I was in the mood for seafood but the hunky BF wanted pasta.

What’s an over-achieving boot-licker to do?

Well combine both ideas and make everyone happy of course! This is another one of those made up recipes. I can’t take all the credit though, because the BF suggested combining them (and he chose the shell-shaped pasta whose sychronicity with the shellfish made me smile). I emailed my brother for more help and he suggested chorizo. He also chose the wine for this pairing.

Though, I share the credit– and I am not one to “tweet” my own horn (well maybe I am), I still have to say this is one of the best recipes I ever made up.

The word cioppino and the dish itself have become San Francisco classics. Still, its roots (even its name) may be Italian in origin. Which may lay some credence to the tale I have heard told that it was first brought to the American palate in the North Beach section of that great city by the bay.

This is one of those recipes. It seems like there are a lot of steps. It's best if you can do them over a day or two. But I promise you these are the very things that make this recipe so EASY! Because all the steps take only a few minutes of actual activity, and they can be done all at once or over several days. The cooking itself is a snap and can be made snappier with a self-timed oven.

The method of preserving the tuna is really more of an oil-poaching method. It's a wonderful method to master and can be adapted in so many ways– from salads, to main courses. I particularly like serving this tuna on toasted baguette slices with shards of red onion! So you see, it's worth the effort, because the technique will pay you back– I promise. I think I may have originally learned this method from an Alice Waters recipe. But I am pretty sure serving it with a Panzanella Salad was my idea! But don't quote me on it...

This recipe has other virtues as well. It is a great opportunity to use up that day old bread, and those less than ideal off-season tomatoes you stupidly bought. What were you thinking? Plus, it's fun to introduce new tastes to the people in your life who may take a bit of prodding when it comes to unusual or strong flavors. I consider it our duty to educate them.

I call it a Three Bean Winter Panzanella Salad with Preserved Tuna.

For this entry into my Panamanian Cooking Series I want to feature Wolfgang Puck and Spago. You can’t really talk about iconic Hollywood restaurants without including Spago. But Spago is not all that it used to be. The new Spago in Beverly Hills represents a certain kind of dining in Los Angeles. Solid, dependable and perfectly delicious. It’s not where you would go exclusively to see stars. The food is too good for that, and while the occasional star certainly dines there, the new Spago seems to have the attention of the serious Los Angeles foodie.

But you know what? I preferred the old Spago, even though I rarely went during it’s hey days of the 1980s and early 1990s. In my mind there is something so elusive about the old Spago in West Hollywood, I can’t quite describe the vibe of the place. Though in my photos here I did try to capture the extravagant starkness mixed with a neon glow that seemed to pulse through the restuarant's windows. It sat on a cliff above Sunset Blvd in old wood frame building with windows all around. In a city that puts a premiuim on views it had one of the best. Not that I ever got a window table there.

Do you read SpinachTiger? If not you should. Her blog is sophisticated, witty and honest.

These are great reasons to read her blog 364 days a year. But there is a 365^th day and on that day there is an even more compelling reason to make the time to go there.

Tuesday December 1 is World AIDS Day. Angela at SpinachTiger is asking us to Cook Red To Remember.

Now, I am going to say something that may seem controversial. I am a gay man, old enough to remember the shell-shocked days of the early epidemic. I don’t need a special day to remember the death, the sadness or the fear.

So when I hear about these special days set aside for remembrance there is a part of me that bristles up and thinks, “what about every other day in the year?” It sometimes almost offends me that one day a year needs to be set aside so we can “remember” that 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS and there is still no cure.

If there is one thing that is universally true, it’s this: Sons are always trying to be half the man their old man was. Sometimes that formula gets tragically warped and a son spends his life trying to be twice the man his father was.

But this is really two sides of the same coin.

In my case I will have to settle for half the man.

Because my father is a doctor, and not just a doctor, but a children’s heart doctor. And as if that is not enough he also volunteers his time at his local Free Clinic caring for the many of us who have fallen between life’s ever widening cracks. He has even traveled to 3rd world countries where he meets and diagnoses kids with heart defects. Heart defects that would have otherwise gone on undetected and untreated.

People like my father with outsized talents (and undersized egos) are a rare breed. Sometimes being the son of a man like this is a little like climbing a ladder with uneven rungs. It’s hard to know how much progress you are making, and if it’s even worth the effort. But I guess that is part of being a son; to always wonder.