I've always been a big fan of birthdays. I assumed my enthusiasm would wane over the years, but it’s inexplicably still going strong. These days it’s less about the presents than it is the opportunity to host a party with all my favorite people. So this year, I decided to celebrate my 31st with a dinner party based loosely around Renee Erickson's lovely cookbook, A Boat, A Whale and A Walrus. Erickson's Seattle seafood shack, The Walrus and the Carpenter, is one of my favorit

Last night, I hosted an Idaho Potato Vodka tasting for an upcoming article in the Boise Weekly. I used the tasting as an excuse to whip up some Russian-themed snacks, including smoked steelhead trout and cream cheese on rye-caraway crackers and crispy potato latkes with sour cream and fresh cherry compote. I based the latke recipe off this one from America's Test Kitchen. To get the latkes extra crispy, you wring out the raw shredded potato and onion mixture then wait for the

I've always enjoyed The Lift's shady, grape-vine-draped back patio in the summertime. It's a quick bike jaunt down the Greenbelt and is somehow insulated from the chaos of nearby State Street. Not to mention, I can get a stiff $3 gin and soda during happy hour. But apart from The Lift's famous fish tacos, I tend to shy away from the food—nachos, burgers, etc. That is, until recently, when I spotted a couple of intriguing new additions to the appetizer menu: Pork Street Tacos

Hyde Park's 13th Street Pub has had essentially the same menu for as long as I can remember—a fairly standard line-up of salads, sandwiches and burgers. So when I swung by for happy hour last week, I was surprised to see some more adventurous new items on the menu. The Risotto Goat Cheese Cakes ($10) were particularly impressive—both in size and execution—with a super crispy, deep-fried exterior that gave way to soft risotto with a core of creamy, pesto-laced goat cheese. Tho

After eight long years spent alternately loving and hating Don Draper—Mad Men’s day-drinking, chain smoking, skirt-chasing, chiseled-jaw main character—it’s time to bid him and the rest of Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce-Cutler-Gleason-Chaough-McCann-Erickson farewell this Sunday, May 17 at 8 p.m. MST. To honor some of the main characters on AMC’s long-running hit show, I put together five cocktail and appetizer combos that are each inspired by particular scenes in the show. Whe

Radishes and butter are an unlikely but undeniably delicious duo. A layer of creamy fat spread on a slice of fresh baguette provides the perfect counter-balance to crisp, peppery radish coins. Add in some minced anchovy, chives and a big squeeze of lemon, and you've got a relatively simple snack that packs a flavorful palate punch. This recipe is adapted from one I thumbed across in an old issue of Bon Appétit Magazine, but it gets the Tara treatment (as so many things do in