liv bites

In French cooking, as it turns out, you only really need three ingredients to get started: butter, flour and eggs. Sugar helps, too, as does a nice Swiss cheese. Everything else is just an accessory. After our indulgent day of soufflé making a few weeks back, I didn’t think I’d be able to stomach another [...]

We’ve been cutting up chickens on a daily basis at Tante Marie’s over the past couple of weeks, so dinner this week was more practice: Roasted Chicken and an Arugula and Butternut Squash Salad with Pomegranate Seeds. The recipe for that is still in the works, but even more interesting was what I decided to [...]

There are about 4,000 ways to cook an artichoke, and trimming those prickly leaves never gets any faster. Make your own pasta… … It’s simple, you can freeze it, and you won’t regret it. Some things are best eaten raw. Never discard stale bread. Give croutons, bread crumbs and bread pudding a chance (particularly the [...]

I hate it when bloggers apologize for being MIA, so I’m not even going there. Suffice it to say that last week, culinary school became, well, school. I was faced with a practical exam (read: cooking a three-course meal under a deadline for my instructor to critique) and a written exam, rounding out the week [...]

See this guy? He’s at work at 2:00 every morning, and he can filet a fish in under 10 seconds. He’s an employee at Monterey Fish Market, a company that supplies seafood to some of the best restaurants in the Bay Area — and to Tante Marie’s Cooking School. I set my alarm for 4:30 [...]

I vow never, ever to buy ricotta cheese in the supermarket again. This week we made fresh cheeses at school — as opposed to aged, hard cheeses like cheddar — and my mind was blown by how incredibly simple the whole process is. Okay, I had it easy, being assigned the ricotta cheese, which takes [...]

I discussed last week’s fish workshop in plenty of detail, but I couldn’t wait to try baking the filets in parchment paper at home. Thus, it’s recipe time! It’s been a while since I posted a recipe on the blog, mostly because I’m focusing on taking everything in rather than producing something new. But I [...]

Confession: Before last week, I had never really made a pie. Okay, there was this chocolate one and these mini tarts, but in terms of an old-fashioned, crusty, fruit-filled pie, I admit I’m fully intimidated. Until Friday, that is, when our school day consisted of a workshop in basic pastry dough — that buttery, flaky, [...]