Welcome to my Blog

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I cook a lot of food. Since I stepped out of the restaurant world, I get the pleasure of creating different dishes all the time. I don't have to stick to a theme, or a cuisine, or an ethnicity, or a region. I can go from homemade Chinese steam buns with braised duck and scallion one night, to Louisiana white shrimp po' boys with summer slaw the next. It depends on what's at the market, if it's chilly or hot outside, who's eating, and what they ate the night before. And (thankfully!) my clients love the variety.

I never lack for ideas about what to make for dinner, but I know a lot of people do. So maybe this blog will trigger inspiration. I also know that I often make off-hand remarks about cooking or food, and what seems totally obvious to me is either baffling or a revelation to others. So perhaps a nugget of information here will demystify something in your kitchen.

Enjoy, and please feel free to email me with any questions!

Vanessa Altman-Siegel

I was hired as a consultant to help open a restaurant in Delhi, India, and I returned last week. Phew! Busy, crowded, colorful, filthy, magical, opulent, impoverished, frustrating and fantastic. I ate cashews and sweet rice, curries, coconuts and chilis off a palm leaf in Southern India. Perfumed kebabs, sacks of spices, Kashmiri morels, silver-leafed sweets, masala and lime, grooms on white horses and honking, honking, honking, honking in Delhi. I researched Indian organics, a blossoming scene, spoke to chefs and front of the house managers, studied spices and produce, surveyed the restaurant space and ate, ate, and ate some more.
It's difficult to choose but here are a few of my favorite, though un-food-related, pictures of a couple quiet moments in an otherwise insanely hectic country.