredible, balconies that look like shark skeletons, colorful mosaic work, and his signature rounded stonework to break up the rigidity of the original building.

Not a Gaudí building, but one he consulted on - a few doors down from Casa Batlló is Casa Lleo Morera. The facade is beautiful and since you’re right there, it’s worth a quick peep. After Lleo Morera, I walked to Casa Milà, also known as “La Pedrera”. The building is on a corner which is nice so you can see it on two streets from the outside. My original notes say that it seemed as if the building was melting into the sidewalk while also evaporating into the sky above. You can visit inside Casa Milà, but again due to time I chose to view only the exterior. The building features Gaudí’s signature sweeping curvature as well as ironwork balconies, a beautiful building indeed.

My final stop on my Gaudí Day was Casa Vicens. It is often cited as Gaudí’s first major work to be finished. The building is quite unlike his other works, filled with vivid colored tiles and checkered exterior. The architecture is certainly inspired by Moorish designs (more common in Southern Spain), with cut windows and beautiful ironwork. You are able to go inside the house for a self-guided tour, and as it is less popular than his other buildings, you are less likely to incur a crowd here. Again I only viewed it from the outside, but when I return to Barcelona some day I do want to go inside this house, and the others.

I am sad I did not have time to visit the main Market in Barcelona, but I do hope to return some day so I can see even more (and hopefully spend more than two nights there).

The next morning I left Barcelona and headed to Madrid to meet my work group. We stayed at the charming Hotel Urso which is a historic and protected building in Barcelona, with one of the first elevators EVER in the city, and gorgeous stained glass in the main stairwell from 1909! The hotel is centrally located in a quiet little part of central Madrid.

We drove around the city so we could see different neighborhoods, fountains, sculptures, and learn about the history of Madrid from our guide. We then stopped at the Prado Museum (where one could spend all day, but we were on a time crunch to catch the sunset at the West Park so we spent very little time there looking only at the masterworks), I would say that the Prado is basically the Louvre of Spain - and it is worth your time while you are in Madrid. Sunset at West Park was a lovely scene - all the locals gathered together to share a snack, a drink, a laugh, some music and dancing, and of course the Sunset. I thought about what I’m typically doing at 5:30 on a weekday, and it’s sitting in traffic waiting to get home, I’d prefer this balance instead, enjoy some time with friends after work, and then head home later for dinner.

Our first dinner in Madrid was hosted by our hotel, and it was truly divine. I went for the vegetarian option which was a leek tart with carrot purée, it was unlike anything I’d had before. We all started with a different vegetable dish that I have tried to recreate - but I just wish I was back in Madrid where the chef from Hotel Urso could make it for me again.

The next morning we had a private tour of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, and when I mean private, I mean we were there an hour before the museum even opened and we had the entire place to ourselves! The collection is absolutely incredible, an art historian’s dream. I will post some photos here of some pieces I was thrilled to see in person. We were more leisurely in this museum than the Prado, but again I could have spent an entire day here. If I had more room in my luggage, I would have purchased both book volumes of the museums collection.

After the museum we went on a food tour of Madrid. We started at the Mercado de la Paz in Salamanca, I was thrilled to finally be in a Spanish market - and what was I searching for? White Asparagus from Navarra of course! We had such a lovely guide who purchased us all a bag of rice to make paella with as well as the “mix” used for paella, and then he shared with us two versions of Tortilla Espagnola (Spanish Tortilla which is made of potatoes and eggs (and sometimes onions). While we were waiting for the Tortillas to be served, I walked through the market and found some small jars of White Asparagus which I brought home with me.

Next, we went to Coalla Serrano which is a restaurant, gourmet grocery, and cheese counter. We did a cheese tasting with wine pairing, and I wish I had written down the names of the cheeses we ate. Each one was better than the last.

After Coalla we had one of the most exceptional food experiences at Sala de Despiece - we went to the Butcher Shop (SDD2), and we ate in the refrigerator…

We had the Artichoke (Savory Version & Sweet Version with Chocolate), a beef tartare dish that was also available with a slight sear, a mushroom dish, leek with truffle, and a sort of savory churro. Every dish was prepared right in front of us from scratch, it was quite incredible.

With the afternoon free I really wanted to take myself to the Reina Sofia Museum, but I wasn’t feeling 100%, so I had a rest instead. Later in the evening we had dinner at the Mandarin Oriental Ritz Madrid. A lot of travel advisor trips is seeing hotels and then eating at them - but the food was incredible here too.

They started us with a Consommé that I wish I could replicate, then we had a Pumpkin Cream dish that was divine. The main course was Lamb Shoulder with Ras El Hanout and Couscous, and we wrapped things up with a Basque-style Cheesecake.

The next day we departed from Madrid and head to Córdoba for a quick city tour. Córdoba is known for the great Mosque-Cathedral in the center of the Ancient town. When we arrived the clouds were rolling in, and we were quickly met with a storm. I always travel with a small umbrella, but many of my colleagues stopped in a small shop to purchase umbrellas! The skies cleared briefly for us to witness a beautiful sculptural installation in the city that I was eager to see!

We then drove to the Castillo de Almodóvar (famous for being featured in Game of Thrones). After a tour of the Castle, we enjoyed some tapas with the owner’s wife, Eva, and she told us about the family history of the castle as well as what she and her husband are doing to keep up the structure.

Later on, we drove to Seville, our home for the next couple of nights.

The next morning we had more rain on our way to the Alcazar (also featured in Game of Thrones). I feel like I enjoy seeing popular places to visit in the rain, and I much prefer it to the heat (it’s supposed to hit 107º this week in this part of Spain!), the only trouble is that people crowd under the covered areas instead of spreading out in the open areas. I really enjoyed the different tiles in the Alcazar, I wish I could have spent more time with each design.

The skies cleared briefly for our visit to the very outdoor Plaza de España, and I am not sure I’ve ever seen anything like this place. It was built in 1928 and features every province of Spain in Mosaic tile around the plaza. In the Summertime you can take a boat on the little moat running through the square.

Next we visited the Mercado de Triana for an exquisite lunch at the Obrador La Osa stand. We had a vegetable soup with rice, olives, a potato salad, an avocado and tomato salad, and a delicious beef stew that I’d really like to recreate someday - Guiso de Carne de Retinto. We were joined at lunch by an incredible Flamenco guitarist and some of his relatives who sang and danced and played for just us in the middle of the market. Of course, people stopped by to watch and listen, but it felt like we were with a group of friends and someone pulled out their guitar. It was a special and emotional moment for our little group.

After lunch, I met up with a friend of Michael’s who lives in Seville and she showed me a few secret places, and we had some local pastries together. She’s actually also a tour guide, so if ever you need a contact in Seville - I have the perfect person for you!

Seville was our last stop in Spain, we had our last meal at the historic Hotel Colón Gran Meliá which is the home to decades of history with Flamenco, Bullfighters, and more! The lobby is both a museum and a love letter to the city of Seville, and worth walking through when you’re in town.

The next Happy Spatulas x Culinary Passport Pop-Up dinner is on August 15th, and all about Spain, but with a focus on vegetables - inspired by my time in the Mercado de la Paz and the produce bounty I witnessed there. There are some items I brought back from Spain that we will be enjoying, as well as featuring the beautiful fresh produce of Southern California. I really hope you’ll join us next month for this dinner!

Brochure & Menu are below. I hope to see you there (Bring a friend)! We have 10 spaces total. If you’d like to come, please send an email to avesilves@gmail.com and I will add you to the list!

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

On Saturday evening we had our 3rd Culinary Passport dinner - Taste of Türkiye! As I wrote in my last post, I traveled to Türkiye in March of this year and was so inspired by the flavors there, I knew I had to try and re-create some of them in a dinner!

We had a couple of repeat guests (THANK YOU!) and several first-time guests (THANK YOU!), but overall it was a fabulous crowd and we talked about Türkiye and other unique travel destinations.

I must take this moment to SINCERELY thank each and every one of my guests for taking photos. I am so grateful to all of them for taking photos of the whole meal and sharing them all with me quickly so I could write this blog sooner rather than later.

Importing wine from Türkiye proved to be a challenge. None of my usual wine shops in Los Angeles carry Turkish wines. I happened to bring one bottle home from my trip, and I was able to buy two more of the same wine from a wine shop in New York that shipped it just in time. But wine wasn’t my only drink choice - I also knew I had to make Sharbat!

Sharbat (or şerbet) is a drink made from sugar, water, and whatever flavors you desire. The two I made were Saffron Ginger & what I called “Ottoman Blend” which was made from fresh plums & cherries along with cinnamon, cloves, and lemon. Both were refreshing, unique, and the perfect start to our evening. It was a hot summer day, and our guests did not complain outwardly about the lack of AC as they enjoyed sipping on their refreshing Sharbat drinks! Sharbat is something I was served at one of the dinners I attended in Istanbul. The restaurant had five flavors, and I couldn’t decide, so they brought me a little taste of each one - I was glad to be able to recreate it. One of my guests said I need to bottle and sell it!! I don’t think I’m quite ready for another business adventure, but I may make it again in the future just for fun.

On the table I placed some dishes of grilled olives, but there’s a backstory here which I wrote about in my last post, I will re-iterate it here.

In 2021 when we traveled to Kenya we got stuck in Istanbul by missing our flight connection, we ended up staying in Istanbul for 24 hours because the next flight wasn’t until a full day later. We made the best of our time there, quickly found a guide to show us around the Mosques, Grand Bazaar, and the Spice Market. While walking through the spice market something caught my eye - grilled olives! I had never seen them before. Even though I knew we were getting on a plane the next morning, I purchased a small box of grilled olives to share with my family. They were delightful, and I hadn’t forgotten about them during my most recent trip to Türkiye. The only difference this time around was that every single olive vendor had grilled olives - so how would I decide? I eventually picked one, bought another small box, and ate them during my entire trip in Türkiye. I knew I had to have them as part of the menu for my dinner.

For the first course I made Mini Cheese & Herb Pide and Mini Meat Lahmacun. The Pide recipe I used is for a longer-lasting Pide, even though everyone enjoyed it - it isn’t what I envisioned for the dish. To me, it didn’t taste authentic or like anything I had in Türkiye.

On the other hand, the Mini Meat Lahmacun brought me right back to Istanbul. I was really proud of myself for knocking these out - and they were so divine. I baked them on a pizza stone which I think helped with the texture, and I used the traditional hot red pepper paste (Biber Salçasi Acı) to bring the mixture together. I used 2:1 ratio of Beef to Lamb, and I used a mix of Anaheim Peppers and Jimmy Nardello Peppers (fresh from our Farmer’s Market - Weiser Farms) as well. I served them with Parsley and Lemon as is traditional, to avoid fear of the current outbreak I did not include lettuce, but I did make Sumac-marinated onion slices which I had at one point on my trip with either Lahmacun or Pide and it was delicious.

The second course I wanted to make Yayla Soup. The soup is very simple, almost congee-like in style. You cook rice (or barley) in plenty of liquid (chicken or veggie stock), and then separately you thin yogurt with water. Then when the rice is done, you whisk the yogurt mixture into the rice mixture and whisk whisk whisk breaking up the rice a bit. The soup is finished with a dried-mint bloomed butter. We were served this soup in Cappadocia and I absolutely fell in love with it. It was simple but so flavorful.

I also served Tepsi Manti alongside the soup. If you’ve been reading this blog long enough, you know that dumplings are my favorite food. If you’ve known me long enough, you know that on our second date, my husband and I hand-made manti together from scratch - so Manti, in general, holds a very special place in my heart and in my life. If you don’t know what Manti are you can think of them like a small ravioli or tortellini - typically they are filled with meat and very tiny. Served most often in a yogurt sauce with an ISOT chili oil - sometimes with a tomato sauce. I tried to have them as much as possible on this most recent trip - but was stunned when in Bodrum I was served this Tepsi Manti.

The presentation alone is incredible, but I also sat there thinking about the execution of the dish, the way it has been cooked, and then I took a bite - they were soft in the middle, crunchy on the edges, the sauce was perfect - it was magical. I enjoyed re-creating them with a little cheat (I used wonton wrappers instead of making my own dough - for fear of running out of time/energy) - they came out perfect. You layer them all in a buttered pan, and then in order to be sure they will not only come out of the pan easily, but also separate from one another, you slather more butter / olive oil on top. I made a garlic yogurt sauce, Isot chili oil, and sprinkled a bit of dried mint on top.

I feel with these dinners I often struggle to decide the main course - Since we’d already had two starters with meat, I did not want to serve more meat (very common in Turkish cuisine), and not everyone likes Chicken, but I was flipping through one of our Turkish cookbooks and found this recipe for Vine-leaf wrapped salmon that has a grape molasses sauce and fresh grapes! Grape Molasses was the new ingredient I learned about on my trip and I knew I wanted to incorporate it into the meal. I also knew I wanted to make a Bulgur Pilaf, as it was often served to us with the main course - I only needed a vegetable. Luckily we were traveling with a Vegetarian on the whole trip, so I had lots of inspiration from what she was served - I decide to make Turlu which is almost like a Turkish Ratatouille - a recipe I also found in the Turkish cookbook - listed as Turluturlu. The recipe called for Potatoes and Pumpkin, but these ingredients seemed heavy and out-of-season. I instead substituted some beautiful summer squash from the farmer’s market and Mushrooms.

One guest mentioned that all three elements of the main course had such distinctive flavors from one another, but they did ultimately work well together on the plate!

Thinking my work was done, I still had dessert to contend with - the other big challenge for me. By the time we get to dessert, everyone is full or says they are full. I knew I had to make Kunefe - and try to make one like I had in Istanbul with the apples on top. We are in the height of Peach season here in Southern California, so I made my Kunefe with fresh peach slices on top as well as some toasted chopped pistachio and Kaymak (a Turkish cream - similar to English clotted cream).

In addition to the Kunefe - I also knew I had to offer Turkish Coffee & Turkish Tea. I had purchased both in destination, so I knew I had that part, but finding the right vessels was another story. We have tea and coffee mugs, but in Türkiye coffee and tea feel almost ceremonial. You need to serve the tea in the glass tulip cup, and you need to serve the coffee in an espresso-sized mug! We gathered what we had in terms of tiny mugs for coffee, but I purchased a Turkish tea set for the tea (anyone need a Turkish tea set… I bought two of them but only want to keep one - 6 glasses, 6 plates).

I also bagged up some tea leaves for everyone to take home - Apple tea which is unique and lovely - can be served hot or cold and is just dried apples, so no caffeine, and Black tea with dried roses - which I call Alyssa’s Rose Blend. I started adding dried roses to my black tea after my first visit to Türkiye, and I was glad to be able to refresh my supply this year.

All in all this was a lovely group of people enjoying a lovely meal. I am inspired to continue - and I had already decided my next dinner date and destination… and then they won the World Cup, so we’re eating SPAIN for a SPANISH SUMMER DINNER* in August. Those of you on the pre-notification email list will receive word later this week with the details, the Substack-only people will receive it a day or two later, and then the rest of the world next week as we announce the dinner on Instagram.

Until then…

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

*Dinner will be Vegetarian!

Amidst all the World Cup madness, I’ve struggled to find time to write.

Yes, it’s a lame excuse, but I once thought that Fútbol was going to be my whole life (when I was 12) and then I injured my knee and that was that!

However, when I was in Türkiye earlier this year, they had just qualified for the World Cup, so it was an exciting time to be there.

I’m pleased to share with you that the next pop-up dinner will be featuring the foods of Türkiye. I truly enjoyed my visit in March earlier this year, and I loved everything I ate while there!

In 2021 I was in Istanbul for 24 hours (missed flight connection)… it was enough time to realize it’s some of the best food in the world, but not enough to dive into it completely. Every time I take a trip, I make a food wish list. It isn’t a restaurant list - rather it is a list of regional specialties to keep an eye out for. Then, while I am in destination, I work to not only seek out these items from my research, but also see what else I can learn while I am there.

The first stop on my 2026 Turkish adventure was to Mısır Çarşısı - the spice market. This is one of the places I visited in my previous 24 hour visit to Istanbul, and a place I knew my group was not traveling to on our regular program.

My mission, should I choose to accept it - Grilled Olives.

When I visited in 2021, I walked down a narrow alleyway and amongst all of the regular olives was a barrel of green grilled olives - something I had never seen before. Even though I knew I was leaving perhaps 12 hours later, I still bought a small box of the olives to eat. The first bite was a revelation - briny but also smoky and sweet and salty and everything you want in an olive. When I returned this year, I was surprised to find that Grilled Olives have become very popular and they are everywhere. I even had a hard time making a choice. They varied in size, color, price… I’m sure in flavor too. I had to decide fairly quickly, and had no regrets, I brought the Olives along with me throughout my whole trip and finished them in our final destination - Bodrum.

My second mission was to buy spices and dried roses (which I add to my black tea). One spice that we’ve fallen in love with (my family) is Urfa Biber - also known as Isot Pepper. It’s smoky and sweet with a hint of spice, and perfect for meat & veggie dishes. You can also buy the slightly spicier sibling Pul Biber which is more commonly known here as Aleppo Pepper - spicier than Urfa, but just as delicious. The spice market can be a bit overwhelming, so I would recommend navigating with a guide if you can, and don’t accept samples from everyone who calls you “pretty lady” because… you’ll be full by lunchtime.

Speaking of lunch, when we were here in 2021, we were taken to a hidden Pide restaurant, you’d literally never find it, it’s in a local, rubble-filled courtyard in the middle of the spice market which also houses a tiny little mosque, but the Pide is delicious. I wanted to have it again, so I asked my 2026 guide to find it with me, she wanted to know how on earth I’d even heard of it before (it’s so hard to find, but it’s also literally right there in the middle of everything). There were no seats available, so they set a table up for us on a porch in the courtyard (to an abandoned building maybe?). We had cheese Pide which is shaped more like a boat, and meat Pide which you sprinkle with lemon, radishes, parsley, and maybe a little lettuce (similar to Lahmacun).

I don’t stay in 5 star hotels on every trip, but on this trip we were lucky to stay at The Peninsula in Istanbul which is right on the Bosphorus. When I arrived to my room, I thought - Ok I’ll take a beat, but someone immediately knocked on my door to offer me a fresh pour of Turkish tea - it really drew me in to the destination in the best possible way.

After my tea was poured, I was able to rest a minute before a sunset boat ride on the Bosphorus, followed by an incredible dinner at the hotel restaurant - Gallada. Gallada’s concept is Turkish food with an East Asian twist. The food was incredible, a menu was prepared especially for us, and I was delighted because they made a nut-free Kunefe for me so I could try it (for the first time). Every bite was more sumptuous than the last.

I could spend an entire separate post talking to you about Turkish Breakfasts, but the pop-up is a dinner, so we’ll skip the discussion and just look at the delicious food instead.

For dinner on our second night, we dined at the spectacular Tuğra Restaurant which is in the Çırağan Palace. A special item they have on the menu is a mixed meze platter consisting of bites and dips so you can have a taste of everything. What really wowed me here, however, was the Sharbat (Sherbet or şerbet). Not to be confused with the frozen dessert, Sharbat is a non-alcoholic drink made from sugar, water, and some kind of mix in for flavor (flowers, fruits, spices). They had five flavors, and I had to try them all. Pomegranate, Tamarind Ginger, Rose, Poppy, and Hurrem Sultan.

I was wowed by how fabulous the food was in Istanbul. Everything was fresh, bright, unique, and delicious.

Soon we were on the move to Cappadocia to stay in a cave hotel, and enjoy all of the regional specialties of the area! I have to admit, I didn’t create such a specific food list for this area, I knew there would not be much room for choice (when you’re traveling with a group and eating as a group), and was happy to just eat and learn and experience. In Cappadocia, I learned all about: the beauty of Grape Molasses, Caramelized Pumpkins doused with Tahini, Homemade food carries more heart than anything you can find in a Michelin star restaurant, sometimes yogurt soup is divine, and people in Central Türkiye really love fries.

I also learned about carpet weaving, ceramics, underground cave cities, overground cave churches, regional wines, and that sometimes it Hails randomly in March (and that’s why we didn’t do a hot air balloon ride).

Cappadocia is a special place and I have so much to say about it, but if you want to hear more, you’ll just have to attend the dinner!

Our last stop was the beautiful port city of Bodrum (by way of the ruins of Ephesus which are incredible). Bodrum is a Summertime destination that is filled with locals in the Summer. There are maybe two or three hotels that are open year-round. We didn’t have great weather, but we ate so very well. Tuti restaurant at The Marmara had an exquisite and inventive menu. Something that I knew I had to eat was Manti, which are small (tiny) ravioli-like dumplings served in a variation of yogurt sauce with chiles, sometimes tomatoes… or sometimes like this:

Tepsi Manti, as I have learned they are called, are different from the Manti I had previously on this trip, but I absolutely fell in love with them, and hope I can do them justice when I try to recreate them on July 18th.

My real last stop was the Istanbul airport, where I was delighted to find the Turkish Tea I had bought in 2021 was still there on sale, and that’s where we’ll end our meal too.

If you’d like to attend the pop-up dinner on July 18th, please send me an email ASAP - there are only FOUR spaces remaining!

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

We had a few repeat guests (THANK YOU) and a few new guests (THANK YOU), and we all remembered to take lots of pictures this time! A special thank you to Daisy for taking so many photos for me with my own phone! She also took some fab shots with her Digital camera :).

So let’s jump right into it. When I started planning the menu I thought a lot about the things we ate on our quick jaunt to Paris earlier this year, but also about previous times that I had visited Paris. To me, Paris is always a tangle of the old with the new. It’s a modern city that has every other heartbeat living in the past. In thinking about this, I wanted to make classic recipes but with modern flair.

First Course

1. Oeufs Mayonnaise - Eggs Mayonnaise is a CLASSIC French dish. Hardboiled eggs smothered in creamy mayonnaise. Sounds strange, sure, but it’s basically the same concept as a Deviled Egg, only you don’t have to scoop out those pesky yolks to achieve the end result. I knew I had to make the mayonnaise from scratch - there was no other choice! We didn’t eat Oeufs Mayonnaise on our trip, but it was on the menu at Minim’s Bistrot where a lot of this menu gathered inspiration.

2. Radis au Beurre avec Sel - Radishes with butter & salt - this, too, is a classic French dish. I actually “tested” it right when we came back from our trip in January with some nice butter we had at home. When we ate at Minim’s Bistrot - they just popped a plate of radishes and a slab of butter on the table like it were a basket of bread. If you’ve never had a radish with butter, you’re missing out. I mean, you know you just want to eat that fancy French Salted butter, but the Radish is at least a vegetable, so snack away! Radishes with butter and salt is one of my dad’s favorite snacks, so I’ve been making it for many many years.

3. Poireaux aux Vinaigrette - Leeks with Vinaigrette - So, if you’re at all like me you’ve watched Emily in Paris. Having come from the food industry and now being in the travel industry, it’s a fun show to watch (they stay at and film at a lot of the hotels we work with). If you remember the episode where Emily is assigned to do marketing for Leeks, Gabriel shows her how beautiful leeks can be. The scene is so epically silly, but the leek dish he makes is beautiful.

   

   I wanted to try and re-create it, but didn’t do so well. I created a base sauce with leeks & tarragon, but the sauce wasn’t the right color or the right consistency. Then I cooked the leeks same as he did, but they were uncooperative! I cannot tell if I undercooked them, overcooked them! Then I made a vinaigrette to balance the earthy flavors in the dish. Although I didn’t feel the dish was what I wanted, many of the guests said it was one of their favorite bites. My mom who almost never eats onion anything ate three pieces! Guess I need Gabriel to teach me how to prepare leeks properly next time (Jk).

We had the first course with a beautiful Sparkling Wine - NV Vloserie des Lys Crémant de Limoux Brut. All wines for this dinner were purchased from Stanley’s Wet Goods in Culver City. If you’re local in Los Angeles, it’s a wine shop I would highly recommend. I am not a bubbles gal, but really enjoyed this one from first sip.

Soup Course

4. Soupe A L’Oignon Gratinée - French Onion Soup (of course) - this is one of my favorite soups of all soups. I would order it off any menu anywhere in the world just for the melty cheese-y bread topping! And who doesn’t love a bowl of caramelized onions?1 The recipe I used is Ina Garten’s recipe for French Onion Soup. I like Ina’s recipe because it relies on the flavor profiles of three separate alcohols added to the soup, so you aren’t just tasting onions & veal stock. I was lucky enough to be gifted bay leaves from my friend Karen, so I used them in the soup, they smelled immaculate - and you could still taste them in the end product. I made the version for this dinner with vegetable stock (so it would be vegetarian) because I knew the Sherry, Brandy, and White Wine would carry an incredible flavor without needing the depth of a Veal or Beef stock to support the onions.

   We came across a fun problem about a week before the dinner and realized our lovely little Ikea soup bowls are not oven-safe. If you know French Onion Soup with a Gratinée topping, you know that it is finished in the oven so the cheese can get a nice broil on it. I thought to myself - I can just slice the bread and put cheese on it on a cookie sheet and put THAT under the broiler, then spatula it on top of each bowl. A colleague of mine said, “you better test that out!” but I didn’t need to - I knew it would work, and it did work!

We served the soup with this white wine: Eric Texier VDF Blanc Adèle - the wine is a blend of Clairette and Marsanne Grapes. If you know wine you’re probably sitting here thinking this light, dry, fruity white wine was drowned by the heaviness of the soup, but because this was a vegetarian French Onion Soup (no beef involved), and the soup base is alcohol, the pairing worked very well together. The wine was also a great pairing with the cheese - a surprisingly even balance. [Wine label is inspired by Adèle Blanc Sec Comic]

Main Course

5. Chou Farci - Stuffed Cabbage - So, you’ve been reading my Substack for a while and you know I cannot pass up a stuffed cabbage recipe… when I saw it on a menu in Paris, I was curious. It was nothing like any stuffed cabbage I’d had before. Our friends in Paris said they make it at home from time to time, and their recipe is different too. Then, the algorithm being what it is, or maybe the stars aligned, I was fed a “reel” of a chef making Chou Farci in a cake pan and serving it like a cake - when I saw that I knew it was my chance to make it for this dinner. We made a meat version for the carnivores, and a lentil version for the vegetarians. Both recipes beyond the main “protein” are completely identical. I did pre-test this recipe and learned a lot in the process. The best thing I learned by testing it ahead of time was that it gave me the confidence to make it for this dinner (And to make it ahead!).

6. Pommes de Terre aux Echalotes - Potatoes with Shallots - I just love a roasted potato - this dish actually brought up a really fun conversation at the table - one of our guests said an icebreaker she’s done with teams in the past is everyone goes around and shares their favorite potato dish and their least favorite potato dish. We played the game at our table, and loved it! I think everyone had different potatoes that they liked and disliked! This recipe was inspired by our trip to the Marche D’Aligre in Paris (Farmer’s Market).

7. Haricots Verts, Beurre, Herbes de Provence - To round out our main course I made a variation of Green Beans that we’ve been loving recently. I love a simple green vegetable with butter and a little herb of one kind or another. We used our fancy French butter for this dish as well as French salt and Herbes de Provence. The recipe is simple - I blanched the Green Beans until they were just tender and then tossed them in melted butter mixed with the herbes and salt. 1,2,3 Done!

The wine we served with the main course was a fun one with a great label (no, I don’t just buy wines based on the labels). Causse Marines ‘Peyrouzelles’ Gaillac Rouge is an epic blend of Braucol, Duras, Loin de l’œil, Mauzac, Prunelart, & Syrah grapes, it is a biodynamic and natural wine - even with a little sediment in the bottle. We served it with a slight chill (as recommended), it was perhaps a little heavier than I anticipated (even with the chill), but the wine was good and enjoyed by the group.

Dessert

5. Tarte Tatin w/ Crème d’Isigny - not a direct copy of the version we had in Paris, but we are lucky enough to be able to buy Crème d’Isigny at Surfas here in Los Angeles. If you haven’t had it, it’s truly the best whipped cream ever (put it on a strawberry and you’ll just go to heaven). I used Claire Saffitz recipe for Tarte Tatin from Dessert Person. I gave myself permission to BUY the puff pastry instead of making it from scratch. I bought Dufour which is the best puff pastry on the market - it’s not that I cannot make puff pastry, it’s that the time it takes and skill it takes were not things I had at this exact moment. The Tarte came out lovely, we used a pear brandy for the apples which was a nice complement.

For dessert we had a very special beverage - Marco Polo Tea from Mariage Frères. This is, without a doubt, my favorite tea that I’ve ever had. When I was researching our trip for Paris, I knew a trip to the Mariage Frères tea counter was in order - what I didn’t realize was they now have a tea room where you can enjoy a whole meal! We certainly took advantage while in Paris, and bought more tea than we could fit in our suitcase (so we bought another suitcase…). If you didn’t know, they also make jellies from their teas which are truly special. We purchased a box of Chocolates infused with Marco Polo tea and I wish we still had it to serve at this dinner because those were incredible chocolates… I guess a trip back to Paris is in order - we’ll come back with a suitcase full of chocolates, surely.

Lastly I want to talk about the flowers. All around Paris, on small walkable streets and large avenues, there are flower shops blooming around you. Originally I wanted to create a little faux flower shop in our living room, but with a tiny budget I decided I couldn’t do that. I talked to my florist friends at Cranky’s and asked them if they could make a bunch of little pre-sorted bouquets, but put them in one arrangement, and then at the end of the dinner I would separate them all and everyone would go home with a bouquet.

Of course they are floral magicians and they made it happen magically! I bought some lavender from one of our favorite farms - Sweet Mountaintop - and that determined that I wanted the bouquets to contain flowers that would dry easily - so not only did each guest walk away with their own bunch of flowers, but they may last a very long time if they took them home and dried them!

A Continuation from Before…

The end of the pop-up dinner brings me right back to where I left off in my last post telling you about our quick time in Paris. After the BnF Oval Room we headed to Mariage Frères for tea and treats, and bought a lot of tea.

Then we met up with our friends again and headed to the Maison Européenne de la Photographie - there was a special exhibition featuring the works of Tyler Mitchell which was breathtaking. I don’t think this is a museum on the traditional circuit of museums in Paris, but if you’re very into photography it is a worthwhile visit.

This evening we also visited Slow Galerie - a small gallery space that features prints made by many different artists. There are a few galleries like this in Oaxaca that we really loved (Burro Press being one of them), and I hope to find more like this all over the world (A great place to buy art for people who like to collect a little art on each trip like we do). We also visited OFR Bookshop which is an independent bookstore that focuses primarily on art books. The other stop we made was to Ressource Boutique - yes, a paint store. For those of you who know, my husband works as a contract painter. When we were planning this trip he told me he wanted to check out a few paint stores in Paris and London just to see what they had. Thankfully this paint store was just around the corner from our hotel, and he only bought the tiny sample jars to bring home!

So, for now, it’s Au Revoir to Paris and on to the next destination for our Culinary Passports - announcing soon, but I bet you can guess where we’re going if you follow me on instagram…

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

P.S. The next dinner will be July 18th - so mark your calendars!

When we arrived to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, we were greeted with a sign: Paris Vous Aime - Paris loves you. It’s something I only just started to learn on this most recent visit - Paris really can love you. This sign was the first direct inspiration for our next Culinary Passport dinner.

Paris is a city I’ve always had conflicting feelings about. Every time I’ve visited, I’ve always done something super touristy and have been underwhelmed, and then maybe done something a little different and have been intrigued.

So what do I remember about past visits to Paris?

Not going up on the Eiffel tower, but rather visiting it on an early morning walk and photographing it from below in the early morning light.

Not visiting Notre Dame, but visiting Sainte Chapelle - a stunning display of stained glass (it’s now more popular than it used to be) and having my breath taken away by it’s luminous colors.

Not visiting the Louvre for the Mona Lisa, but eating at a locals cafe behind it that you’d never even think to visit.

So on this most recent trip - if we aren’t talking about a lengthy Louvre visit, an escalation of the Eiffel Tower, or a nod to Notre Dame - what are we going to talk about?

Perhaps wandering through smaller neighborhoods, getting lost in flea and farmer’s markets, and finding independent art galleries and bookstores to enjoy on a rainy afternoon. We are talking about searching for restaurants and wine caves that locals haunt - because believe it or not, Parisians live in Paris too - it’s not just a city designed for tourists, but a city designed for Life, and for Love.

We stayed in the Marais neighborhood as most of what we wanted to do was in that area (in our short stay). We decided to get an Ile de France Metro Card - a digital tap card that allowed us three days of access on any trains we needed to take locally. Even in January the trains, sites, and some restaurants were very busy - but the tap card was an easy & affordable way to get around.

The only touristic stop we made was a visit to the Musee de L’Orangerie since Michael had never been. It was a pleasure to step inside the Les Nymphéas de Claude Monet - two beautiful, almost chapel-like rooms, filled from wall to wall with Monet Water Lily Canvases - stretched further than the eye can reach. I hadn’t been in this space for nearly 20 years, so it was really wonderful to be there again. The Water Lily pieces in L’Orangerie are unlike any other Monet installations that I have seen, and if you haven’t gone yourself, you must try to visit the next time you are in Paris. We were excited to see the lower floor exhibition was a collection of curated works by prominent gallerist Berthe Weill - I had never heard of her before so I was really impressed to learn all about her history, and see her riveting collection of artworks from the 20th Century!

One thing I will tell you now - a bit of advice - many of the museums in Paris have one day a week where they are open late, after hours, this is when we visited L’Orangerie. I wouldn’t say for us it was any less busy than normal hours, but it doesn’t always work to visit museums in the daytime when there is so much to see - so notating these nighttime shifts in your agenda may be worthwhile (and the nighttime tickets are often at a discount).

After our museum visit we met up with Michael’s friends (who I hope are now my friends too) who live in Paris. They took us to Minim’s Bistrot (which is right next door to the famous Maxim’s - and is the little sister restaurant of this famous dame of France). The food was exceptional and the restaurant wasn’t too busy for a Friday evening. The meal we had at Minim’s serves as the main inspiration for the next Culinary Passport dinner.

The next morning we found ourselves wandering through Paris streets and neighborhoods until we stumbled into Marché D’Aligre - this street is full of food-focused shops (a bakery, a cheese store, a butcher shop, a fishmonger, an epicerie, as well as wine shops & more) it is also a beautiful farmer’s market daily (Except Mondays when all is closed), full of abundant fresh produce and flowers. On the far end of the market you’ll find a little flea market with an eclectic mix of items for sale, and now there’s also an interior market hall with more bakeries, fromageries, and epiceries!

After seeking much inspiration from the Farmer’s Market - we headed to E. Dehillerin, the favorite shop of Julia Child for cookware and knives. The store is narrow but long, wrapping around a street corner. If you’re looking for an easily packable souvenir - they sell a lovely kitchen towel with the shop’s name and logo on it. If you’re looking for a less-packable souvenir, you can buy knives like we did and ship them home (the shop offers an international shipping service, which costs almost as much as the knives).

We then made our way over to the 2nd Arrondissement from the 1st to visit the FREE BnF (National Library of France) and spend some time in the gorgeous Oval Room. If you are a fan of books, libraries, architecture, or silence - this is a great place for you to visit. We just took a leisurely turn of the room and didn’t stay too long, but one could easily spend hours waiting out a rain-shower or heat-wave looking through the many volumes of books here. The room is absolutely stunning, and since it’s free, you should definitely stop in for a visit.

Now I’m not going to share here what we did next - because that will just have to wait to be revealed at the Culinary Passport dinner. I want you to keep in mind that Paris is many things to many people - and I hope you’ll soon discover what this city is for you.

I saw the following list on instagram and I wanted to share it with you as it really resonated with me:

1. Paris is not a postcard - and that’s what makes it beautiful.

2. Locals don’t eat out every day. Markets are the real luxury.

3. You don’t need to live in the “best” arrondissement to live well.

4. Walking is the fastest way to feel at home here.

5. Cafés are for observing life, not rushing conversations.

6. Speaking imperfect French is better than speaking none at all.

7. Paris changes with the seasons - your favorite version will too.

8. Touristy places are magical early in the morning.

9. You don’t have to dress expensively, just intentionally.

10. Solitude in Paris is normal - and often chosen.

11. The city rewards routines more than bucket lists.

12. Rainy days are part of the charm, not a problem to fix.

13. Small neighborhoods matter more than famous landmarks.

14. Paris can feel lonely before it feels like home.

15. Once it does, it never really leaves you.

With all that said - I would like to invite you to consider joining us on a “trip” to Paris here in Los Angeles at our next Culinary Passport Pop-up Dinner. The dinner will be held on May 23rd in West Adams at 7 PM. There is limited space - so if you’d like to join, send an email now to avesilves@gmail.com

The brochure & menu are below. For this meal we can accommodate vegetarians, but we need to know with your RSVP if you are vegetarian. We are working on some modern French wine pairings - not traditional French wines, and the foods are traditional with modern twists. Any questions? Send me an email!

Looking forward to stamping all of your Culinary Passports when you arrive for your Parisian dinner and get a bigger taste of all of the unique treats Paris has to offer.

Love & Happy Spatulas,
Alyssa

I think I was really in my head about this dinner - which is why I did not overly-advertise it here, and I was scared to push out emails to people from my past encouraging them to come. I feel like I had a false confidence in myself, seeing as half the dishes I had never made before, and the half I tested I felt good about, but still was not sure how they would be received. I think this is why I never opened a restaurant, I can’t imagine feeling the same false confidence day in and day out.

This Portuguese-fueled pop-up dinner gave me a little boost that I needed to proceed with future pop-up dinners, however - I need to work on the travel angle.

After the dinner, I had to ask myself, what is “The Culinary Passport” and why am I doing it? You may be wondering why I did not ask myself that before the dinner, but in all honesty it’s because I needed to experience it with other people to see what it is I was trying to accomplish.

First and foremost, The Culinary Passport is a dinner (dinner series), and each dinner will be based on a destination that I have personally traveled to with menu items inspired by foods I have eaten or been served in that destination. The menu may be padded with dishes I have seen and not eaten in that destination, but do note that extensive research will go into each menu. I am tapping into my skills as a trained chef, I am tapping into my extensive cookbook collection, and I am tapping into my privilege to have been able to travel to many beautiful places and eat incredible meals.

So let’s dive into this by going over the menu from P for Portugal - the first Culinary Passport dinner.

1. Papo Secos (Portuguese Rolls) & Butter with Red-Wine Salt

Our first meal in Portugal was in Evora at the Octant hotel there - if you’ve ever been to California wine country (like Sonoma) or driven through New England late summer/early autumn - this is what Evora’s countryside feels like. The restaurant at the Octant hotel strives to serve traditional Portuguese foods with modern twists & utilize their land for ingredients. They have vegetable and herb beds on property as well as some working farmland. When we sat down at this beautiful table there were already some snacks laid out on the table for us, and I noticed on the butter some pink salt. I asked the chef or server “What kind of salt is this?” and they said it is a house-made red wine salt.

I am glad I was able to pseudo re-create this for my own dinner celebrating Portugal. And the rolls? Not something I think I had in destination, but as I researched recipes, I found many of the Portuguese dishes have a prominent letter “P” in them, so I made Papo Secos.

2. Portuguese Sardines with Grilled Peppers

Everywhere you turn in Lisbon there’s a shop with tinned fish. It’s always an eye-popping array of colors, with so many different options to choose from, one could say it is almost overwhelming! Not being a fan of most tinned fish, I actually only walked away with a few tins for my brother & my sister-in-law who LOVE tinned fish. But, while planning this dinner I knew I needed to include a dish that incorporated tinned fish. Thank goodness in Los Angeles there is no shortage of imported tinned fish, so I was able to find Portuguese tinned whole sardines to make this dish. Inspired by the cover of “My Portugal” - a cookbook written by George Mendes that has been in my collection for quite a while. (And Again - Peppers with a capital P!)

3. Pastéis de Bacalhau, Piri Piri Aioli (Codfish Croquettes)

Bacalhau is a must when trying Portuguese cuisine. It’s Salt-preserved cod that is then re-constituted in water. Of course there are hundreds of ways to cook with it and incorporate it into your meal, and we were served the traditional Bacalhau à Brás on our trip - Bacalhau with potatoes & eggs, but in sticking with the P theme - I decided to make Pastéis de Bacalhau (Croquettes) and served them with Piri Piri Aioli. Piri Piri is very popular in Portugal as well - likely from colonization, but it is also now grown in Portugal and the sauce is produced there as well.

4. Caldo Verde with Oven-Roasted Tomato “Chouriço” (Collard Green & Potato Soup)

Ok - no P here, except the soup is made with a silky Potato base. Caldo Verde is often considered the national dish of Portugal - made with Portuguese greens (a specific cabbage or collard green varietal) and Portuguese sausage. Since I don’t eat pork and don’t like to cook with it, I found a vegan recipe that used sundried tomatoes instead of sausage, but I had a hard time finding the right kind of sundried tomatoes, so I made oven-roasted Tomato “Chouriço” for the topping. We were not served Caldo Verde while in Portugal, so this came from my research after the trip, but I’m glad to have made it for this dinner, it was delicious!

5. Arroz De Pato (Duck Rice)

Well - you know I love rice, and I also love a crispy rice, trying Arroz de Pato in Portugal was a game changer for me. I knew the second I tasted it for the first time, I would eventually have to try and re-create it at home. It’s actually the first dish of all of these dishes that I have been searching for a recipe for since I returned from Portugal. You braise duck & chorizo in water with a mix of vegetables, and then you take the duck & chorizo out, puree the vegetable liquid and cook the rice in it - then you bake everything with the duck meat shredded and chorizo on top until the rice is nice and crispy. I really love eating this, but I actually didn’t love making it. Duck meat has small return after you take out all the skin and bones! I couldn’t find any Duck chorizo in Los Angeles, nor did I have time to make it myself, so I used a spiced beef sausage I found as an alternative. I tested this recipe baking it in a large dish (how it is typically made and how we were served it in Portugal, but then for the dinner I ended up making it in a muffin tin for individual portions - this helped the rice get crispier, and it also made service easier for me.

6. Pica Pau com Pickles (Beef Stew with Pickled Vegetables)

After tasting this dish for the first time in Portugal, I sought it out at every restaurant I came across afterward. It’s beef stew, but then pickled veggies are added to it, so you have your umami, earthy meat and then you have this acid hit from the pickled veggies. Ok OK it sounds unusual, but it is really good & you just have to TRUST me when I tell you that it’s divine. I did test this recipe before the dinner, and my husband gave me a FACE when I told him what it was, but then he tasted it, and now he is forever converted to Pica Pau. I spent a long time looking at recipes for this one, and even reached out to my tour guide in Portugal for advice. It can be made with beef or pork, beer or wine or port, and the pickles are really up to you! I chose not to make pickled onions, and also - I did not pickle my own veggies! I bought a Giardiniera mix to save myself a bit of time (many recipes suggest this as well). I did, however, pickle my own mustard seeds - it’s one of my new favorite condiments, so I try to always keep some in the house.

7. Wild Mushrooms & Brussels Sprouts

I pulled this recipe from My Portugal cookbook (mentioned above). I needed a green vegetable recipe to present a balanced meal, and these vegetables were in season. I was able to get a lovely mix of mushrooms at the farmer’s market & Japanese market. It was a nice addition to our meal!

In sticking with the P theme, I wanted to make Peixinhos da Horta (Portuguese Green Beans), but since we already had the croquettes I did not want to serve two deep-fried dishes. But I do want to talk here about Peixinhos da Horta, Portugal, Japan, and Tempura! If you think Japanese Tempura is originally Japanese, you may be surprised to learn (As I was) that the practice of making Tempura (how we know it today) actually has Portuguese Origins, and Peixinhos da Horta is the original “Tempura”. You can read more about it in the linked recipe above or the Tempura Wiki also linked above. I found this history to be pretty interesting!

8. Pastel de Nata

I knew I had to make Pastel de Nata for dessert, there was no way around it. I also found another Portuguese desert that featured the letter P - Pudim Abade de Priscos - But decided ultimately to make only Pastel de Nata. I was really scared to make the custard tarts because I had once tried making them (years ago) before, and to say they failed would be a complete understatement. I read many different recipes before deciding on one that made sense, and I swear to you I was anxious the whole time they were in the oven. They came out as perfectly as they could, and I wish I was eating one right now!! We tried a few different Pastels in Portugal, but the original — Pasteis de Belem — is the one you must have when you go. What interested me was the way they are served when you order them to go - in a large tube where you get to pull them apart with friends. I tried to re-create this at my dinner by serving two on one plate to every other person, forcing everyone to share with someone next to them, but I don’t think I explained it very well - guess I’ll just have to make Pastel de Nata again soon.

Wine

We were served local wines throughout our time in Portugal, so I knew I would be able to find some imported wines here to pair with the meal. Although Portugal has an incredibly diverse wine region, and it made finding possibilities and pairings easy - not every country has that, so if you plan to attend in the future, you may not anticipate wine pairings at every dinner. When I worked in a gourmet cheese shop, it was connected with a fine wine shop - and I’m still in contact with many of my colleagues from that time. I was able to reconnect with one who is now at a different shop, and he helped me select the wines for this meal - they paired really nicely in my opinion, and it was nice to try some Portugal-specific varietals. I also wanted to do a port flight at the end of the meal (honestly, a last-minute decision), but I didn’t really have the correct glassware for this, and also it seems like my guests aren’t really into port. We did taste three Ports, but this didn’t end up how I wanted it to (I may re-think this for future dinners - less is more).

Ok - back to the Culinary Passport (reasons I am doing these dinners).

Second - these pop-up dinners are meant to inspire travel (in general).

Of course, if someone wants to go to Portugal after eating this meal - that’s excellent! But I really want to just inspire more people to travel. The way you grow during your experiences immersing yourself in another culture is unlike any other kind of growth you can experience in your life - and I want people to embrace travel so they can grow.

Now, I understand not everyone can afford a 5* First-Class trip, but there are many ways to travel through a destination, and I used this dinner as a way to explain that about Portugal. There are many direct flights to Lisbon from the continental US - so already you’ve got a great non-stop air option. There are, of course, five-star hotels in the major cities, and in the countryside (Douro Valley Wine Region), but there are also smaller boutique hotels that are safe to stay in and offer a valuable accommodation option for those on a budget.

Portugal is an easy place to drive, if you want to save $ - self-driving is a great way to explore (and the cities have easy public transit - just watch your pockets on those trams), if you want to be treated like royalty - we can hire drivers to get you from place to place. If cruising is your thing? Ocean cruises explore the Portuguese coast, and river cruisers can spend time on the Douro river, exploring the wine areas. If you aren’t sure what you want to do - but you know you want to go to Portugal - there are guided tour options that have everything ready for you, and they cater to all ages and travel styles.

Third - I want to support others. I purchased all the wines & ports for the dinner at two independently-owned wine shops in LA (and plan to continue this as much as I can for future dinners). The flower arrangements were created by Cranky’s - an incredible flower team in LA who are also good friends of mine (contact them for all of your floral needs) - they will (hopefully) be arranging flowers for future pop-up dinners as well, and their arrangements were inspired directly by my photos from my trip. The vases they used were sourced from a local ceramicist. I procured as many ingredients as I could from the farmer’s market, and smaller shops around town - of course ideally I would have brought ingredients back from Portugal, but I guess I’ll just have to go back! And I also decorated the space with items I purchased in Portugal - the ceramic fish on the table were a purchase in Sintra (and my guests were obsessed with them - I’m surprised no one walked away with one!).

In conclusion - I think these dinners are a way for me to circle back to my culinary roots while providing an emphasis on my current career as a travel advisor. I am not forcing anyone to buy a trip or plan one with me, but I hope they will think of me if they are thinking of planning a trip in the near future (or tell others I exist and can make their trip planning easier). I also just want everyone to have a great meal!

So where are we going next…? Only time will tell… come get your passport stamped at the next Happy Spatulas Culinary Passport dinner - April 25th!

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

Before our departure, I did a lot of research on local food in Kenya - there were dishes I’d never heard of (Ugali, Sukama Wiki) and ingredients I’d never used… I was so excited to try many new things. Imagine my surprise when we arrived and were immediately served very European food. This may be the “norm” on the Safari camp circuit, but I continued to advocate for our little group at every stop - “please can we try something local?!” The first week, the most local thing we had (and fell in love with completely) was Stoney Tangawizi, the local Ginger Beer.

By our third safari camp, we finally had a special meal made entirely of local foods - just for us. Staying at the exquisite Elewana Loisaba Lodo Springs, the incredibly thoughtful staff were pleased to create a luncheon which consisted entirely of Kenyan cuisine. I have never seen a happier group of people than this staff, who were sharing their culinary traditions with us. This was by far the best meal we had on our entire trip. The food was spectacular, I asked if they would share the recipes with me - and I was lucky to come home with a few of them.

While on this trip, we were planning my dad’s 70th Birthday dinner, and after this meal… I suggested to him we make food inspired by our trip. He agreed, and this was the birth of The Culinary Passport.

Fast Forward to today - I’m working as a full-time Travel Advisor and not as a full-time chef, and I’m still privileged to be able to travel to different places in the world and enjoy local foodways. Since starting in the travel industry in 2023, I’ve always had it in my mind that I would find my way back to my culinary roots somehow and tie these two passions together. I’ve spent a couple of years developing this concept - Dinners inspired by my travels, so I can share the taste, culture, and passion with you.

So I’m doing something new, different, unusual, unique, and maybe just a little bit crazy. I’m opening up 10 seats at my dinner table in Los Angeles for you to enjoy a meal I’ve created inspired by my travels to a single destination. We’re going to talk about the destination, the food (obviously), I’ll share photos from my time there & talk about my experiences. We are also going to have hand-selected wine pairings with each course, featuring wines from each destination. After the dinner, I hope we can reconnect and talk about planning a trip somewhere for you - it could be the featured destination, or anywhere!

The first dinner is on Saturday February 28th, 2026 at 7:00 PM - and there are only 10 seats available. The dinner will feature food inspired by my time in Portugal - an incredible destination with a diverse culinary scene, and excellent wines. We’ll end the meal with a sweet special treat.

The menu is below - so please review it before committing to the dinner, at this time we cannot accommodate allergies or dietary restrictions. Seats will be held on a first-come basis, and a waitlist will be generated once seats are filled.

P for Portugal - $125 pp

Papo Secos (Portuguese Rolls)

Butter with Red-Wine Salt

Portuguese Sardines with Grilled Peppers

Pastéis de Bacalhau, Piri Piri Aioli (Codfish Croquettes)

Caldo Verde with Sundried Tomato “Chouriço” (Collard Green & Potato Soup)

Arroz De Pato (Duck Rice)

Pica Pau com Pickles (Beef Stew with Pickled Vegetables)

Wild Mushrooms & Brussels Sprouts

Pastel de Nata

So if you’re interested - let me know (send an email - and once you have confirmation from me that your seat is being held, you’re in):

Stamp my Culinary Passport

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

It wouldn’t be a year off our cookbook shelf without a visit from Ina Garten, this time in the form of her book Make it Ahead. Many of Ina’s books were released before I started collecting cookbooks, but I remember this particular book and it’s release. I was working in a small cafe in Santa Monica, and my coworker was thrilled that Ina was releasing a new book. In order to seem ‘hip & cool’ I got on board the Ina cookbook train (then and there). I think this may be the first of Ina’s books I ever purchased, just as a result of that work interaction. I had been a fan of her show and her recipes for years, but never thought to buy one of her books. Well color me forever changed, because I love her cookbooks! I know that you can find many of the recipes online, but I just really love reading through the cookbooks - her little quips are written as though the reader is one of her close friends and she’s sharing a tip, trick, or anecdote with them.

We started with the Zucchini Basil Soup - simple enough in Summer to get the ingredients necessary for this fabulous soup - but we took it one step further and bought squash blossoms to make squash blossom tempura for the top [not in the book]. If you’ve been reading the blog this past week or so - you know we were on a real soup kick in 2025, and summer was no exception. I love a zucchini soup. There are so many people who don’t like zucchini, and I feel like a soup could truly reform them. It’s such a fabulous canvas for so many colors and flavors to play with. The basil was a really nice touch in the soup - bright and herbaceous all at once, we will definitely be making this again next summer.

One of our favorite quick dinners for many years were little hand-made New Zealand-Style Savory pies from Hemera’s Bench - a vendor at our farmer’s market. In June we learned that she was going to be closing down her business at the end of July. We bought several of the pies to stock in our freezer, but also wanted to find some kind of alternative for when we needed that quick dinner. Of course, what we made - Ina Garten recipe or not - was never going to be as creative and delicious as Hemera’s Pies, but we thought we’d give the French Chicken Pot Pies a chance - and thankfully we had some small ramekins to make them in, so we could try freezing them as well for a later date. If you don’t have time to roast the chicken, you can always buy a rotisserie chicken and use that instead. The pies came together easily. We used frozen puff-pastry for the tops which made the whole process painless. We had pot pies for a whole week and then some, & enjoyed them immensely! Although we will miss Hemera’s Bench, it was nice to make some kind of “alternative” for the time being.

I’ve always wanted to make Greek Pastitsio, so when the chance presented itself in this book, I went for it. I would say that the recipe was great, but I should have cut the Béchamel sauce in half - there was far too much of it for me. Although it was delicious, it was far too rich. Pastitsio is like a Greek Lasagna, but also not really like that at all. You have pasta and a meat sauce, and then béchamel on top, but it isn’t layered exactly like a lasagna.

There are so many great recipes in this book that can be made ahead, I would highly recommend it for those who need to do their meal prep in one day for the week, so you can be prepared with fresh meals all week long.

In October we cooked from Where Cooking Begins by Carla Lalli Music. This is a fabulous book for first-timers in the kitchen. The book showcases different cooking styles - from steaming to confit-ing. It suggests how to build your pantry staples for an easier approach to cooking; what you have on hand makes what you can do each time you cook that much easier.

We started with the Pan-roasted salmon with cauli-tartar sauce and chive vinaigrette. I want to warn you that the recipes look really complicated - they are not written in the usual recipe style. Instead of having a panic attack, take your time looking at the page. Everything on that page is designed to make your life easier, not more difficult. Some items you may have at home, some items you may need to pick up from the store, and some things you may have to substitute - which thankfully Carla has shared with us for every recipe in the book. No salmon? Use trout, or red snapper. No cauliflower? Try cabbage instead. I would say that 70% of the food things I google are “substitute for…”. It either helps me better understand the ingredient, and think of alternatives, or if I cannot find one thing, then perhaps there is a solution I haven’t thought of.

We enjoyed this dish, but it did have a few too many parts for me. I think I would happily make the salmon with chive vinaigrette again, but I wouldn’t make the cauli-tartar “sauce” again alongside it - especially not on a busy/late weeknight. We served this with duck fat potatoes (my favorite).

Next we made the Seared Lamb Patty with marinated Halloumi and herbs. This was such an interesting recipe - I think it would be a great quick idea for a last-minute dinner party. You can swap out the lamb for beef if you prefer, and it’s got a ton of potential as a side dish in a mezze spread. You essentially marinate the halloumi, and then make one giant thin lamb patty in a frying pan. Then you break up the lamb, and top it with the marinated cheese and fresh herbs. Simple as that! Tons of flavor. We had ours with some flatbread, olives on the side, and lemon. Next time I wouldn’t shy away from some pickled onions, hummus, or other Mediterranean dip.

Again, this is a fabulous book if you don’t know too much about cooking, you will learn so much just by reading it, and you’ll learn even more (and eat great meals) when you cook from it.

Just some updates from October 2025 -

While we tried to spend a lot of 2025 eating at home, there was one night when we both had awful days and couldn’t bring ourselves to cook - we ended up without any plan at Somerville - a restaurant in the historic Slauson Corridor of View Park Windsor Hills, that opened end of 2024. They have live music every night, the night we ended up there they had a Jazz Trio - and it really turned our day around. There are meals out, and then there are meals out that change your life. If you have a chance to dine at this restaurant, go! The food is amazing, wine list incredible, cocktails creative, the staff is wonderful, and it’s great for any occasion - date night, girls night, guys night… maybe not for the kiddos, but go and eat and enjoy.

I was lucky enough to attend a live conversation between Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway in honor of Samin’s new book - Good Things. My mother treated me to the evening, and we really enjoyed ourselves. If you’ve never listened to their podcast - Home Cooking - which they started during the Pandemic, and continued sporadically for the years after, you’ll have to give it a go - you will learn things, and you will laugh a lot too. Of course, this is one of the new books in my collection and I’m excited to jump into it and make some incredible dishes soon.

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

We started off with a comparison of the Green Rice and Red Rice recipes. Although the recipes are different, some meals are great with green rice, and others with red rice - and some meals are great with both! If you know me, you know I’m a rice lover. I could eat it three meals a day, happily. Even though I’m allergic to tomatoes, Mexican Red Rice is one of my favorite types of rice. I’m always happy to try new recipes for it, but I’m especially happy to try it from any restaurant or taquero who is making & selling it. Green Rice isn’t as popular here in Los Angeles restaurants, but I was happy to give it a try alongside the red rice.

To be honest, I think I ended up liking the green rice more! It had a really nice base of Poblano chiles, cilantro, and onion - excellent flavor too. The red rice was great too, I always like that it has some extra veggies in it - in this case peas and carrots. I would happily make either again. I can see green rice being a great complement to fish dishes, whereas the red rice is a better complement for meat dishes.

Next up we tried the Chorizo with Potatoes - Enrique suggested having it for breakfast with eggs, so that’s precisely what we did. The recipe calls for you to make your own chorizo, which I’m sure would be delicious, but due to time we purchased our chorizo pre-made (we actually used soy chorizo because I’m not big on pork). If you’re not making your own chorizo, the recipe goes rather quickly - and also holds up well for re-heating. You could easily make a big batch of this and then re-heat it throughout the week - or use it as a base in an omelette perhaps? It’s a great combination.

When I told Michael I wanted to make the Broccoli Tamales with Broccoli Cream, he questioned the time it may take to make it. But, a little pre-made masa from the grocery store saved us - and what we ended up with were fantastic little morsels of fluffy tamales mixed with broccoli and a creamy broccoli sauce. I can’t say I’m an expert tamale maker - I am more adept at dumplings - but tamales are one of my favorite foods, and I’m determined to continue making them so I can get better at making them.

This was my first time using banana leaves to make tamales, and that may have been the biggest learning curve this time around. When you use corn husks, you soak them to get them nice and pliable, they are already (usually) a size and shape that lends itself to tamale-making ease, but banana leaves are a whole new concept (for me). You start out by heating the banana leaves over an open flame, and then you cut them to the size you want. The heat allows you to fold the leaves without them breaking. Since it was my first time, I may not have heated the leaves enough - there was some breakage when folding. HOWEVER - I have to tell you that regardless of how poorly I may have folded these tamales, they were absolutely delicious. Tender, fluffy, vegetal in the best way. You actually mix the broccoli florets right into the masa - it was such a nice way to eat tamales. The sauce was creamy and delicious, we enjoyed the dish immensely. Even though I may not have done it perfectly the first time, I am not afraid of making them again in the future - if only to taste the deliciousness again!

Lastly we made the Coffee Custard. We typically don’t make desserts from the cookbooks, but I thought it would be fun to try this one. The recipe was simple, a rich dessert with a coffee zip and a little bit of a sugar crunch on top. Unfortunately we forgot to take pictures! You’ll just have to trust that we made it & enjoyed it.

When we were in Mexico last - Dec 2024 - Jan 2025 - we had Squash Blossom Soup. I talked about my soup kick a blog or two ago, but I think this soup was really what started it off. Squash blossoms are really popular right now in Los Angeles - especially in Italian restaurants (either stuffed & deep fried, or splayed over pizzas), but can you really get the delicate flavor of a squash blossom when it’s breaded and fried? I cannot.

When I had this soup, it changed my perspective on Squash Blossoms. We aren’t appreciating them for what they are - a delicate flower. They do have their own unique flavor, and it isn’t like getting a mouth full of roses or lavender, it’s like sunshine on your tongue. I was happy to see a recipe for Sopa de flor de Calabaza in this book, because it has become one of my favorite soups. I did not make the recipe from this book, but I did find another recipe that I modified and made. It was delicious! I will have to try Enrique’s version next time.

Sopa de Flor de Calabaza

8 Cups Squash Blossoms, Stems Removed

2-3 T. Butter

1/2 Sweet Onion, Diced or 2 Shallots, Diced

2 Cloves Garlic, Minced

2-3 T. Flour

3 C. Vegetable or Chicken Broth

3/4 C. Whole Milk or Heavy Cream or Crema

Salt & Pepper

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add a bit of salt and then the stemmed squash blossoms - make sure they are submerged under the water for one minute. Drain the squash blossoms in a sieve, and the place the whole sieve in a bowl of ice water (this will prevent the blossoms from sticking to the ice). Drain the blossoms and gently squeeze out excess water, then chop.

In your empty pot - melt the butter, then add diced onion and a pinch of salt, and cook until the onion is cooked through (you want to cook out any raw flavor in this step, or your soup will taste like raw onion later on). Once the onion is cooked, add the minced garlic and cook for a minute until fragrant, and then add the chopped squash blossoms. Mix well with the onions, and then sprinkle the flour on top of the blossoms and stir to combine - we want to cook the flour for at least a couple of minutes so it is no longer raw. If the mixture looks too dry, you can add more butter and let it melt in, if it looks too wet, you can add a bit more flour - just make sure you cook it through.

Slowly pour in the broth, it’s best to do it 1/2 cup at a time, but you can also stream it in and mix as you’re pouring. Then add the milk or cream. Stir as you pour, making sure that the flour is fully incorporated and not in clumps [of course for video sake, I didn’t do it this way, but I recommend you do]. Simmer the soup for 8-10 minutes, and then you can turn it off.

When it cools for a bit, pour everything into a blender, and then purée until you have a smooth consistency. Pour the soup back into the pot and cook on a low heat, stirring, it should thicken a bit. Taste for seasoning. Salt & Pepper - but also if you want a little heat, some chili powder or cayenne could be a nice finishing touch. You can garnish with more squash blossoms if you have any reserved, or some greens like parsley, cilantro, or epazote.

Enjoy!

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

PS: Around this time we ate at a restaurant in our neighborhood that isn’t really a restaurant - it’s a food wholesaler that also serves lunch. The food is incredible - including their stuffed squash blossoms!

We spent some time visiting the incredible Crafted at the Port of Los Angeles which is a collective of artists and artisans selling their wares. It’s an enormous space with so much to offer, great for families and couples alike - a fabulous place to go shopping for a gift, or just walk around and appreciate all the wonderful things they have to offer. It is free to walk in the doors, and lucky for us - dog friendly.

Our Los Angeles County Museum of Art finished construction on it’s newest building, and our good friend who works for LACMA invited us to view the building at a preview while it was completely empty. It was very eerie, but also very special to be in an empty museum space - and I think we will appreciate it that much more when it is full of art. The entire building is cement - I don’t envy the art hangers having to drill into those walls!

We also spent an evening walking amongst Elephants. The Great Elephant Migration was in Beverly Hills, so we popped over there to experience it one evening. It was a beautifully designed installation and really fun to walk through. The elephants are all based off of real elephants and made from lantana camara which is an invasive grass species. The project is supported by one of our favorite animal charities - The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust - who works to re-wild orphaned elephants and other animals in Africa.

In July we also cooked from two exceptional cookbooks (even though in the heat we didn’t feel like cooking). First we made an incredible dish from Chinese Heritage Cooking - a cookbook by Shirley Chung. I’m not a Top Chef watcher, but first learned of Shirley Chung at a food festival under her restaurant Ms. Chi Cafe. We fell in love with the food at Ms. Chi & would dine there often. The dumplings were incredible, the spicy tater tots a perfect comfort snack, and everything else we ever ate there was amazing. I was so sad when they decided to close in 2024, but happy we were able to have one last meal there beforehand.

For those who don’t know, Shirley Chung was diagnosed with stage four tongue cancer and she went through intense treatments as a result. I am so glad to read she is doing better, and starting to cook again with her Top Chef friends, and hope she will be able to open another magnificent restaurant again someday (if she wants).

In the meantime, we get to enjoy her fabulous food and recipes from her cookbook - published in 2018, we’ve been cooking from this book since the day we purchased it. I often make the Glass Noodles Salad as a base for lunches (I add a protein and some extra vegetables to the mix). We’ve also enjoyed the Egg Pancakes with Vegetables, a cross between an omelette and a crepe. For Thanksgiving several years ago I made the Thanksgiving Wild Rice Stuffing with Roasted Pumpkin - delicious, I wish that was my stuffing every Thanksgiving.

This time around we made the Bok Choy with Crispy Garlic - a beautiful side dish which we enjoyed for days. The recipe was clear and easy to follow, and the result was delicious. Up until this recipe, I had basically only made bok choy as a side dish one way, but now after making this recipe, I’ll be happy to change it up for a bit.

In July we also made a couple of recipes from This Is A Book About Noodles by Brendan Pang. He is also the author of This is a Book About Dumplings which we also have on our bookshelf. The book is divided into chapters based on different types of Asian noodles - and the recipes fall across several countries and cultures. The chapters are: Wheat Noodles, Egg Noodles, Rice Noodles, Crystal Clear Noodles, Noodle Soups, “These Aren’t Noodles!”, Noodles with a Twist, Slurp N’ Snack, and Noodle Condiment Essentials, followed by a directory of Noodle Doughs and Shapes with recipes. So if you’re looking for a book with a lot of different noodle recipes, look no further - this one is great.

I find Brendan Pang’s recipes to be super approachable - he isn’t trying to scare you away, he’s trying to draw you in (just like a bowl of noodles would) and make you feel comfortable during the cooking process. I’m not going to lie - we want to make about 90% of the book, but we only made one recipe this time around. (However - I just bought some fresh Taiwanese Wheat Noodles at the market, so now that I’m looking through this book again, I am seeking inspiration for my Taiwanese noodles).

We chose to make the Long Life Noodles, however we did not make the noodles from scratch ourselves. We had most of the ingredients on hand before going shopping which made the recipe an easy choice, but it was delicious! I liked that the sauce was flavorful but not heavy, and even though the dish contains two types of onions, it was not onion-y. We served it with Broccolini from the farmer’s market and wished for a Long Life ahead with each twirl.

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

We started out with the Sopa de Albóndiga “Yehuda Halevi” recipe. Albondigas is something we’ve made before - of course it’s meatballs and you know me! - but I liked the chunkiness and variety of the vegetables in this version. One of Yehuda Halevi’s poems is written alongside the recipe in which he shares the strain of living away from where you are from.

How can I savor food? How might it be sweet to me?

The soup is full of delicious vegetables, and some jalapeno for a little kick. You serve it with avocado, cilantro, & limes which brighten and enhance the dish completely. I also liked that this version was tomato-free!

After the Albóndigas, we moved straight into tortilla soup territory. In come the tomatoes & chiles - this Sopa de Tortilla includes beans and chicken for a superior protein offering. I like that it had both, but if you don’t eat meat you could easily omit the chicken and use vegetable broth and have a fabulous result with the beans. We did fry our own tortilla strips this time around, it’s always nice for tortilla soup to do them fresh - but of course if you cannot do this, you can always use tortilla chips instead. One thing that this recipe requested that I hadn’t done before in tortilla soup was to mix some of the tortilla strips directly into the soup while it was still on the stove. I’m sure I’ve seen/experienced it before, but it was a nice addition. Although the recipe doesn’t call for any dairy to keep things kosher, we (not being kosher) jazzed up our soups with crema and queso cotija.

Have you ever made a recipe that you were so confident in when you started, and then halfway through making it you think to yourself, “I bet this would be easier if I’d done it 100 times before”? This is how I felt about the Cumin Rose Kibbe. It ended up being delicious, but was also a true labor of love - one that I may never endure again. If you’re wondering - this is the cover recipe of the book.

Kibbe comes in many forms and from many cultures. The first time I made Kibbe it was in cooking school. Ground meat mixed with bulgur, herbs, spices, and onions - shaped & cooked (like meatballs, but shaped like american footballs). Then I had wonderful Lebanese clients for a while who asked me to make them Kibbeh Cake (or Baked Kibbeh - Kibbeh Bil Sanieh) which is a similar concept to the “meatballs” but made more like a meatloaf in a baking dish. I have made the baked kibbeh from other cookbooks as well. I thought the inclusions of rose petals in Kibbe sounded interesting, so I decided to try this recipe out. You make the filling by cooking the meat with onions and spices, including the ground dried rose petals, and then separately you make a dough with bulgur, flour, and water. You portion the dough into balls, and then pinch them open, and painstakingly attempt to fill each one with the filling, then, you close them up - hoping they don’t fall apart before you drop them into a frying pan of oil to cook. A true labor of love.

I’m looking forward to trying many more recipes from this book, we are going to have to try the Mushroom Jalapeño Matzah Ball Soup or the Chipotle Chicken Noodle & Matzah Ball Soup, the Brisket Tacos, the Falafel Taquitos, & so much more!

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

PS. Sorry this blog is 10 months late!

First of all, thank you for being here. Thank you for reading. Thank you if you support with $ or not - thank you. We are living in weird times right now, and last year was hard for so many - within my own community, my greater community, and beyond. I wish that 2026 would be a better year, but we’re not off to a great start. I am going to remain hopeful.

I’m trying to harness joy & be thankful for everything I have, but some days it’s hard to even get out of bed… let alone continue to get this project in order. It’s hard to write about food knowing that so many people go without it. It’s hard to write about food when there are other issues that are really bothering me in my community, in this country, and in this world. So please - if you read one of my posts and are thinking that I’m living without knowing what’s going on - I do know what’s going on. I stay informed and educated, and I am trying my best to show up for my community.

I also think [and this is important] we all need to take care of ourselves and our mental health, and one of the things that calms me is cooking. I’ve always loved to cook since I was (at least) 8 years old. So I’m going to continue cooking. I hope that you find some of these posts approachable - it’s not as if I’m buying Lobster Tails and Caviar every week and cooking with out of reach ingredients. I’m on a budget, and it’s a tight budget that consists of not only money, but also of time.

I took a big trip last year in Feb/March and it really inspired me on the intersection of the two paths of my life - Food & Travel. I spent a lot of time in 2025 trying to figure out how I can get these two paths to converge, and I think I’m finally there with a fully formed concept that I want to try out in 2026 - I will share more on this later.

For now - I want to do my year-end/year-beginning update as I’ve done for every year since I started this project.

I still have six books to write about that we cooked from in 2025 - so for the next few weeks you can anticipate a few backlogged blogs.

In 2025 I skipped the following books:

Mangoes & Curry Leaves - Alford Duguid / An incredibly beautiful book on Indian cooking, I actually read through a lot of the book when I was considering cooking from it, but I inevitably decided to pass on cooking from it for now.

The Food of Thailand - Oi Cheepchaiissara / I’ve referenced this book a few times when cooking Thai food, but I’ll have to come back to it when I can give it the time (and ingredients) it deserves.

Koreatown - Deuki Hong & Matt Rodbard / Not a true skip, as I cook from this book all the time! I really love this book because it shares stories about different Koreatowns across the United States - such a cool intersection of Food & Travel & Culture! I love the Gamja Saelleodeu recipe and the This is Not a Bibimbap Recipe is fabulous for inspiration! Japchae is one of my favorite dishes - and I’m really pleased when I make it from this book, I’m glad it’s a vegetarian recipe, as I prefer it that way so I can serve it alongside my protein of choice. I think next up for me is to make the Dakgangjeong (Koreatown Fried Chicken - yum)!

Pasta by Hand - Jenn Louis / Again not a true skip - when I was cooking all the time, I cooked from this book quite a bit. I especially love the Beet & Ricotta Gnocchi which I used to make for Valentine’s Day for clients - and it’s one of the first things my husband and I cooked together when we started dating.

Mooncakes & Milk Bread - Kristina Cho / This was the first book that came up last year when I did my cookbook reset, and when I tell you I wasn’t ready… that would be an understatement. Lunar New Year will be mid-February, so my goal is to pick ONE recipe from this book to make for Lunar New Year. Here’s hoping I stick to it - because everything in this book looks incredible.

Modern Jewish Cooking - Leah Koening / Again, not a true skip - We reference this book for every Jewish holiday and have cooked from it regularly.

A Painter’s Kitchen - Margaret Wood / Georgia O’Keeffe // Ok. This one was a true skip. I love Georgia O’Keeffe and bought this book when I was in New Mexico in 2015. It stayed wrapped in the shrink-wrap I purchased it in for years, and when it came up in the rotation, it was really the first time I looked at it. The recipes are simple (great), but I didn’t find it personally inspiring. I will have another look at it, I’m sure, in a few more years.

Here are some of the books added to the collection:

She’s A Host - Erin Dana Lichy (gift from my boss - recipes look great)

Good Things - Samin Nosrat (of course, I had to - and we went to a talk about the book between her & Hrishi - Purchased from Now Serving)

The World is your Dumpling - Emily Roz (A gift from Karen <3)

The Potato Book - Poppy Cooks (Purchased at Island Books on Mercer Island - Great Bookstore)

Bethlehem - Fadi Kattan (Purchased at Books for Cooks in Notting Hill - Amazing shop, I will write a dedicated post about our time in this bookstore later this year)

Around the World in 80 Meatballs - Bunny Banyai (Purchased at Papersmiths in London, I wasn’t expecting Cookbooks at a Pen shop, but here we are)

Chesnok - Polina Chesnakova (Also purchased at Island Books)

The Caribbean - Jenni Fleetwood & Marina Filippelli (From my Parents)

Dining with the Impressionists - Jocelyn Hackforth-Jones (From my Parents)

Ice Cream Sandwiches - Donna Egan (I don’t remember where this came from… Sorry if you gifted it to me and I forgot)

Daniel: My French Cuisine - Daniel Boulud (My coworker was gifted this book, and he doesn’t cook so he gave it to me)

Noodles the New Way - Sri Owen (From my Parents)

The Breakfast Bible - Seb Emina & Malcom Eggs (From my Parents)

101 Asian Dishes You Need to Cook Before You Die - Jet Tila (Gift)

» My Parents did a little clean-out of their cookbook collection, so some of these books were ones they were getting rid of that I wanted to spend some time with.

» Another dumpling book? You bet! My good friend Karen gifted it to me, and you can never have too many books on the world’s favorite food.

» I’m most excited about my newest acquisition - Around The World in 80 Meatballs. I bought it without a thought in London earlier this month, and I hope the recipes are as good as the title!

Total Amount of Books in Collection: Around 270 at this point!

Wishlist - ? I’ve stopped adding to my wishlist for now - it’s not that I don’t want more books, I do, it’s just not where the $ is going right now. More focused on exploring the world in real time to the best of my ability.

SO WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM THIS SPACE IN 2026?

Well… I’m going to write more about my travels, but the food perspective.

I’m going to catch up on the last six books I cooked from in 2025, probably across four posts.

I am going to continue to cook from my cookbooks and write about them when I have the capacity,

and also… big announcement here…

I’m going to try to orchestrate at least four pop-up dinners in 2026. If you’re local and want to know more, let me know if you’re interested… and stay tuned.

I am no longer going to privatize my Substack posts, all written content from this point forward will be free - if you are a paid subscriber and don’t want to continue paying, I understand. $ is tight right now for all, and I only ask for your eyes and ears here, not your dollars - save your dollars for a great meal or a great trip (that’s what I do).

Some 2025 Galleries Below.

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

Marcella is amazing and inspired me so much this year - in her cooking journey and her path to becoming a parent.

We started with the Smoked Trout Salad which also had us making the Pickled Mustard Seeds. Several years ago we decided to make an “Eastern European” inspired Thanksgiving menu. We made duck instead of turkey, apple mashed potatoes, and borscht for our soup starter. This Smoked Trout salad was our appetizer and it was a smash hit! Making it this time around, it reminded me more of a tuna salad. Trout has a season, unlike some fish that we can get year-round, and we found a Smoked Trout option at the store that we had not seen before this past Spring. The salad is almost like a whitefish salad, but the Pickled Mustard seeds make it pop (literally). I had a dish in Portugal that I’m aching to re-create that was also served with pickled mustard seeds - so I’m glad I at least have that part down.

Monday came quickly, so we wanted to see what this Monday Soup was all about. At first when I read the recipe, I wasn’t really convinced that we’d like it. It’s essentially a vegetarian soup (or you can add some mini-meatballs for what is lovingly called the “Tuesday Variation”) with Oats added to it. Yes. Oats in a soup. I was confused too, but everything I’ve made from this book has been delicious, so I figured I shouldn’t question it now!

The soup was incredible. Comforting, flavorful, and a really pleasant texture! We actually didn’t end up adding meatballs to ours, and just kept it as the Monday version throughout the week. I guess you can’t go wrong when the last step is to add a pat of butter to the bowl when you’re serving the soup, right?

I’ve mentioned before that we will often double recipes and freeze some for later. As two people working full-time jobs, we never know when we’re going to need to take a night off from cooking. We spent the better part of this year trying to find a cooking pattern that works for us and reduces our takeout intake, and to be honest we are still working on a schedule that works for us. But I’m thrilled to share that we doubled the Short Rib Borsch and were thrilled to have it in our freezer for a rainy day. Regardless of what type of Borsch or Borscht you are making, it takes a decent amount of prep work and cooking time. It’s worth it to make a big batch of recipes that are going to take a long time, so you can enjoy them for longer (especially if they freeze well).

We love borsch in general, so it’s always nice to try a variation of it. I really loved the way the grated beets and carrots worked texturally in the soup as in the past I’ve always diced all of the vegetables. I learned to make borsch from my Aunt, and her variation is still my favorite. I won’t be sharing the secrets of her borsch with you today, but maybe some day in the future.

Since I was already buying short ribs for the borsch, I decided to make the Short Rib Zharkoye which is short ribs with potatoes and prunes (and basically that’s it). It isn’t a dish I’m familiar with, but I liked all of the elements. I don’t think this was the recipe for me (or perhaps I didn’t make it correctly). What I thought we were going to end up with was not really what we ended up with - the dish was one-note in terms of flavor, and the textures kind of melded together. It was not a bad dish, I think I’ll just need to have someone else make it for me next time who knows the recipe and it’s intricacies.

Golubtsi (stuffed cabbage) is one of my favorite dishes. If you’ve been here a while - you know this. You know I like to try different stuffed cabbage variations and sauces to see which will ultimately be my go to and my favorite. Well… let me tell you that Lazy Golubtsi might just take the cake. Stuffed cabbage is a true labor of love, and I love to do the labor to get that perfect pocket result, but when the opportunity presented itself to make stuffed cabbage in meatball form with cabbage as the sauce and not the wrapper, how could I say no? We loved the way the recipe came out. We had it over pasta (Delicious), and I think we also had it with mashed potatoes one night. If the cabbage isn’t coming off in perfect leaves to make those perfect parcels, I’m making the lenivo [lazy] version.

I’ll end off with a sweet treat which is what we had in June when we cooked from this book. The abundance of early summer fruits was upon us, and I had always eyed the Summer Kompot recipe in this book (but had always been looking at it in Winter)! Finally, my chance to make this exquisite treat. We used a variety of fruits as the base of our Kompot - peaches, strawberries, blackberries, apricots - whatever we had on hand from the farmer’s market. We tried it with and without ice cream and enjoyed it immensely both ways - but with ice cream on a hot summer’s day cannot be beat. I will have to save this recipe for future hot summer gatherings as it truly hit the spot last summer.

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

PS. I want to give a throwback shout-out to another recipe in this book that I made for a dinner party in 2022 - Armenian Pumpkin Dolmas - I made these stuffed pumpkins for friends and the flavors blew all of our minds. What a special and beautiful dish. If you’re into stuffed vegetables, don’t sleep on this one! I wish I had a photo, but I don’t… I guess I’ll just have to make them again, soon!

I spent a year working in the kitchen of a small cafe in Santa Monica. The experience was invaluable. Yes, I’d attended culinary school, and yes I was already starting to work as a private chef, but you learn so much more by being around other people than you ever will on your own. Now that I work in an office in a completely different industry, I can say with confidence that this is true - especially when everyone brings in different strengths and skillsets.

One of the things on our cafe menu was Frittatas, we made a few each day and sold them by the slice. I hadn’t really been exposed to Frittatas before this job - sure I’d seen them on menus and cooking shows, but when you make them literally every day it’s a different kind of exposure. I brought my frittata knowledge (after this job) to my private clients. I had one client who ordered a frittata every week!

Like my Mac & Cheese, my own Frittata recipe is a ratio which has been adapted from the recipe we used at the cafe.

1 Dozen Eggs + 1 C. Milk (or you can use half & half) + 6 oz Shredded Cheese + 2-3 Vegetables or One protein & two vegetables + Salt, Pepper, and Garlic powder (no measurements - do them to your liking). I bake my frittatas in a baking dish (@375º until set) so you can cut into squares (and I usually double this recipe).

Some combinations that my clients loved: Mushroom & Onion with Gruyere, Bell Peppers & Red Onions with Cheddar Cheese, Potato & Onion with Swiss Cheese, Broccoli & Pesto with Parmesan, Kale & Soy Chorizo (or regular Chorizo) with Cotija Cheese, Asparagus & Bacon with Goat Cheese, Garlic Spinach, Sausage, and Onion.

So why, you may ask, would I bother with any other frittata recipe when it seems like I have a method that’s worked for me for well over 10 years? Well, as I was saying earlier - just as you can learn from other people in your work environment, I feel like you always have something you can learn from a cookbook - even if it’s a recipe you “know”. It’s why I make almost every meatball recipe I come across in cookbooks, because I love meatballs and I want to find out what makes the best meatball!

I’ve had Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden on my shelf for years, but this is the first time I’ve genuinely cooked from it. I think I was gifted it or purchased it in 2018 after it won a James Beard award. It’s a gorgeous compendium of vegetable-forward recipes divided into the six seasons of the year - Spring, Early Summer, Midsummer, Late Summer, Fall, and Winter. The recipes in each chapter focus on the ingredients that are most readily available at that time of year. I would safely say that if you only want a few books in your collection - this would be a great one to consider. Not only are the recipes clear and easy to follow, but the descriptions of certain vegetables and their various applications in recipes that are interspersed throughout the book are little bits of treasure within the pages.

The Red Pepper, Potato, & Prosciutto Frittata Topped with Ricotta felt like a great place to jump into this book. My husband loves to have eggs for breakfast, but he doesn’t have enough time in the morning to prepare them - so a frittata or an egg cup is a great way for us to have eggs “on the go”. I made this frittata just for him, as I don’t eat prosciutto, and he enjoyed it for a full week of breakfasts. The great thing about Frittatas is that they both re-heat well, and freeze well - so they’re a fabulous egg choice if you’re wanting to prep your meals in advance!

The recipe is well-written, easy to follow, and foolproof! One thing I loved in this recipe was the inclusion of specifics on the pan type - as I mentioned before I make my frittatas in the oven in a baking dish, but this one is made in a frying pan, half on the stove, and half in the oven! Aside from pre-boiling the potatoes, you bring the ingredients together in one frying pan, so the dish-washing load isn’t too heavy. The ricotta on top isn’t just an aesthetic touch, it adds a lovely fresh creaminess that will balance out the saltiness of the prosciutto and the savory depth of the peppers and scallions.

I was working from this book on the edge of Spring and Early Summer, but couldn’t for the life of me find green garlic, so I substituted regular garlic to make the Lamb Ragu with Carrots and Green Garlic. Perhaps next spring I can re-visit the recipe if I chance upon some green garlic at the farmer’s market.

The Ragu recipe - like the frittata recipe - is well-written and easy to follow. I found the end result to have a bit more fat than I’d prefer, but that’s probably due to the fact that lamb is one of the fattier meats one can use to make a ragu. The end result, regardless of fat content, was delicious. I love making sauces like this, and when I can I try to double the recipe and freeze half to use for a future date.

I’ll definitely be turning to this book seasonally for inspiration, and if ever I come home with some uncommon vegetable from the market (which I do from time to time), I hope I’ll find some fabulous way to prepare it within these delicious pages.

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

Whenever a recipe calls for caramelizing onions, I find that there’s several different methods that chefs swear by to try and “cut time”, but the beauty of caramelized onions is that they take time! The lower and slower you cook the onions, the more development you’ll get with your flavor - sweet and savory all at once. This is my method for caramelizing onions - I’m sure you can find similar methods online, but here’s my explanation of How To & Why… I do hope you’ll try it for yourself.

Caramelized Onions - Dry Pan Method

4x Sweet Onions

4x Tablespoons Butter (unsalted) - or Olive Oil if you prefer, or half butter & half oil

Salt & Pepper

Non-stick pot or pan

Wooden or Bamboo Spoon or Spatula1

Start by cutting your onions.

I cut off the root and stem ends and then peel off the outer skin, then I slice from root to stem in thin slices (this is also known as pole-to-pole slicing and is better if you are using onion slices for cooking). Slicing pole-to-pole is an “against the grain” slice, if you work with meat, then you’ll be familiar with the benefits of slicing against the grain.

Once all of your onions are sliced, put them into a DRY non-stick pan or pot over medium heat. Your goal here is to cook the naturally-occurring water out of the onions so that when you eventually add the fat and seasoning you are doing it with intention and the seasoning and fat isn’t getting lost in the water released from the onions. You’ll need to stir them every once in a while but you don’t have to hover over the stove. The onions will release their liquid on their own which will keep them from burning as well, as they release liquid, they will reduce in size by about a quarter of what you started with - and slowly they will start to turn slightly yellow (just the faintest).

Once you feel the liquid has released (10 minutes or so - depending on how many onions you are using, how big your pan or pot is, and what temperature you have the heat on) add the butter (1 TB per onion) and season with salt (and pepper) to taste (a couple of pinches should do it). Turn the heat to low and let the butter melt into the onions - give the pot a good stir every few minutes, just to keep them from getting too brown too fast. Again this will take time, maybe 20 minutes, maybe 30-40 minutes - there are too many varying factors to put an exact time on how long it will take you to achieve the results you are looking for (stove temp, stove type, pot or pan size, etc.)

What you’re looking for? Golden brown - not too dark, and not too pale. You want to try to keep the onions from catching on the bottom of your pan because you don’t want them to taste burnt. If they are browning too fast or too much; your heat is too high. If nothing is happening; your heat is too low. It’s a delicate balance, but you’ll find what works for you.

And now for the main event…

Macaroni & Cheese - Alyssa’s Ratio

1 lb Pasta (I use Cavatappi - it’s like an elbow that keeps going)

1 Stick Butter (1/2 Cup Butter)

1/2 Cup Flour (All Purpose)

5 Cups Milk - warmed gently in a pot on the stove

1 lb. Cheese (your choice - I used cheddar and gruyere this time) - shredded

Salt & Pepper

Optional -

Cayenne if you want heat, 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon

Freshly Grated Nutmeg if you want warmth, 1 teaspoon

Panko Breadcrumbs

Grated Parmesan Cheese (Optional)

Preheat oven to 350º.

Bring a pot of water to a boil, add salt, and cook the pasta until al dente (time according to the package you have). Set aside while you make the béchamel.

In a large pot melt the butter, then add the flour and stir. You want to cook it for a few minutes so that your sauce won’t taste like raw flour, stirring with - you guessed it - a wooden spoon. At least 3 minutes - you can take it darker if you want a deeper flavor, but béchamel is supposed to have a more blond roux (butter + flour). Begin to whisk in the warmed milk - 1/4 - 1/3 cup at a time, at first your mixture will look like wet sand - this is good.. keep whisking and incorporating at the same pace - making sure the milk and the roux are combined well before you add the next round of milk.

Once all the milk is added and the sauce is thick and a smooth consistency2, season with salt, pepper, and cayenne or nutmeg if using. Turn the heat off and stir in the shredded cheese. Once you have a homogenous mixture, stir in the cooked pasta and be sure it is coated very well with the cheese sauce - at this point it is referred to as a Mornay sauce (béchamel with cheese added).

For this particular variation - I added the caramelized onions in with the pasta and Mornay sauce and gave it a good stir.

Prepare a deep baking dish by buttering the inside of the dish (or you may use a cooking spray if you prefer - just be sure it isn’t too distinctive in flavor, an olive oil spray may not be a nice flavor with your mac). Pour the sauced pasta in the baking dish. Top the pasta with an even single-layer sprinkling of panko breadcrumbs, and a lighter sprinkling of grated parmesan cheese.

I decided to add shaved gruyere pieces to the top of my macaroni and cheese since it was “French Onion Soup Mac”.

At this point you can either cool it, cover it, and refrigerate it - cook it the day you plan to eat it. Or you can bake it right then. OR you can bake it, cool it, cover and fridge it and re-heat at your gathering. The dish is flexible!

I bake it at 350º for 30 - 40 minutes or until the Mornay is bubbling and the panko/parmesan crust has formed. If your baking dish is filled almost to the top like mine was - I recommend sliding your baking dish onto a rimmed cookie sheet to catch any cheese sauce drippings.

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

Two years ago we had the pleasure of visiting Oaxaca just after Dia De Los Muertos. The trip was incredible! Oaxaca is where my husband’s mother is from, and experiencing his family’s culture first-hand was really inspiring! When we returned from the trip, I decided to look for some cookbooks that focus on the food of Oaxaca, and Dining with the Dead, by Mariana Nuño Ruiz & Ian McEnroe, came up in my search. This book is a beautiful tribute to Oaxacan cuisine, culture, and the traditions that surround Dia De Los Muertos.

We will have to come back to this book for some real project-based cooking, the explanations on Moles, Tamales, and more are so detailed and fantastic — I’m really inspired to dive into these recipes! We didn’t need to make too many meals this week, we had some meals covered with family gatherings, so I decided to focus on just a couple of recipes - but boy did they really wow us!

I started off with Frijoles de la Olla, Pot Beans, which we needed in order to make the main dish this week. I don’t have the clay pot requested for making beans, but I just made them in a regular pot. I made a half recipe which is one pound of dry beans and it made a very nice amount of beans for us. If you have the time to cook your own beans, preparing them this way is much more economical than buying cans of beans (I assume most people know this already, but it’s not something I think of on the day to day. It is much easier to open a can of beans, but it is much tastier to cook them yourself!).

I decided to make Enfrijoladas this week. If you’ve ever had enchiladas, they are not too dissimilar in concept, but the sauce is silky smooth and made with beans! The recipe in this book is vegetarian - the filling is cheese and onions, but you could easily make this with shredded chicken, beef, or maybe even chorizo! I made the beans one day early so I could make the sauce the next day. If you remember from a couple of weeks ago, I have an excess amount of Guajillo & Ancho chiles, so I was happy to find a recipe that requires both of them. I felt the recipe was well-written and easy to follow - it came together beautifully and was absolutely delicious! The chiles added a bit of smoky heat that was just right - not overpowering at all. We used flour tortillas instead of corn because we had them on hand, but next time I’d like to try to make them with corn tortillas… and there will be a next time!

Well, if you know me at all by now, you know I cannot resist a rice recipe, and Mexican/Spanish style rice is one of my favorites! I am trying to find the perfect recipe for this type of rice, so I was happy to try a new one. The Arroz a la Mexicana from this book had a great flavor, it came together easily and made a decent amount for just starting with one cup of rice! I did like it, we ate it alongside our enfrijoladas, but it isn’t exactly what I’m looking for in my grand quest. In a pinch, however, I would definitely make this recipe again as it worked well!

I am definitely going to want to return to this book - as I said earlier, some of the project-recipes are really well written and I am excited to brave them! And when I next decide to make a dessert, I am definitely going to try the Flan de Campazutchitl (Marigold Flan). It looks incredible!

Love and Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

Writing in real time now! It was hard to want to cook after returning home from a long trip abroad, and not really knowing which time zone I was in, but Ina makes it easy, as always.

A lot of the books in my collection are there because I think they are beautiful, unique, interesting, and feature a culture or cuisine of somewhere I’ve traveled (or somewhere I want to travel), and then the other half are practical cookbooks. Sometimes practicality & beauty intersect, like in Cooking for Jeffrey, but I just have to say that Ina Garten really knows how to write a book full of practical, approachable, and delicious recipes for the modern busy-person who wants to cook their own meals!

In addition to what we ended up making from this book this time around, we’ve cooked a lot from this book since it’s publication in 2016. I am constantly making the Maple-Roasted Carrot Salad, it is perfect for bringing to a party or potluck. There are a couple of roast chicken recipes in here, and Ina really takes away any “fear” one might have about roasting a whole chicken. Her method for Spaghetti Squash is the only one I will use to make Spaghetti Squash and it comes from this book (it’s actually this method and recipe that convinced me Spaghetti Squash was worth all the effort)!

You can tell that these recipes come from a place of love and comfort, because they are all so comforting and so full of love. The Rigatoni with Sausage and Fennel is one of those incredible balanced pasta bakes that ends up tasting like every bite was made with care. We used chicken sausage instead of pork, but otherwise stuck to the recipe as written. I think this could be a really special pasta dish to make for a dinner party that doesn’t have you sweating in the kitchen all day. If you’re a vegetarian, it’s easy enough to leave the sausage out and make the recipe with just the veggies & cheese!

It’s a saucy pasta dish, but we are going to bake the remainder to get a nice crispy top!

After traveling, I felt like I came back on a soup kick… but after reviewing what I cooked before I left, I feel like I was already on a soup kick! Regardless, Asparagus is just coming in to its season and the Asparagus and Fennel Soup sounded too good to pass up. I knew we had some random slices of bread in the freezer that would make for a great soup Crostini, and thus a fantastic and comforting dinner. The soup came together easily, the hardest part was chopping the vegetables, but once everything was in the pot and simmering, I felt the hard work was done. I blended it all together at the end - the interesting thing about this recipe is you use a bit of rice in the soup as your thickening agent instead of potatoes (what I assume would normally be used). The nice thing about rice is it doesn’t really change the consistency of the soup once you’ve blended it in. This was a nice touch, and one I may have to remember for creamy soups in the future.

We had just purchased all of our ingredients fresh on Sunday, and this soup calls for a bit of half and half at the end, I started to measure it out and poured a tiny bit into the soup and then I realized it was spoiled. I was so upset! This was a brand new half and half!!! The amount of soup we had in the pot vs. the amount of half and half I had added made me feel like we could probably eat it and not die… and spoiled milk is basically cheese, right? OK sorry if this is gross. Anyway we ate the soup. It was delicious! We didn’t die. We didn’t get sick (thank goodness), and I am never buying half and half from the store I bought it from again! I will definitely have to make the soup again, preferably without spoiled dairy added at the end.

Well, you know me and meatballs, and Ina has some secret trick to hers. Although this recipe is slightly different from another meatball recipe she has that makes some of the best meatballs I’ve ever had… it’s still a great recipe. The Roasted Italian Meatballs calls for red wine mixed right into the meat mix. It’s really an interesting addition. If you aren’t a wine fan, you may skip the wine and add more water or some milk instead, as the wine flavor is really present even in the finished cooked product. We froze half of the meatballs and are going to save them for a rainy day. The recipe says to toss them with a jar of tomato sauce, but since I technically shouldn’t be eating tomatoes, I do try to avoid them as I can. I decided to make a leek & mushroom gravy for the meatballs. Not the prettiest picture, but it was very delicious and a nice change-up from the traditional red sauce.

The book suggests you serve the meatballs with the Creamy Parmesan Polenta, I happened to have a bag of polenta in my pantry, so I thought “no time like the present” and since we were already having the pasta bake we didn’t need pasta on top of pasta. I used to make Polenta at one of my restaurant jobs, and it was always so stressful, if you leave it for too long it starts to burn, if you don’t cook it long enough, it tastes bitter, and even if you have it on the lowest of low temps, it will still bubble up and spurt out hot corn bits to burn your forearms. There must be some secret to making it just right (I assume pot-size has a lot to do with all of these factors), and I think pre-boiling your liquid and then adding the cornmeal/polenta slowly does help. We enjoyed it with the meatballs, but made far too much polenta… I had some this morning for breakfast with an egg, but it just didn’t fit my normal rice for breakfast craving. So if you have any suggestions for polenta… send them my way. Next time? Half recipe.

With the Meatballs and Polenta we decided to have the Parmesan Roasted Zucchini. When I worked as a chef I cannot tell you how many times clients told me they hate zucchini. Even still to this day I have people telling me how much they hate zucchini. Well Zucchini is a magical, beautiful.. blank canvas! It has so much potential in the world of vegetables! It can be grilled, broiled, roasted, pan-fried, sautéed, steamed, and even eaten raw! I love to make a zucchini soup in the summer, I love to shave it onto a pizza… I really love zucchini. I thought this would be a fun recipe to try zucchini in a new way. I guess the main issue people have with zucchini is that it releases a lot of water and therefore gets soggy, well I think Ina’s cracked that here. By removing some of the seeds from the interior, you are getting rid of a lot of what holds the moisture in the vegetable, and end up with a less soggy result! You scrape out some of the seeds to make a little bowl for your filling (later) roast them, cut-side down, which also helps draw out some of the water, flip them and then fill them, roast until that topping is crispy and zucchini is tender! It was a really delicious combination, the zucchini melted in our mouths, but the crispy topping kept the bite interesting and delicious. I would definitely make this again, but not for anyone who says they hate zucchini.

Lastly we prepared the Roasted Broccolini. I had purchased some broccoli/broccolini tops at the farmer’s market and decided this would be sufficient. I have a lot of methods/recipes for preparing broccolini, some of which I stole from other chefs, and some of which I invented myself, so it’s always nice to try another one when it comes my way. We thought this would be a great side dish to the pasta, and also it was very hands off! Once you pop the broccolini in the oven you don’t really have to think about it until the timer goes off. This was a great side dish that had a ton of flavor (roasting always makes veggies taste more complex) and went well with the pasta as we thought it would.

Without contest, Ina holds the crown for approachable and delicious recipes in one of her many cookbooks. I’m always happy to make her recipes and share them with others, and this book is a great book for a cook at any level.

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa

PS: We will likely be skipping the next book, Pasta by Hand by Jenn Louis simply because we don’t have the time to make pasta from scratch by hand this coming week. However, this is one of the first books Michael and I ever cooked from together when we first started dating. We made Buckwheat & Ricotta Gnocchi from this book early on in our relationship - for our first Valentine’s Day. So the fact that we are still together almost 10 years later must mean something!

I am so happy that Daylight Savings is finally here and we have daylight later than usual! Of course, I cooked from these books end of January/Early February… so I apologize for the crappy photo quality again.

Plenty More by Yotam Ottolenghi is a book that focuses on vegetables and the many ways in which we can use them, enhance them, and enjoy them in our cooking. The book is fabulous, perfect for finding Spring & Summer salads and enjoying rainbows upon rainbows of delicious vegetables. For Winter, it’s a bit harder to find recipes to enjoy. Now you’re probably sitting there thinking, “Alyssa, just swap this book for a more winter-y book and do this one in the summer!”, but I am trying to stick to my method here. I have 20 new books that my parents were getting rid of… how am I going to incorporate them into the collection?!

We are trying to be more mindful of our lunches. Sometimes I have lunch catered at work and it isn’t always the “healthy” choices one would anticipate, and Michael’s options are mostly food trucks if he doesn’t think ahead on his lunches. The issue is - we like vastly different things for lunch. I have made the Lemon & Curry Leaf Rice before when I was catering. It’s a fabulous, aromatic, delicious rice dish, simple & flavorful. I decided I would try to make it in my rice cooker (no time for the oven method during the week - but if you can try the oven method, I recommend it! One less thing on the stove!) and it came out just perfect! I used it as a base for Michael’s lunches for the week and he loved it (with some grilled meat and sautéed veggies). I had my portions for breakfast because I love having rice with eggs for breakfast!

Our apartment in winter is what I lovingly refer to as our “Ice Castle” the average temperature is 50ºF if we don’t turn on any heaters. Of course it is infinitely warmer outside, and when we finally decide to open a window it warms up. I’m not a fan of the artificial heat sources, I prefer to be under a pile of blankets with a hot water bottle!

Taking our “Ice Castle” into account, Curry Laksa felt like just the right dish to warm us up at night. Not only are the flavors warming (with the spices) but it’s a stew/soup dish and perfect for a cold winter night. I have never made Laksa from scratch, and the first time we ate it, I kind of regretted that I had not strained the aromatics out of the broth (they did not purée well in our food processor). The flavor was superb, but the texture was a little gritty. When we packaged it up for the second round, I strained the broth so we just had a smooth broth with the remaining ingredients (veggies, proteins) on the side. The second round was pleasant to eat, and still delicious (you know what they say! Soup the next day!). We subbed in chicken for the tofu suggested, and I used egg noodles because that was my preference over rice vermicelli. I would say this is one of those recipes that looks overwhelming - a lot of ingredients on the page - but it really does come together well. You put the first 8-9 ingredients in a food processor and it’s easy from there! I could not easily find Laksa leaves, so I used curry leaves as the book suggests for a substitute (and I had them for the curry leaf rice).

We had purchased ingredients to make the Miso Vegetables & Rice with Black Sesame Dressing and the infamous Cauliflower Cake, but Michael came down with a cold so I made him Matzo Ball Soup instead.

When he started to feel better, he asked me if he could prepare the Grilled Ziti with Feta. I worked late almost all of February, and wasn’t getting home until after 7 PM most nights, so when he texted me one evening [5:30 pm] saying “Can I cook this recipe, I read through it three times and I think I can do it?” I said, “Sure! Call me if you have questions.”

I started to drive home and the phone rang [6:15 pm], he asked “where are the caraway seeds?” I really wasn’t 100% sure we had any (and I have a lot of spices in three different places) so I quickly looked up a substitute, the internet said Fennel seeds, so I told him to use some Fennel seeds which I knew we had. I started thinking to myself, “he hasn’t even started yet, we’ll be eating dinner at midnight!” but I want Michael to have confidence in the kitchen so I didn’t say anything! The man can cook, he doesn’t need my help to do so, but I really think he just needs me to not be around telling him anything from a chef’s perspective. I arrived home after 7 pm and he was still cooking. I took a shower, and at 8:03 PM, the Ziti came out of the oven. It isn’t actually “grilled” in the American sense of the word, it is “Broiled” so we get a nice crispy top. The dish was delicious! Honestly he did a fantastic job. I think, reading through the recipe, it seems simple enough. It is not tomato season, so we used whole-peeled canned tomatoes instead of fresh tomatoes. The spices and herbs here are unique, not exactly what I would use for a pasta dish, but I think everything worked well together!

Michael was very proud of himself, so then I left him a recipe for a cauliflower curry (not from this book). I knew he could make it with the cauliflower we had purchased for the cauliflower cake that we weren’t going to make (egg shortage anyone? the cake recipe calls for 7 eggs!). I walked him through the recipe over the phone and he made some notes and when I came home, there was an EXCEPTIONAL cauliflower curry ready for us to consume.

We then got very excited for the next week’s book because it is one from Michael’s collection, Mexico From the Inside Out by Enrique Olvera. We started to look through the book and were less excited with each page. Don’t get me wrong, the book is gorgeous, absolutely stunning, and each recipe sounds amazing… but this is the kind of book for someone who has all the time in the world and access to really difficult to source ingredients, not the kind of book for two people with full-time jobs who are trying to get dinner on the table in 30 minutes each night. The other issue we had was, none of the recipes felt like they would constitute a lunch or dinner. There was one egg dish that I thought maybe I could make for breakfast on the weekend, Eggs with Hoja Santa and Ranchera Salsa but I couldn’t find Hoja Santa leaves anywhere (even my mother-in-law thought we were crazy to look for them).

We finally decided that the only thing we could truly make given all of the circumstances was the Vegetable Soup. The picture felt like we were going to make tortilla soup with vegetables, and that is basically what we did.. but instead of tomato in the base we made a Chile Adobo with Guajillo and Pasilla chiles. If you know your chiles (I do not) Guajillo and Pasilla chiles are both dried versions of fresh chiles. TO make them into an Adobo paste, you boil them in water, and then blend them with aromatics (onion, garlic, and salt to taste). I felt this was a great process for me to learn, and not just because the amount of these dried chiles that I have leftover is overwhelming, as adobo-bases are great for marinating meats, fish, and vegetables, and can add a real punch-up to your cooking. The vegetables added to the soup are all diced in little cubes (felt like I was back in cooking school making consommé), and then gently boiled in the adobo-laden broth until tender. The recipe calls for us to fry tortilla strips, but we had some leftover crispy tostada chips so we ate it with those instead. All in all the soup was yummy, warm (because we live in an ice castle), and I was happy to learn a new method with dried chiles, but I probably won’t be making it again. So little time, so many soups to enjoy.

The book that came up after this was A Painter’s Kitchen Recipes from the Kitchen of Georgia O’Keeffe. As we have learned previously, artists cookbooks don’t always provide the best recipes to cook from, so even though we wanted to try maybe one or two recipes, we decided to skip it.

Love & Happy Spatulas,

Alyssa