Note: I'm in the process of adding metric conversions to all the recipes, but don't nobody hold your breath. Those who are unfamiliar with American recipe measurement conventions might want to take a look at my comments on this matter in the recipe "Grandmother's Cornbread."

Crisp Pickled Green Beans

The recipe for the Crisp Pickled Green Beans from Better Than Store Bought by Helen Witty and Elizabeth Schneider Colchie.

Chocolate Sauce

This chocolate sauce has been the source of many fine memories, perhaps the fondest of these being that of giving my friend Robin her first jar when we were at Bayard Systems and watching a look of low cunning cross her face as she grabbed a gummed label and wrote "Hot Chile Sauce" on it.

Willie's Crisp

This is a wonderful recipe for berry season or for that matter, stone fruit season. I got it many years ago from Marion Cunningham's column in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Italian Butter Beans

The following recipe is an original creation, which is not to say that someone else has not already done this, but rather that I was messing around in the kitchen one day and made it up.

The Pie

After Allen joined me in San Francisco in 1978, we started giving dinner parties. By then, I had enough confidence to try making Mother's chocolate-pecan pie. It was an instant success (well, after I finally made it successfully) so much so that when I issued dinner invitations, guests began to inquire, with varying delicacy, whether "The Pie," as it came to be known, would be the dessert. I never refused, and in time there was cruel speculation that it was the only dessert I knew how to make.

Okra

What to do with that okra? Well, you must never serve it just boiled to death in its own slime like all the southern mothers did, and while we all like it fried, we all like just about anything fried and we're over that now. So what does that leave?

Chèvred Tomatoes

This is another thing to do with chèvre besides pairing it with dried Moyer plums from Bella Viva at the Ferry Plaza and other fine markets or, in a pinch, another fine prune.

Clementined Avocado

This is supposedly the recipe for one of my favorite little dishes even though when I call this a recipe I am reminded of Christine Muhlke's quotation of a French chef upon his eating one of Alice Waters' salads, "That's not cooking. That's shopping."

Garlic Sprouts

I've been pairing sprouts and hot sausage for years, but the garlic adds a level of complexity. It's sort of like the difference between Bach's Two and Three Part Inventions....two voices are enough, but sometimes the complexity of a third is a good change.

Sautéed Fresh Garlic

In the early Spring when fresh green garlic is in season, I use it a lot. As a precaution, I try to serve it to everyone around me. Here's how I cook the garlic as a vegetable, starting with about three pounds or a bit more.

Grandmother's Cornbread

This recipe is not really here for Americans, since we all use our mothers' recipes, and if Mother didn't make it, we tend not to, either. Rather, it's for my European friends, most particularly the Dutch since they're who I've been feeding it lately.

Chile con Carne

I still continually marvel that for most of my life, except for a few times when I was able to buy good frozen chili back in Texas, I subsisted on canned chili, which is what Texans call chile con carne. Here's a recipe I developed for the real thing.

Sandwich

Another recipe that's really just shopping.

Cranberry Beans

A new recipe from our experimental kitchens.

Arugula, Marionberry, and Blue Cheese Salad

I copied this out of a Sunset Magazine on the back side of a paper baguette sleeve one afternoon at hand therapy. Didn't have much time, so it's only the essentials, but I figured it might be worth a try, and at least nobody'd be likely to have eaten it before.

Pork Sybil

This recipe is my adjustments to Sybil's modifications of a recipe by Molly Stevens in her book All About Braising. I am deeply, gravely saddened that I didn't learn this recipe forty years ago because everybody loves it.

Chile Verde

I stuck a draft version of this recipe in my Feeding Amsterdam travelog. The dish is, if anything, even more popular than my chile con carne. And since tomatillos are next to impossible to find here, it's something that the Dutch have never even imagined. See the end of the recipe for a variation using chicken.