toasted bread can hold anything
It started with a forty-cent slice of Trader Joe's white and two presses of the Breville's A Bit More button. It ends with a whole lobster sitting inside a hollowed-out block of toasted milk bread in Shanghai. The bread was doing the work the entire time.
From the shelf.
trust your wine people
I bought a bottle of Aligoté because a friend posted one on Instagram. It turned out to be one of the best whi…
detroit pizza, take three: don't rush the dough
I finally got the pepperoni right, then found a whole new way to trip: I served my family a dense one. Here's …
two home runs: white chicken chili and detroit pizza
Two back-to-back wins from the kitchen, each with a twist worth stealing and one with a lesson learned the har…
stupid simple breakfast
Dying bagels, Trader Joe's white cheddar, and one pack of thick-cut bacon versus three hungry teens before sum…
feeding a sleepover off the grill
Odin wanted teriyaki or salt and pepper, a sleepover was incoming, and it was too nice not to grill. Whole thi…
an ode to melinda's habanero honey mustard
Sara slipped a bottle of Melinda's Habanero Honey Mustard into my Father's Day haul, and now I look forward to…
“Cook for an hour and you might learn something. Cook for ten years and you might unlearn the wrong things.”
Field notes.
Briefer than an essay, longer than a tweet. Updated whenever something’s worth saying.
Writing from Lake Oswego.
Bottle & Flame has been a notebook since 2013 — kitchens in London, Shanghai, and now Oregon. Brian cooks from memory as much as from recipes: what a market in Xintiandi taught him, what a Sunday roast in Islington required, what the pantry in Lake Oswego demands on a Tuesday night.