Bad Mother

With any luck, Lake Sharp's widely popular and totally informative vimeo has all you Hot Knives devotees bottling your own pro-biotic elixirs and feeling rad. For those of you that did, you probably have huge, intimidating fungi festering in cabinets verging …

Apples on Apples

We are not known for luxurious deserts -- it's not our thing. We get too full to fast; we prefer savory salts, the occasional soft, ripe bloomy artisan French cheese, and hard after dinner liquors. We gorge on calories in other ways. But for the holidays, when …

Headless Helper

There will always be central aspects of the holiday season that are total bummers. For some its traveling long distances crammed up against smelly strangers in a metal box impossibly cruising tens of thousands of feet above the surface of the planet: screaming …

Figgy Pudding & Grilled Fruits

Just like Thanksgiving, the December month is one long, beloved food holiday for us at Hot Knives, even though we typically try hard to disassociate our gluttonous chillin' from any of the uncomfortable religious undertones. This year, we decided instead to …

Awesome Blossoms

After the haze of another thanksgiving wore off, we found ourselves at the farmer's market with little drive to buy anything but green vegetables. Not knowing until later, when drunk on the Internet, that our little score of zucchini blossoms were literally …

The Wild Dog

If the Good Doctor -- upon burning through Baker and Barstow and pulling to the side of the desert highway to take a gibbering inventory of the drugs and booze -- had not counted two quarts of Wild Turkey bourbon, but rather two bottles of this Wild Dog porter, …

A Hot Knives Thanksgiving

Shazzzam! Our favorite food holiday is all up on us, and we're getting hungry. The tradition around our homes the last few years has been what can only be described as Orphan Thanksgiving. (In Portland, we hear they celebrate something similar called …

Recent Lactic Combo

After a recent trip to the always epic Cheesestore of Silver lake, we found ourselves gorging on a really ripping cheese plate. If you have the means we highly recommend picking up any of the following lactic lords.

l'Alt Urgell y la Cerdanya (Urgelia for …

Riding the Ghost Chile

Just last year, some mad hot pepper professor stumbled upon the Bhut Jholokia, now nicknamed the ghost chile. Subsequent lab tests have revealed that the little fucker is officially the hottest chile pepper in the world -- nearly double the amount of "Scovile …

Hop Nouveau

As a point of order, it's important to note that now is the time of year when the weakest of wines will have its day. If its youthful booze you're looking for, turn your eyes away from tired Beaujolais and pick up a wet hopped IPA.

When it comes to IPA's we …

Sass Squash

Here comes the comfort food, and unfortunately, that means a lot of mashed potatoes are about to be all up in our face. We like taters and all, but honestly, if you open a restaurant and all you can come up with for your dinner menu is garlic blue cheese mashed …

Sass Squash

Here comes the comfort food, and unfortunately, that means a lot of mashed potatoes are about to be all up in our face. We like taters and all, but honestly, if you open a restaurant and all you can come up with for your dinner menu is garlic blue cheese mashed …

Tapa Duty

When our friend Molly recently returned from a yearlong hiatus in the Iberian Peninsula she was totally infused in the mellow vibes of Spanish cooking. Unlike the tedious scenester bustle you find at just about every eatery touting itself as a tapa house, the …

Stew Eggs

The situation goes something like this: Last week, a fall chill settled and you started getting psyched about the season by fixing a big fat pot of soup, and this week, go figure, it's 80 degrees. Now what, right? Or... maybe you did an internet search for "hot …

Avocado Supper

As the first chills of Los Angelean "winter" gave way to 90 degree heat today, and apocalyptic fires throughout our surrounding areas, a last vestige of the summer-fall mash up finally got mushy after a week of incubation: The Great California Avocado.

Instead …

Black Techno Beer

Sometimes it feels like we drink nothing but west coast triple IPAs and 750 ml Belgians, doesn't it? It's not far from the truth cuz when you're home cooks and non-paid beer bloggers you tend to gravitate toward what you know you'll like. One area where we've …

Goul-borscht

Did we say soup season? Naw, we meant stew season. The Halloweeny vibes of deep fall and early winter demand beany substance and spongy protein chunk, not purees or sprinkled garnishes. With that in mind, we pursued an old cobwebbed recipe for goulash -- the …

Sherry and Sage Spuds

When the weather starts to turn, there is nothing that will warm you to the core like a plate of hot potatoes. These wee tubers braised in sherry will certainly heat your chest cavity and the heady fried sage mayo will surely stick to your ribs.

Hard day at …

Cream of Burning Spears

What with our guest contributors beating us to the punch and declaring it official Soup Season, we decided to hurry up and follow suit. Unfortunately, some of us don't have foggy Tolkien-esque mountain fjords abloom with woody fungus bounties, so we had to make …

LRBC's Vegan Chanterelle Dream

Every so often we like to turn over the blog buttons to friends who have a kitchen secret or a standout recipe. The latest comes from Portland natives and recent restaurateurs Ali and Evan. We've known them for years and highly recommend peeps check out their …