About
Photo by Jessica Chou
The Gist
This is a space about food, creativity, adventure, and cooking. Food-related experiences are sensory. They can be soothing, transformative, fun, triumphant, inspiring, therapeutic, a reminder of a person or place, or the anchor or creator of a memory, and much more. These are the ideas conveyed throughout these pages that I hope motivate visitors to think about food, creativity and life in new ways, with a particular focus on food's intersection with a wide variety of artistic mediums and forms of expression.
Pages here include personal recipes, photo essays about people who inspire me and my recipes inspired by their work, as well as information about special projects and publication features.
A note about me: my name is Sharon, and I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. I've also lived in Athens and New York for some years, as well as Paris, Istanbul, and Cape Town for some months. I currently divide my time between Los Angeles, CA and Athens, Greece. I'm also an immigration lawyer.
I like your vibe, let's do something together
My work broadly includes the list below but there is always room for the great unknown, so feel free to contact me if you'd like to collaborate.
- Curating food components/experiences for commercial and creative events, i.e. concerts, performances, film screenings, exhibitions, etc.
- Food writing
- Food photography and styling
- Recipe development
- Cooking classes
- Pop-ups
Recipe Assumptions
For the most part, recipes here can be made with very few tools. The more you cook, the more comfortable and intuitive it becomes, and you can make almost anything without fancy machines or strict measurements. I don't own a stand mixer or food processor, and only recently upgraded to a fancy blender and bought a microplane. In short, while tools and gadgets are nice, it's definitely possible to cook a lot without them.
All ingredients here strive to be easily accessible and economical. If there is an unfamiliar term and you want a lengthier explanation or a visual example, well, you’re already online…open a new page and Google it. This is why we love Google. You can also contact me and I’ll get back to you.
Regarding measurements, nothing here is too strict because I don’t like rules and am comfortable messing up. When cooking for myself, I typically don't measure anything (but in baking, always measure). All recipes here are in US measurements. I also assume that anyone exploring these recipes has some basic core pantry items on hand at all times. If this reflects your pantry philosophy, we'll get along just fine.
- Good quality olive oil for eating
- Decent quality olive oil for cooking
- A nice flaky sea salt for eating
- Decent sea salt or kosher salt for cooking
- Balsamic vinegar
- Peanut butter that is just peanuts. No added oil/sugar.
- Good quality tahini, otherwise don't bother.
- Try to make your own beans when possible.
PS what does 'Records in the Den' mean anyway?
This came from a podcast. To be honest, I can’t recall the interviewee or the exact context of the conversation, but the sentence was something along the lines of ‘…just sitting and listening to records in the den…’. I love music and film (which is why I title recipes with a non-food title, like a song). This sentence spoke out to me because the way I feel when I listen to music or watch an exceptional film is akin to the often relaxing or expressive feelings that I have when cooking. I see cooking and sharing food as experiences and opportunities, and the most beautiful meals or concerts or cooking triumphs in my life all recall a certain sense of kinship with each other. Enter, ‘Records in the Den’.
(born September 2016)
Website design in cooperation with Affekt