I have a ridiculous confession to make. I hesitate to tell you because it’s a trivial thing that I’m blowing out of proportion, and I can just imagine the puzzled looks on your faces as you read my admission. What? Really? Huh.

Here goes: I have a fierce aversion to buying fish on sale. That’s it. I know.

I have this notion that buying fish on sale is like ordering seafood in a restaurant on Mondays: it’s just not a good idea. If it’s been knocked down a few bucks, it’s likely been sitting there for days, developing all kinds of fishy odors and rancid flavor notes. I believe prices are slashed only when the fish is hanging on dearly to its last thread of edibility.

Now that I’m doing my fair share of penny-pinching in these rough financial times, I can’t justify paying $10 a pound for swordfish over $2 a pound for chicken, turkey or beef. Pair that with an actual physical reaction when buying fish that’s advertised in a weekly supermarket mailer and you’ll understand why I haven’t had a good piece of fish in longer than I care to admit. I know. I’m slapping my forehead for you.

I’ve not a clue where this aversion originated from. It’ll miff until I have an epiphany of some sort, after years of weekly therapy or when something random triggers a distant memory. But I do know that it’s a silly fear that needs to be conquered – because I miss eating fish.

OK. So let’s do it. Let’s buy some fish on sale.

A local market was having a special on Dover sole: $4.99 a pound, reduced from $10.99. I took home two pounds, about 8 fillets, all snuggled in a brown butcher-paper bundle. I would make poached sole with a blood orange beurre blanc and try not to think of how little I had paid for it.

Like clockwork, my bodily reactions began as I peeled back the paper from the fillets. The backs of my knees started weakening – the same feeling I get when I’m watching surgery on TV or some graphic action flick where everyone has to exaggeratedly spew blood from their wounds (hello, Quentin Tarantino). I held my breath before my stomach could follow with its own unpleasantness.

It all feels like my body is betraying my brain: I knew there was nothing wrong with the Dover sole. It was actually quite beautiful – a bright, pinky white with an even surface. Not even a whisper of an off-smell. My body just couldn’t seem to get the message. It was fine.

I plowed on despite all the weird feelings, trying to ignore my weak knees and queasy stomach. When I finished plating the dish, I served it to my boyfriend first (I admit I did it because I was scared to have the first bite). He declared it delicious, but I observed him for a few minutes to make sure he wasn’t having any delayed adverse reactions. Satisfied that he was OK, I had a bite of my own – and it really was delicious. It was flaky and tender in all the right places, with a citrus kick to brighten it up even more. My body relaxed. I ate the whole thing, but couldn’t help but wonder if it would have tasted better had I paid full price. (Click “Read the rest of this entry” for recipe)

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After writing this post on weird food laws, I was left with a hunk of Roquefort and not a single idea what to do with it.

When you don’t have a hunk of Roquefort, you can think of tens of recipes to use it in – I mean, crumble it over a salad at the very least, right? But when you have a little Roquefort wedge nestled between your palms, it’s an entirely different story. You’re nervous. It’s like a femme fatale, the Roquefort, taunting with all of its sultry. You have me now, but whatever will you do with me? And then there’s you, the bumbling man who should have been careful with what he wished for, questioning his manhood with a worried look to boot. Gulp. What will I do with you?

So there I was in my kitchen, with a pungent hunk of Roquefort, a head full of imagined silver-screen romance scenarios between me and the cheese, and an inexplicable, massive brain fart. Reluctantly, I put it back in my fridge. My little mademoiselle, it’s not you, it’s me, I said. I need more time.

For the next week, the Roquefort lingered patiently in my fridge while I plotted out some smooth moves. I wanted something substantial, yet something that would also use the Roquefort in a subtle way, without letting it overpower the other ingredients. The week finally yielded what I had been waiting for: A rough recipe sketch of pork with apples and Roquefort. It would be a roulade, to marry everything into a single, unified dish. After a seemingly endless period of debate, there would be a happy ending for the Roquefort and I after all. Don’t they always say that good things come to those who wait?

For this recipe, you’ll need some kitchen twine, a meat mallet and a thermometer. The apple butter sauce is a spinoff of beurre blanc, which is usually a light butter sauce reserved for seafood. The addition of chicken stock or broth beefs up the sauce – so it can stand up to a the Roquefort and protein. I serve the roulade over a pile of roasted yams with sea salt, which add a little more salt and sweet to the dish. (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for recipe.)

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My former ballet mistress once told me that the barre is a dancer’s home. No matter how much time was spent on a stage or center floor, rehearsals and classes began and often ended there, with dancers performing the steps and stretches that were learned from the very moment we stepped into the studio for the first time.

I loved that no matter how great or awful I had performed that day, the barre was always there for me, waiting in the wings whenever I wanted it, offering nothing but comfort and familiarity. On the floor, I’d frantically go over the new combinations – a flurry of microscopic steps, pirouettes and grand jetes – trying desperately to match mind and body to an accompanist, who played perfect, staccato notes with his piano.

Dancing at the barre was a different story. Muscle memory and music would take over, while my mind took a backseat. It was all like sliding into a buttery leather recliner that you’ve spent years coaxing to hug your body perfectly. The pianist played in tune with my every perfect tendu. One flick of his wrist for a high note matched my frappe. A bellowing series of notes, low and slow, matched my plie developpe. Nothing else existed. It really was home.

Over the years, the dance studio would be replaced by the kitchen, with the stove taking the place of the barre.

This is my home now.

This becomes especially true when the task at hand is baking, performed in the wee hours, when it seems you’re the only person in the world not tucked into a warm bed and dreaming of good things. Whatever tasks performed during the day become distant memories, whatever responsibilities lie ahead don’t exist. Muscle memory takes over, and with its help I execute the choreography that I’ve performed so many times before: A scoop of flour added to a sifter. Heavy cream poured with both hands into a measuring cup. My thumb and forefinger, poised to clap imaginary castanets, instead pinch salt into a mixing bowl full of dry ingredients.

The musical accompaniment is rhythmic. A scraping sound from the stainless steel spoon against the Nutella jar. The soft, crunch crunch, crunching as my chef’s knife rocks against a board littered with toasted hazelnuts. The muted pops and subtle hissing from the oven while baking the pan of Gianduia brownies. It all falls into place, like music notes sprinkled over a crisp, white page, with my immediate world as the orchestra. It’s a different dance, but it produces the same warm feeling I used to have while at the ballet barre. It feels like home. (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for recipe)

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A few weeks ago, my boyfriend and I gathered some friends together to squelch our mutual curiosity for a tiny, scarlet berry and it’s “miraculous” effects.

The gathering was called flavor tripping, and the berry is deemed Miracle Fruit. Eating one of these will weird-out your tastebuds to varying degrees and allow you to experience food in a different way – by ditching some of their nature-intended flavor profiles for radically different ones. The promise was that acids and sour foods would take on sweeter notes, while already sweet foods would become cloying. It sounded too good to be true. And in some respects, it is. It’s a crapshoot, really.

First, you bite into the berry, roll the pulp around your tongue for a few minutes (to coat tastebuds) and spit out the seed. If you’ve done it right, it’s effects should last anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours, depending on the potency of the individual fruit, and, as Wired magazine speculates, depending on your genetic makeup. There’s no guarantee that it will work, and no guarantee of how long it will work. You just have to trust that it will. And for the most part, it did: A few people reported that the berry worked instantly, but others say the effects were extremely subtle until a second berry was ingested. (I had ordered extra berries for this scenario.)

For their price ($3 each), they’re not anything you would reach for when you want a snack (and the Miracle Fruit’s taste isn’t anything to write home about, either). So, are they worth it? Read on for the rundown and some comments from flavor-trippers.

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This Friday Link Love is brought to you by the adorable little Daschund (lookit the smile on his face!) that surfaced on the Internet months ago. I’ve found some other equally small and/or sweet blurbs from the culinary world for your perusal. Have a good one!

• Food & Wine magazine names its Best New Chefs of 2009.
• David Lebovitz encourages unusual flavors of homemade ice cream (carrot cake ice cream!) for the LA Times.
• The Chocolate Peanut Butter Gallery tackles Devil’s Food Twinkies with peanut butter filling.
• How sweet it is: Pie of the Tiger offers a step-by-step lesson in sugar casting bowls. Eat the fruit, and the bowl, too.
• Serious Eats celebrates the (possible) birthday of the ice cream sundae.

– Cynthia Furey

March Madness was tough! Thank you all for reading. Here’s a recap in case you missed anything, and stay tuned for a Friday Link Love and new posts next week.

My quest for farm-to-table cooking comes to a screeching halt when I’m faced with unshelled macadamia nuts, which I tried to crack with a hammer and a towel. My neighbors think I’m nuts.

• A cheesecake for sugar freaks and perfectionists: One heck of a cheesecake, with more frill and decoration than a 6-year-old’s Easter Sunday dress.

Green velvet cupcakes from the Layer Cake Bakery in Irvine, Calif., make me wish that St. Patrick’s Day would come more than just once a year.
Kitchen voyeurism: You can tell a lot about a chef just by peering into his kitchen.
Easy recipes for Croque Madame and Croque Monsieur, published in my Food 101 column in The Orange County Register.
Link love, brought to you by Gumduck. Also other collections of interesting links here, here and here.
A perfect day at Taylor’s Refresher, with a perfect burger to match.
Learning how to make Okonomiyaki with my friend Mark, who spent a few years in Japan perfecting his methods (while teaching English).

• Some thoughts on a new study that claims eating red meat is bad for your health — “deadly” according to one news outlet.
• Syllable and Sustenance: A relationship I’ve imagined between the Vietnamese language and its food.
• The Scharffen Berger plant in Berkeley, Calif., closes.
• A first visit to Pizzeria Ortica, David Myers’ new pizza place in Costa Mesa, Calif.

A quick recipe for roasted potatoes with rosemary and olive oil.
Dining at the Ramos House Cafe, in a picture-perfect, historical California setting.

Flying Food: Tales of a kid who sends her food airborne in hopes of fooling her mother into thinking she ate them. (Reader comments on this post are super-hilarious.)

On April 30, the Cook’s Library will close its doors after 20 years of being the go-to spot in Southern California for cookbooks and culinary literature.
Some notes on the Roquefort tariff, plus some weird food laws that still exist today.
The seven steps you need to perform to ensure an excellent dim sum meal.
And finally, 30 restaurants in one go at the L.A. Weekly’s Gold Standard.

– Cynthia Furey