Weekly Menus

Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–so glad you’re here! Today, I’m continuing my series on the foundational sauces of California Cuisine. So far in this series, I have shared recipes and information about mayonnaise, salsas, vinaigrettes, pesto sauces, tomato sauce and now Hollandaise sauce and its derivatives. This blog is devoted to California Cuisine, and so naturally, I try to use fresh, seasonal ingredients. But for my regular readers, you also know …

Hello and welcome back to another edition of “What’s Cooking in Keri’s California Kitchen Tonight?” So glad you’re here! We are experiencing a remarkably cool end-of-summer season. A cool front came down our way from the Gulf of Alaska and our daytime highs have plunged from the low ’90’s to the low ’70’s and upper ’60’s. The sky is dotted with white cotton candy clouds that float by under the care of a gentle, cool …

Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–so glad you’re here! Well, here we are–the summer is almost over. I can see the signs of fall everywhere and I’m reminded of how quickly time goes by. The turn of the season from summer to fall always makes me want to lean into comfort foods; and what better comfort food than Bearnaise sauce?! Today, I’m continuing my exploration of my choice for the sixth “mother” …

Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook! I’m so glad you’re here! Here in Northern California, we have been enjoying some of the most beautiful weather of the entire year. It’s been breezy–but an on-shore breeze, which keeps things nice and cool–sunny and clear during the day, but foggy and cloudy in the morning, which has been bringing us just a hint of fall. This morning, it was chilly–I actually needed a little …

Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–so glad you’re here! Today, I’m continuing my series on the seven “mother” sauces of California Cuisine. Having covered the first five sauces: mayonnaise, pesto, vinaigrette, salsa and tomato, I’m now starting in on recipes for and derived from Hollandaise sauce. Today, I’m sharing my recipe for Sauce Maltaise, which is basically Hollandaise sauce with blood orange juice and zest. It’s light, very mildly sweet and a …

Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–so glad you’re here! Today, I’m starting my exploration of the sixth of my sauces of California Cuisine: Hollandaise sauce. I will confess that I struggled with Hollandaise sauce–not so much with making a successful batch of it–it’s pretty foolproof to make using a hand-held immersion blender–but I struggled with whether or not it should have a berth in my list of California Cuisine sauces. After all, …

Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–so glad you’re here! Today, I’m finishing up my exploration of tomato sauce, the fifth of my seven sauces of California Cuisine, by sharing my recipe for quick pizza sauce. I think Mr. Stone Soup could eat pizza every single day. When I make pizza, he gets a grin on his face and bounces a little on the balls of his feet in anticipation. Pizzas, at their …

Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–glad you’re here! Today, I’m sharing my version of Bolognese sauce, which after doing some research, I’m titling Bolognese Sauce a la Keri because it doesn’t fit neatly into a category, and I’m actually ok with that. Turns out, neither do I 😉 I have been having a hard time getting back into the swing of writing and publishing. The mountain of work that resulted from our …

Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–so glad you’re here! Today, I’m going to feature a recipe for vodka sauce, which is the next in my series on tomato sauce, one of the foundational sauces of California. But first… I was shocked to see that it’s been a whole month since I last put up a post. In that time, in a nutshell, I was getting ready to take a two-week road trip …

Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–so glad you’re here! Today, I’m continuing my exploration of tomato sauce, the fifth of the sauces I have designated as the “mother” sauces of California Cuisine. Yesterday, I shared the recipe for long simmered, basic Italian tomato sauce. It is a beautiful sauce that’s super versatile: Today, I’m sharing my recipe for French Tian, which uses the gorgeous Italian tomato sauce as a base: For those …