Sometimes, you just need to screw around in the kitchen. Sometimes, screwing around in the kitchen generates a lot of bulk waste for the trash bin. Sometimes boredom, distraction and a bit of Korean seasonings produce a bastard love-child that kind of works…

Bulgogi Meatballs

Bart: Akira, my good man, I’d like two sharks, an octopus and an eel.
Akira: Very good.
Bart: Do you have any giant squid? The kind that drags men to their deaths?
Akira: Not today…

I don’t know about you, but I’m just about ready for this winter to be over… Maybe I’m getting scurvy, but citrus is on my mind of late. As wrong as it is, I still think of oranges, tangerines and grapefruit as “Summer” fruits, even though I know (my family’s from Florida) that January and February are peak season.

This guy sacrificed his skin to flavour a custard I made recently. What are some of your favorite Winter citrus recipes?

Never met a dumpling I didn’t like. I’ve made chicken and dumplings at my mother’s knee. I’ve had dumplings in Prague with wild hare stew and in Vienna with roast boar. Once at a little restaurant along the Danube in Germany, the dumplings were served alongside a chunky soup of mushrooms, potatoes, carrots and venison swimming in red wine. I’ve dropped dough atop a thick beef stew made in a Dutch oven and cooked with the coals of a campfire. Dumplings with soup are bliss. But I’d never had the soup inside the dumpling.

Tomatoes are my absolute favorite fruit. And nothing excites me more that finding nice heirloom tomatoes in the market. As a kid I never really appreciated the lumpy, weird-looking tomatoes my grandfather fawned over in the garden – but one taste is enough to remind me of what a real tomato is all about…