Not so long ago — really, a matter of months — checking out the canned fish section of my supermarket was a pleasure. Not something to look forward to, exactly, but it nearly always put me in a good place.

That’s because of what I’d find. Sometimes fancy Italian jarred tuna on sale. Other times good-looking anchovies. Or I’d grab a can of wild pink salmon — nice for croquettes for pantry-time dinners.

More often than not, I’d stock up on sardines: because we eat a lot of them.

Or used to, before the good ones became unaffordable, and then disappeared from the shelf completely.

I’m looking at you, tinned fish lifestyle influencers. I love that you’re attracted to those great-looking little tins (I am, too!), but you’ve ruined it for those of us who enjoy actually eating the shiny little fish preserved simply in olive oil.

Now the shelves are crowded with extremely overpriced, highly designed, beautifully branded sardines, soaked in all kinds of sardine-flavor-disguising sauces — charred tomato, preserved lemon, chile crisp. Who knows, maybe these concoctions are delicious, but they’re not meant for those of us who enjoy actual sardines, or want to use them in recipes.

Gone are good sardines that I can afford. Yes, I can sometimes find skinless, boneless, more affordable ones, but they’re skinless and boneless — not what a true sardine-lover wants.

Those have disappeared. Maybe because they don’t come in a colorful tin. Normally I don’t pay much heed (or any) to Tiktok trends like sardinemaxxing, but this one has impinged on my ability to eat a normal, delicious thing.

When I read about how sardines are good for your skin, I picture gorgeous Gen-Zers smearing sardines all over their beautiful faces.

Will we ever return to sardine normalcy?

The sardines I used to buy were the ones shown above — Bar Harbor Wild Petite Sardines in Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Here’s what I wrote about them three years ago in a post:

“We are a big sardine household. We eat the silvery treats frequently for lunch, with just a squeeze of lemon. I also love to toss them with pasta, toasted pine nuts, soaked currants or yellow raisins and parsley, Sicilian-style — quick and instant delicious dinner. These sardines (imported from Latvia) are the nicest ones I’ve ever found, small, perfect and fabulous. They’re pricey (usually $5 and change), but you can sometimes find them on sale (recently I grabbed them at Whole Foods for about $4).”

Now they’re about $8 — online. I haven’t been able to find them anywhere in my neck of the woods in stores.

With summer upon us, I’ve been thinking about so many sardine-involving treats, particularly one I used to throw together without a care in the world: a toast topped with egg salad and sardines. Put a salad next to that, or a bowl of gazpacho, and I’d call that a fantastic dinner.

It’s a dinner that I cannot make happen — and neither can you, if it happens to float your fishing boat.

And so I’m asking: How can we deglamorize the humble sardine and return it to its rightful place as a healthful, thrifty food that’s accessible to fish-lovers? Do we just need to wait for the trend to burn itself out and hope that eventually the prices drop and availability of non-glammy brands return? I’m dreaming of a day when I can stop at the supermarket, head toward canned fish on Aisle 4, and not be faced with a brand-happy rainbow but rather a tin or three of honest-to-goodness, tasty, unadulterated sardines.

I’d love to know your thoughts — please share them in a comment.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Lots of love,

Leslie

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Happy Sunday, rejuvenated cook!

I must confess: I’ve had a hard time recently coming up with posts that feel delicious enough to serve you. My in-box is overstuffed — with recipes from others (so many look worth making!), newsletters galore, cooking stories up the wazoo.

Why would anyone need to hear from me? What could I possibly add? Isn’t everyone literally and figuratively fed up? Inbox overwhelm has, very honestly, made it hard for me to write anything that feels worth sending. On top of it, my cooking spark has abandoned me. (I know — it’s hard to believe!) All this has put me in a bit of a funk.

Here’s the good news: I’m back!

This morning, faced with producing a pot-luck dish to bring to a gathering later today, I made a double-batch of Way Better Three Bean Salad. It was so enjoyable to make, and turned out so great, that it completely changed my cooking-and-writing mood. I couldn’t wait to share it with you! (Again - I did mention it a couple of years ago when I first created it.) The salad is pickly, not sweet (with just a touch of sugar), with lots of parsley, celery for crunch, and a marvelous zing from sumac. It’s vegan, delicious and super healthy. It made me excited to make it again (right away!), and started me thinking about all the cool-or-room-temp salads that could sustain us this summer.

I thought maybe the double-batch of the bean salad would yield enough for me to keep a few servings for Thierry and me, but I didn’t have the heart to remove any — it’s all going to the pot-luck.

No matter. I’m going to make it again this week. Maybe I’ll even pick up the ingredients on my way home from the event.

Here it is — do try it if you like beans.

🫘

More great salads for summer potlucks and picnics

🫘

Cooks Without Borders Cookbook Club on hiatus

In other news, at last week’s monthly meeting of the CWB Cookbook Club, I announced that we’ll be taking a break from the club for a month or three. The hiatus is a direct result of my cooking ennui I described above. I’ll keep you posted about when we resume. More about that soon — I’m going to write up some takeaways from the last few cookbooks we’ve cooked from as a club.

Have an excellent, bean-filled, salady week.

Lots of love,

Leslie

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Hello, overextended cook!

I’m looking forward to see all the CWB Cookbook Club members this evening, when we’ll compare notes on our May selection: Vegetables the Italian Way, by Giulia Scarpaleggia.

Besides that, we’ll need to devise a plan, because I’m going to need a break from Cookbook Club for a spell. If someone’s up for running the club in my stead, that’s fantastic — we can discuss! Otherwise, we’ll all take a break.

Joining Instructions - June Meeting

Today (Tues., June 2), at 4 p.m. PT/5 p.m. MT/6 p.m. CT/7 p.m. ET.

Cookbook Club regulars, you know how to join. If you forgot, please DM me in the members-only chat or reply to this email - let me know you’re coming, and I’ll give you a link to join. Important: Don’t wait till the last minute; if you request the link less than an hour before the meeting, I might not see it.

OK, see you soon!

Love, Leslie

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Happy unofficial-start-to-summer!

I can get a bit stuck on a dish that strikes my fancy; currently that’s the dish shown above — which I’m guessing will enchant me all through the summer. I’m also imagining that pasta salads will be my friends through the hot months, and lots of peaches — usually eaten out of hand, but when friends show up, maybe roasted with amaretto and dolloped with mascarpone or a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Tomato Tonnato

My present fixation began pre-season, when I happened upon a clever spin on the classic northern Italian dish vitello tonnato — sliced cold veal in tuna sauce — in ’s delightful new cookbook Vegetables the Italian Way, Though it was only late April, some decent-looking heirloom tomatoes from Mexico appeared in my supermarket, so I didn’t need to wait to try it.

My friend An-My had mentioned to me a couple of years ago another vitello tonnato spin: She dresses chicken breasts (poached, I think) with tonnato sauce, which I thought sounded so smart. Because while the traditional dish is spectacular — and trending in stateside restaurants these days — the idea of veal is so loaded. A veal loin is also hard to find anymore, and very expensive if you do find it.

Tomatoes, on the other hand, are uncomplicated. And accessible. And what I want to eat at at least four or five times a week in the summer.

In Scarpaleggia’s version, you simply blitz together canned tuna, mayo, anchovy, and capers with a dash of vinegar, spoon the mixture over sliced tomatoes, dot with more capers, strew basil leaves, drizzle olive oil and there you have it. It makes a magnificent lunch or splendid kickoff for dinner with friends. Absolutely you want crusty bread to sop up the sauce.

Scarpaleggia’s recipe serves a crowd (4 as a main course or 8 as an app); I’ve been cutting it down to serve 4 as a starter or 2 as a main, and tweaked it to make it a bit thicker.

To try it, whirr together (in a mini-chop or using a stick blender):

• 100 g (3.5 ounces) drained tuna (use good tinned or jarred tuna in olive oil)
• 75 g (1/3 cup) mayo
• 1 anchovy fillet
• 1 1/2 tablespoons drained brined capers
• 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar or cider vinegar

Add salt, if necessary, then spoon it over those tomatoes and garnish with basil, good olive oil, more capers and a few grinds of pepper.

Or you can try my less mayonnaise-y tonnato sauce from the recipe in this post (which also offers some vitello tonnato history):

I’ve been trying to conjure other uses for the tonnato sauce. My friend Diana thought it would be great on pasta. And that made me think about pasta salad. (Right?!) Or we could use it to transform a potato salad into something entirely new. Or spoon it over cold poached asparagus. Or slather it on a tomato-and-lettuce sandwich.

❦

Pasta Fagioli Salad

I love pasta salad, and I love bean salads; here they meet in one bowl. It’s infinitely riffable; go ahead and bend my recipe according to your will.

❦

Roasted Peaches with Amaretto

Two summers ago, I wrote about this fabulously simple dessert as a farewell to summer. This time around, I’m embracing it early — right at the beginning of stone fruit season. It’s adapted from the Via Carota cookbook by Jody Williams and Rita Sodi.

Via Carota, by the way, is probably my favorite restaurant in New York. Last time I ate there, just about a year ago, Thierry and I nabbed seats at the bar and had spectacular vitello tonnato. If you find yourself in NYC and you want to go, know that reservations are difficult to come by, it’s mostly walk-ins.

As for me, no summer getaway plans yet; everything is so damn expensive. Where we live, the heat is punishing, and I will need something. Preferably with turquoise water, though that’s starting to feel like a mirage. I hope you have something wonderful to look forward to.

Lots of love,

Leslie

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[Books purchased through the Bookshop link above may earn me an affiliate commission. Thank you for using it to make your purchase - it helps support this endeavor!]

Hello, community-craving cook!

It’s the first Tuesday of the month, and therefore the CWB Cookbook Club will have its May meeting this evening (or late afternoon, if you’re on the west coast).

We’ll be comparing notes on Diana Henry’s Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons (plus other Diana Henry books of your choice, our March/April selection), and then introducing our May selection: Vegetables the Italian Way, by . After that, we’ll brainstorm what to select for June.

Giulia and I had a terrific conversation about her just-published book last week, in case you missed it:

Joining instructions

All paid subscribers are welcome, including new ones! No need to have cooked from Diana Henry’s books in order to join — I think you’ll enjoy it anyway.

Thinking of subscribing? Go for it — we’d love to meet you.

MAY MEETING
Today (Tues., May 5), at 4 p.m. PT/5 p.m. MT/6 p.m. CT/7 p.m. ET.
Cookbook Club regulars, you know how to join on Wednesday. Everyone else, please DM me in the members-only chat or reply to t…

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Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with !

In case you missed the event, here’s the replay. If you love Italian food and you’re interested in the way it’s really practiced in Italy, take a look. We covered the following, and lots more:

• How to order in restaurants in Italy

• What people make when they invite friends for dinner in Tuscany

• The three recipes Giula hopes you’d cook from the book if you only cooked three

Also, as we discussed in the video, Giula’s wonderful new book — VEGETABLES THE ITALIAN WAY — is the May selection for the Cooks Without Borders Cookbook Club. I’ve already made two recipes from the book, which I’m very much loving. And would love to cook along from it with you via Cookbook Club! The club is open to paid subscribers to Leslie Brenner/CWB. Check out the link below to learn more.

Interested? Treat yourself to a paid subscription. That also gives you full access to all my (downloadable/printable) recipes, and the entire archive of stories.

If you’re already a paid subscriber who hasn’t just joined us, just ping me by answering this email or in the Subscriber Chat and I’ll tell you how to participate.

I’d love to see you there!

Lots of love,

Leslie

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Happy Tuesday!

Just a quick reminder that the one and only will be joining me tomorrow for a Substack Live. We’ll talk about her new book, VEGETABLES THE ITALIAN WAY.

Joining instructions:

• Wednesday, April 29 at 10 a.m. Pacific / 11 a.m. Mountain / noon Central / 1 p.m. Eastern / 6 p.m. England / 7 p.m. Italy
• The event is free for all, not only paid subscribers
• Come with your questions for Giulia — there will be a Q + A for the last 10 or 15 minutes of the 45-minute conversation
• Here’s a link to the event: Substack LIVE with GIULIA SCARPALEGGIA and Leslie Brenner
• Here’s a link to purchase VEGETABLES THE ITALIAN WAY at bookshop.org
• If you are subscribed to Leslie Brenner/Cooks Without Borders, you’ll receive an email notification right when we go live. If you don’t want to miss the beginning, mark your calendar and log on before showtime.

Hope to see you there!

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

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Happy Wednesday, vegetable-loving Italophile!

One of my earliest and best food-memories is a beautiful asparagus soup I swooned over in Rome when I was nine, and my parents took the family on a European vacation. I’d never had anything like it: The asparagus flavor was so pure and gorgeous. It didn’t hurt that we were dining on a terrace of a villa (belonging to a client of my dad’s, if memory serves). That soup was life-changing, dumb as that sounds, because in those days — this was 1970 — American nine-year-olds did not normally have access to magical asparagus soups, and I’d had no idea beauty like that could exist in a bowl. I’ve recreated the soup a gazillion times in my own kitchens over the years.

In a way, that memory is all the more remarkable because much more lately, as I’ve traveled around Italy, I can’t help but noti…

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Greetings, footloose friend!

Ever wondered what Genoa is like? Built on hills that bob and weave steeply down to the Mediterranean, it’s dramatic, gritty, dreamy, complicated, beautiful and mysterious. Medieval churches anchor piazzas, and baroque palaces line broad pedestrian-only streets. Funiculars, stairways and municipal elevators move the Genovese up and down; gorgeous mosaic sidewalks pave their way from left to right. New, old, messy, brutal, careful, haphazard, lazy and energetic, it’s all there, mashed together magnificently as igneous rock.

In the center of the old city, connecting everything, are the vicoli — narrow, dark alleyways, with tiny ancient groceries, hardware shops, cobblers, thumbnail-sized osterias, even a tripe shop, and maybe a prostitute or three. There are also art galleries, bookstores, boutiques and vintage clothing shops. Notably, none of it is cute.

And that’s gen…

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Happy Sunday, curious cook, and happy Easter to those who celebrate!

I’ve been on the move — last week, we celebrated Thierry’s dad’s 100th birthday in Bordeaux, and now we’re visiting friends in Genoa, so I need to keep this short and sweet (never easy for me!). But I thought I’d share with you a few funny little food and drink things that turned my head in France.

• First was on the short flight from Paris to Bordeaux. You know how flying makes people want to drink tomato juice? Apparently there’s something contagious in that phenom: You hear someone order tomato juice and then you want it. That happened to me. The surprising part: It was served with celery salt. How clever is that? Definitely adds something nice.

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Happy spring, evolving reader!

With friends over for dinner on the first official day, I threw soft herbs around with abandon. Today I walked on our trail, watching a songbird carry a twig in its beak up to its nest-in-progress. Here in North Texas, the season sprung earlier than normal. Already most of the blossoming trees have started to leaf out, and the extravagant scent of mountain laurel has given way to wisteria, heavy with luscious pale violet cluster-blooms. Now I’m sitting on my balcony in the treetops, marveling at the song of a ruby-crowned kinglet and wondering how it can already be in the 90s.

For that first spring dinner, the supermarket didn’t present the hoped-for start-of-spring lineup. No fat asparagus, just the scrawny, skinny ones; no lovely radishes; no slender leeks — just absurdly bulbous fat ones.

I did find generous bunches of dill, though, and mint and parsley and chives — which I used to blanket my favorite cold springtime soup, the Greenest Gazpacho. It’s a…

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Happy Saturday, contemplative friend!

I didn’t write much as a child, growing up in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley. The public schools I attended mostly sucked, though I did have a few wonderful teachers. None of them happened to nurture writing. Our house was filled with books, but no one encouraged my brothers or me to put pen to paper. Ballet lessons, art lessons, piano lessons, yes, but writing — talking about it or doing it — just wasn’t a thing.

Yet somehow I wrote a college application essay that got me into Stanford. When I landed there, on scholarship, and with barely two nickels to rub together (my dad left my mom when I was 12 or 13, and money was very tight), I found myself in a wonderland, wanting to soak up everything. Everything humanities, arts and social sciences, that is. I woke up early to attend a 5-day-per-week Intro to Japanese language class. Imagining diplomacy as a career, I focused on International Relations. My first declared major was Religious Studies (Eastern religions attracted me), then I switched to Art History, spilling myself also into life-drawing and painting workshops. Philosophy and Psychology fascinated me, too – I took an entire seminar on Freud, and another on Self-Deception. Then it was French Literature, and French language. (I had studied Spanish in junior high and high school, and French in community college while I was still in high school.) Finally, with the late-sophomore-year deadline for declaring your major looming, I declared for real: English.

And loved it, of course. There was a choice for English majors: English and American Literature, or Creative Writing. I chose Lit, did all the coursework, then, senior year, turned to fiction writing. Oh, I forgot to say that when I started in college, my freshman writing workshop (required for all) was Humor Writing. I had never done any creative writing to speak of before that. My professor, an adorable young novelist, encouraged me, even suggesting I submit my work to The New Yorker. I did, and received some very encouraging rejection letters.

In those days, Stanford’s Creative Writing program was one of the best in the country, and I wanted to study with the head of the department, Albert J. Guerard. Admission to his workshop required submitting a short story. I wrote one, submitted it, and when he posted the names of the 10 students admitted, mine was #10, with a note: Please see Professor Guerard.

I went to see the wonderful old gent in his office, a bit trembly. (Me, not him.) “This story is terrible,” he said, holding the typed sheets. “It is banal.” He read a few embarrassing sentences out loud. “But I think I can help you become a good writer.”

He did, and the workshop did. I found myself in that workshop, loving that roomful of fledgling writers. That’s when I knew I was a writer.

Through all that, I cooked, all the time and from the start. Freshman year, I lived in a dorm, but after that, I always had a kitchen. I cooked for my roommates and friends, and even invited my profs to dinner. First time was sophomore year, when three roommates and I lived in a mobile home on campus with a full kitchen and a dining room. This was 1979, when the American food revolution was just starting to rumble in California and New York, and the San Francisco Bay Area (Stanford sat on the southern tip) was a paradise of produce, incredible meats and poultry, a Pacific Ocean full of seafood and wines from the newly up-and-coming Napa Valley. I had taken an extra-curricular Wine Tasting class in the dining hall of my freshman dorm. (We were required to purchase eight proper wine glasses in order to attend.) That was my first wine training.

Toward the end of my second year, my dad decided to pull the plug on his financial support for me, meager though it was ($300 per month). Between the financial difficulty that created, and a feeling that a year away, earning and saving money, would do me good, I took advantage of Stanford’s oft-used program of “stopping out” for a year.

I lived with my mom at first, in the house in Van Nuys I grew up in. She was working at the American Federation of Musicians, over the hill, in Hollywood, at Hollywood and Vine. I got a job a mile or so down Vine St., at the affiliated union – Musicians Union Local 47. She dropped me off at work every day, until I saved enough to buy a car – a 1967 Volvo 122S, ivory-colored, manual transmission. I loved that car.

I started working as a switchboard operator, holed up in a tiny room downstairs with one other operator and an old-fashioned switchboard – a crazy thing where you had to answer calls wearing a headset, then push a plug into a hole on the wall-mounted board that corresponded to the right office phone upstairs where you were routing the call — Recorded Music, “Casuals” (live music), Dues/Membership, Contracts, or the various local reps’ offices or executive offices. Even then, in the late 70s, a switchboard was archaic. I had only ever seen one in old movies.

Before long I was promoted – to a position as secretary to the Vice President of the local, Vince Di Bari. Vince had played trumpet in the orchestra on “I Love Lucy,” a show I had watched my entire childhood. The union was mostly staffed by old guys like that. He was extremely kind, and enjoyed the fact that I was an avid cook. His family came from Bari, at the top of Italy’s heel, in Puglia. (Who knew the region would one day be a chic international destination?!) I was dating a musician, who also loved to cook. He had gifted me Pasta, a cookbook from the Time-Life Good Cook Series. I bought myself an Atlas pasta maker and rolled out miles of fresh noodles. I still use that old machine.

One day, Vince called me into his office, and opened his desk drawer. “Come here, honey; I have something for you,” he said. His drawer was filled with bunches of fresh basil – something I’d never seen before. “This is basil,” he said, and had me smell it. Whoosh! This was not something you could find in supermarkets at that time. He opened another drawer, and took out a white flimsy bakery-type box of Italian sausages. He unwrapped the sausages and showed me.

Yeah, I know – old boss dude showing young girl (I was nineteen) his sausages in his office? Even then, the wackiness of it wasn’t lost on me. Especially as my friend, the secretary in the next office, was experiencing pretty outrageous sexual harassment at the hands of the local’s president. Vince was not like that, and I was well aware that I was lucky.

Instead, Vince talked me through making pasta with sausages, tomato and basil, and gave me those marvelous gifts – which stayed in his little office fridge until I went home that evening and cooked.

Halfway through the year, I moved in with my dad. An independent entertainment lawyer with a thriving practice, he was living in Venice, half a block from the beach and boardwalk. He was also a practicing Buddhist (of the Tibetan stripe), and a free-thinker whose priorities did not include parenting. When Johnny, the younger of my two brothers, turned 13, my dad took him on an acid trip, calling it Johnny’s bar mitzvah. Living with us in the two-story, funky, white-and-yellow wood-frame house were a macrobiotic cook, Nick, and a Tibetan lama, Lama Ganga. I can’t remember whether my dad’s awful girlfriend also lived there with us, but I do have memories of her in the house.

That summer, I left the Musicians Union for a job at the Screen Actors Guild, in West Hollywood. I was committee secretary for the Board of Directors, and became friendly with some wonderful actors – including one I’d move in with a few years later. Not long after I started, the Guild went on strike – which turned out to be a historic 77-day watershed dispute. Every morning, I took minutes at the daily Strike Committee meeting, and quickly realized it would benefit me to learn shorthand, so I taught myself, using a paperback workbook. I took shorthand notes of the meetings, typed them up as minutes and delivered them every day. If I had recorded the meetings and transcribed them, I would not have been able to keep up — there wasn’t time. That shorthand was a skill that wound up serving me for decades.

The strike committee work was grueling, and I eagerly I returned to Stanford that September, a few weeks before the Guild settled with the producers. Now I had nickels for the school year that I could supplement with a part-time campus job and make it through.

When I graduated, with those two English degrees under my belt, I returned to L.A. No particular plan in mind, I signed up with a temp agency and found myself at Warner Brothers, which seemed romantic, even to Hollywood-raised me (before Van Nuys, we lived in Hollywood). On my birthday, I got a card in the mail – from Daffy Duck, no joke. He was always my favorite. I had lunch in the commissary every day, stars and writers and producers all around, coolest thing imaginable.

My longest-lasting gig at Warner Brothers (a couple months maybe) was working for a comedy writer-producer, Bernie. He called himself Bernard, but everyone else called him Bernie. When Bernie’s deal at Warner Brothers ended, he moved back to his second-floor office in an decrepit building on the edge of Beverly Hills, bringing me with him. My job: writing down his every word (shorthand!), as he dictated comedy scripts (screenplays and teleplays) off the top of his head. Bernie was kind and funny, and let me listen in on his calls as he pitched concepts to studio heads, rolling his eyes when they were idiots, which they often were.

❦

End of Part 1. Look for Part 2 soon.

Lots of love, Leslie

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Happy Tuesday, ridiculously hopeful cook!

You’ll see them soon: the little crocus shoots pushing up through the soil. Daffodils. Asparagus. I’m thinking of my friends on the East coast, who have endured such a frigid winter. The season of rebirth is coming!

But why wait, when you can fake spring now?

I wouldn’t be caught dead without a bag of frozen peas. You can simmer them into a spring-evoking minted pea soup. Mush them into a pea-ricotta dip. Layer them into a nostalgic salad.

Or you can riff, maybe like this: Boil a pot of bow-tie pasta. While it’s cooking, melt a big knob of butter in a sauté pan. Add sliced or diced ham (any kind will do, including prosciutto) and warm it briefly, followed by a lot of frozen peas. Interpret “a lot” however you like. It could be a cupful, or it could even be two. Heat up those peas with the ham. Add a few glugs of cream (was that half a cup?), stir it all toge…

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Happy Monday, freewheeling-recipe-loving cook!

Normally the CWB Cookbook Club meets on the first Tuesday of every month, but a professional obligation prevents me from being there tomorrow. Instead, this month, we’re meeting on Wednesday evening (March 4), at 4 p.m. PT/5 p.m. MT/6 p.m. CT/7 p.m. ET.

All paid subscribers are welcome, including new ones! Thinking of subscribing? Go for it — we’d love to meet you.

On Wednesday we’ll be discussing our February selection, ’s new Something from Nothing. I’m excited about this; I think we’ll be sharing a lot of deliciousness, so I expect you’ll find recipes you’ll love. We’ll also be introducing our March selection, Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons by Diana Henry. In fact, Henry’s book will be our March AND April selection because I need to skip the April meeting, as I’ll be out of the country when we’d normally meet. Regula…

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Happy Sunday, balanced cook!

People keep asking my opinion about Pete Wells’ recent public epiphanies about his evolving diet. The New York Times’ former restaurant critic has written four stories about what his high-octane role did to his health and how he is now reinventing his relationship to food and drink.

“Does it bring anything new to the table, offer any new insight?” I ask those soliciting my view on the series. Not one person has said yes. That why until today, I hadn’t bothered to read most of it.

I have tremendous respect for Wells, who threw in the napkin on that awesome, terribly demanding beat about a year and a half ago. During his twelve years as the country’s highest profile and most influential critic, the reviews he filed were always highly engaging, well informed, wonderfully written and altogether impressive. I salute him for an incredibly difficult job brilliantly done.

But isn’t it weird that Wells would spend more than a decade doing that kind of work without seriously considering what it means for his health? It’s not like other departing critics haven’t sounded the alarm.

Everyone knows restaurant food isn’t healthy, and the job basically entails overeating rich foods nearly every day of your life.

Think about it: If you’re a normal person and you indulge in a tasting menu, how does that make you feel? Not too hot, probably — especially if there’s a cocktail first and then a parade of paired wines. You only have to trust the way your body feels just a little bit to understand this can’t be good for you. Somehow all this escapes all kinds of critics, who stuff themselves for years and then write about their diet-and-health lessons learned once they step away from their roles.

❧

In 1995, when I was a fledgling food writer in New York, I attacked the problem — and offered a facetious solution — in a piece for Avenue magazine called “The Balanced Luxury Diet.” I give it to you here in its entirety; unless you’re up for a silly read, you can skip it.

THE BALANCED LUXURY DIET
By Leslie Brenner
(First published in Avenue magazine, Dec. 8, 1995)

My thighs grew in December, as they always do during the holiday season. I usually regard my body in January with a sang-froid my boyfriend Thierry finds alarming, but this year I can’t turn a blind eye. Everyone I know in California has gone on the “Manhattan Weight Loss Program,” which no one here has even heard of, so I looked into that. Turns out it’s medically-supervised speed—not great for me, since I’m always fairly revved up naturally. Here in town, fad diets are actually making a comeback—one well known food writer of my acquaintance has been eating nothing but mangoes and marzipan for a month. Alas, I’m not the type. It seemed, for a gloomy moment, I’d have to go on a real diet—something I hadn’t done since 1987.

The problem was, after all that wonderful goose and chestnut stuffing and sauces and ham and rich, butter-filled purées and bûche de noël, I felt that the sense of deprivation I’d suffer by suddenly cutting off my stream of spirit-sustaining delicacies could be psychologically damaging.

A few days ago, I hit upon a solution: a moderate luxury diet.

It’s perfect. I can represent all five food groups: foie gras, caviar, truffles, Sauternes and Champagne, as long as I do so in moderation. And since the health benefits of red wine and duck fat have been well-documented, it should be no problem to add magret, pommes sarladaise, and plenty of my favorite premiers crus from the Médoc.

I’ve never been a big dessert person anyway, except for chocolate, which as we know battles depression; and it’s impossible to diet at all if one’s feeling blue in the first place, so that’s a must. The important thing is to make it quality chocolate.

The timing was right, since Thierry had to go to France for ten days. As long as I stayed within a budget of 1,200 calories, I should lose about two pounds a week. I felt I could do this painlessly. But then, flipping through a health book, I chanced upon a marvelous fact: that “standing quietly” burns 95 to 120 calories per hour! This was great news for me, since I’m not really into the whole fitness thing. Besides, standing quietly is more sensible than exercise, which can lead to injury. I figured I could stand quietly for three hours a day, and tack on an extra 300 calories to the diet budget. Mornings are not a problem, since I don’t eat breakfast anyway. Just 33 calories for the 2% milk in my coffee.

The first day went smashingly. I’ve always heard it’s healthier to have a large midday meal, so I stood quietly, then ate around three. I started off with a little smoked salmon (120 calories), an ounce of beluga (74) with toast points (120), all washed down with a glass of Taittinger Comtes de Champagne 1988 left over from New Year’s (114). I followed with boeuf bourguignonne (639), which I couldn’t even think about without a glass of Burgundy (86). I still had 314 calories left in the coffer, so I finished with a nod to health in the form of a toothsome Caesar salad, at 302 calories, and ended with 12 calories to spare. Then straight to bed in case I got hungry later.

The next day, I woke up thinking I could do this just as easily in restaurants. A whole lobster, cooked meat only, is only 112 calories, so I headed over to Le Bernadin for a light lunch. I started with the tuna tartare, which I figured at 200 calories (I virtuously left the fried garnish on the plate), then moved on to Eric Ripert’s completely shelled and reassembled Maine lobster in lemongrass-lobster essence, which I figured for 212. I demurely sipped San Pellegrino water for the duration. Then I went home and stood quietly.

Later, I had a picnic dinner in front of the fireplace: a healthy slice of foie gras with truffles (648) spread on slices of baguette (75) and a glass of Château d’Yquem 1988 from a half-bottle that was burning a hole in my cellar (190). A large portion of steamed brocolli (59) didn’t even feel like penance after that, and I came in for the day with 50 calories to spare, so as it turned out, I could have even put a little butter on that broccoli.

Yesterday, I started feeling a rhythm. I added orange juice to my breakfast regimen (60 calories for 6 ounces), just to make sure scurvy didn’t set in. I put away a dozen Belons for lunch (240), and a chilly glass of Muscadet (70), but thought I should subtract a hundred calories for the sweat I worked up in opening the oysters. Last night I felt like cooking: Leeks vinaigrette to start, a bargain at 251 calories, followed by lamb shanks with white beans (672). I was up to 1,226, but craving chocolate, I thought about the marvelous fondant au chocolat at Daniel. I love that dessert—piercing that delicate crust and letting the melting Valrhona chocolate ooze out on the plate is a fine thing. Looking in his cookbook, I toted up the calories, divided by six, and was positively thrilled that it came out to only 314! It would put me over the top by 40 calories for the day, but then I reminded myself that balance was the thing. I knew, however, I shouldn’t prepare it at home, lest I be tempted to polish off the other five. I put on my coat and headed toward 68th Street for a sensible fondant at Daniel. This was a diet I could live with.

❧

A decade later, we had moved to L.A., where I found my dream job: Food Editor at the Los Angeles Times. This position allowed me to explore L.A.’s extraordinary food scene, while also letting me shop at the amazing Santa Monica Farmer’s Market every Wednesday morning and cook at home to my heart’s content. Wonderful balance! I wrote as much or as little as I wanted, a freedom gained because I was mostly assigning and editing stories. As part of my duties, I edited the weekly reviews and notebooks filed by our wonderful lead restaurant critic, S. Irene “Sherry” Virbila.

Also as part of my duties, I filled in for Sherry on the lead reviews when she was on vacation, and I also picked up one of her weekly notebooks per month in order to give her a little breathing room. In addition, I wrote some of the second-tier reviews, usually covering mom-and-pops. So part of my job was writing restaurant reviews.

Part-time reviewing allowed me to grasp — quickly and deeply — how hard this kind of work is on the critic’s body. Keeping weight off and finding balance was very difficult even for a sometime critic. I fashioned a new diet for myself: “the Half Diet.” The idea was I’d eat what I’d normally eat, but only allow myself half-portions. It helped.

Meanwhile, when people asked me, which they frequently did, if I’d ever want to be a full-time critic, I always said the same thing: Not in a million years. Never ever ever ever. You couldn’t pay me enough money.

Until, when the economy imploded in 2008, suddenly you could. I had lost my job in a mass layoff at the paper, and the Dallas Morning News was looking to hire a restaurant critic. I applied, got the gig, and figured it was something I could do for only a few years — five years, max. I knew it was way too hard on one’s body to do it any longer, and I also knew how hard it is to write engaging, worthwhile reviews week after week. And in those days, I filed full-length reviews every single week.

❧

Less than a year into the job, before the holidays had rolled around, I had my own epiphany. I was fatter than I wanted to be. I couldn’t chalk it up to my age (I was 49) or the fact that I’m a woman, as I had girlfriends my age who loved food and wine as much as I do and who were nevertheless svelte. On top of it, my mom had just been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. I vowed to lose 20 pounds.

In fact, I did so publicly — figuring if I announced I was going to tackle my weight problem, I’d have to succeed. To fail would just be too embarrassing.

I created a new diet: The Restaurant Critic’s Diet. No specific foods or drinks were forbidden, as I’d need to taste everything in the restaurants I was reviewing; no holding back. My rule was I had to burn considerably more calories than I consumed — a diet approach that has since been rightly discredited, as human metabolism is not that simple. I was super-strict and disciplined at breakfast and lunch, and burned a shit-ton of calories working out in the gym every day.

I announced my goal — losing a pound per week for 20 weeks — on my socials and on the paper’s food blog.

Twenty weeks later, I was 20 pounds lighter. I went on maintenance, easing back on the strictness, till I had lost eight more by the time a year elapsed. I went from size 10 pants to size 2 in the course of that year, and then wrote about it in the paper. (You’ll hit a paywall unless you subscribe to the Dallas Morning News, but I told you the basics.)

I felt and looked the best I had in eons. Gleefully, I took all my clothes to the tailor to be taken in, and bought a bunch of new things. Amazing.

I had a happy run of sveltness for maybe five years — at which point I started seriously plotting my escape from restaurant criticism. I was super fed up. I created and launched Cooks Without Borders, largely as a way to get myself back into my own kitchen, cooking and eating sanely.

It took another few years for me to find my way out of formal journalism. Miraculously, through all of this, I’ve never had high cholesterol, high blood pressure, concerning blood sugar levels or anything like that.

Now, I dine out when I want to (or when clients need me to); mostly we eat at home. Mostly healthy things — lots of veg and fruit, legumes galore, whole grains, pickly things, plenty of fish and seafood, a little chicken, a little meat. Lots of herbs and spices. You know, the kind of stuff you find here at CWB. I’ve cut most alcohol out of my diet, trying to limit myself to four glasses of wine per week.

But I love pasta. I love good sourdough bread, and I’m learning how to bake it. I love Italian or French butter. When I do have a glass of wine, I try to make it something good (though not expensive). I walk a lot, sometimes run, and need to trim off a bunch of pounds.

As ever, I’m trying to find balance.

Pete Wells, I wish you all the best — and hope you can find some balance, too.

Lots of love, Leslie

❧

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Happy Valentine’s Day, lovable cook!

Have I ever told you how much I love you? More than you’ll ever know. The fact that you’re reading me here, when you have SO many other things you could be reading, means everything. It keeps me writing, which is such a gift. And many of you I have come to love personally! You’re paid subscribers, of course — the one’s who hang out with me over on the Chat or in the CWB Cookbook Club. That’s how I get to know you enough to love you to pieces.

And because I do, I want to give back every week — by making your food life a little better in any way I can.

If you love me one-thousandth as much as I love you, upgrade to a paid subscription (if you haven’t already). You won’t be sorry. (If you do have regrets, you can always go back to free and get a refund). OK, just do it now — and then I’ll give you some delicious ideas for Valentine’s Day.

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Let’s get to it! It’s Val…

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Happy Sunday, cozy cook!

I know what you’re thinking: Is there such thing as an easy, quick Valentine’s dinner for two? One that you could easily double or triple and call dinner for four or six?

Oui, ma chérie/mon chéri, there is: Deviled chicken thighs with braised lentils and pan-seared Brussels sprouts. Amazingly, you can put it together in under an hour without breaking a sweat. You can even make it in the toaster oven, if you like.

I think you’ll love the technique this manoeuver relies on: Seasoning the thighs with salt, pepper and dried herbs, slathering in Dijon mustard, topping with bread crumbs and melted butter, and roasting. That’s it. I think of the thighs as deviled, thanks to the mustard, but you can dub it French by calling it à la moutarde.

It’s way better than the minimal required effort would suggest. Modify cooking times and temps accordingly, and you can use it not only for chicken thighs, drumsticks and whole legs, but also skin-on, bone-in chicken breasts or duck …

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Happy Saturday, shiverrring cook!

This marks the second weekend in a row of frigid temps in my neck of the woods. Thanks to a mid-week thaw, the streets are now drivable, but the supermarket shelves are only halfway back to normal.

We were full-on snowed in last weekend, which turned out to be rather cozy. Our plans to celebrate Thierry’s birthday in high style in a restaurant were stymied, as our city came noiselessly to a white-blanketed halt.

I had shopped for a dinner for friends we were meant to host on Sunday (would that really happen?), but possessed nothing for a proper birthday dinner. I had a few ideas, and left it up to Thierry: He chose something I hadn’t included in last week’s pantry-cooking newsletter, but had long been wanting to try: Marcella Hazan’s famous Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter for pasta.

It’s the simplest thing imaginable: Put two cups of canned Italian tomatoes into a pot with a halved onion, five tablespoons of butter and a little salt. Bring it to a s…

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Happy brrrr-day, adaptable cook!

Today is my husband Thierry’s birthday, and it is — where we are, in Dallas, Texas — also a sleet-into-snow brrrr day. Instead of braving icy roads for a celebratory restaurant dinner, we’ll be improvising something at home.

Something tells me we won’t be the only ones staring into the pantry this week and strategizing something fab — a kitchen sport I’ve long called making something out of nothing.

It’s a sport that’s very much in vogue: Recently, ’s new cookbook Something from Nothing — published on the same November day as Kardea Brown’s Make Do with what You Have — has propelled this approach to cooking front and center.

I’m excited to dive into Roman’s book in coming weeks, as it’s th…

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Happy Wednesday, heat-seeking cook!

I just returned from frosty-cold New York City, thinking, all the way home to soon-to-be-frozen Dallas, Texas: We’ll all be needing soup. So I’ve rounded up an assortment to warm your spirits.

Hope you are staying warm and safe, wherever you are.

[Note: I’m still in the process of adding metric measurements to my archive of recipes, from which these are drawn. In the interest of getting hot soup on your table sooner rather than later, I’m including recipes that haven’t had metric added yet. Metric folks, please excuse me!]

Lots of love,

Leslie

P.S. If you’re wondering how best to provision for future soup in advance of dramatic winter weather, pick up onions, carrots, celery, turnips (if you like them), a leek or two, canned tomatoes, beans (canned and dried), lentils. Maybe some fresh th…

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