As you probably know by now, the New York City 2007 Zagat Guide has been published. Josh over at The Food Section has comprehensive information and a comparison running all the way back to 1996, showing which restaurants have shuffled in the top ten, in both food rankings and popularity. I find it especially interesting that New York City's average meal cost on a global scale, ranking 4th in price, is far behind Tokyo ($75.07), London ($72.25) and Paris ($67.06), amounting to $39.43. It's comforting that New York's cuisine offers cheap options, that there are Zagat-rated restaurants bringing the average cost so far down. I like that there's a kind of equal-opportunity chance to eat well.
If you happen to... 
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As you probably know by now, the New York City 2007 Zagat Guide has been published. Josh over at The Food Section has comprehensive information and a comparison running all the way back to 1996, showing which restaurants have shuffled in the top ten, in both food rankings and popularity. I find it especially interesting that New York City's average meal cost on a global scale, ranking 4th in price, is far behind Tokyo ($75.07), London ($72.25) and Paris ($67.06), amounting to $39.43. It's comforting that New York's cuisine offers cheap options, that there are Zagat-rated restaurants bringing the average cost so far down. I like that there's a kind of equal-opportunity chance to eat well.
If you happen to... 
Someone is really concerned about us.
We eat a lot of meat and not enough vegetables. Nick spent a week devouring ham and now his face is the color of plain file folders. (I'm in the office--this is the only simile available to me.) We're facing vitamin deficiencies, colon problems. We're afraid to go outside. Because if we just ate a bunch of raw vegetables, we'd have nothing to tell you. We're offering up our bodies for the sake of research.
Are there other ways to eat cheaply? The problem is, Nick ate for a week, including ham sandwiches for lunch, on a $15 piece of pig. He went from Christmas dinner to ... 
After four days of intense bonding with my 10 pound ham, the meat stopped magically improving in the fridge, and started instead to develop what could best be described as a funk. Not necessarily revolting, and I'm sure perfectly edible, the smell was offending enough. And with something less than a pound left, I didn't feel too bad chucking the slimy, sour-smelling flesh into the garbage and calling it a job well done. It's not easy eating a 10 pound ham mostly by yourself, and I had managed to eat most of it before it turned against me.
That wasn't the end of the story, though. At the beginning of this great ham adventure, I had...
I'll have to admit the real reason I bought a 10 pound ham, beyond "I'd never done it before" cop-out, was to have enough meat to make as many ham sandwiches as I could possibly stomach in a week. Sure, that Boar's Head Black Forest ham can stuff a hero, but thick slabs of real, brown sugar encrusted ham exist on an entirely different plane of pleasure. And for three days I had enormous sandwiches smeared with an excess of Dijon mustard, real crisp pickles, and swiss cheese actually from Switzerland. It was a glorious week.
Unfortunately, that doesn't make for much culinary excitement, and by the third lunch I had tired of it myself and realized I needed a fresh approach to this sandwich institution. But I couldn't...
By the second day the roughly 8 pound ham I had foil-wrapped in my refrigerator had started to express its full potential. What had tasted perfectly fine the day before became a sensuous, hands on event the next, as it had somehow increased in flavor as it waited in the fridge. I wanted nothing more than to slouch over the kitchen table, picking hunks right off. How could anything be better than this?
There are many recipes for ham out there, but most of them center around what to do the ham before you cook it. Now that I had taken the plunge and baked the thing, I needed a recipe for what to do with the nearly 90%...
I had no reason to buy a ham. No guests were coming over, there was no potluck to attend. It was just a Monday and I had never baked one before and wanted to try. So I hopped on my bike and set out to Fairway to secure the biggest ham I could find. Sure, I could have trained myself on some perfectly reasonable ham steaks that would have happily fed my girlfriend and me for one, maybe two, meals. But I wanted the real thing and the real thing is a 10 pound ham.
Not that it was hard; ham is nearly impossible to ruin. It's also cheap. All those 10 pounds cost me exactly $15.93, which would make this one cheap dinner party entree. It could have very easily feed 10 people.
But it was just me and Abby. And the moment that ham hit the oven the...
I never have any idea what to put in a salad. I know this much: make your own dressing, that's a given. Mushrooms are a good bet, as they soak up all the flavor and end up being remarkably delicious. Leaves: yes. Good oilve oil and vinegar (or lemon / lime juice). Salt, fresh pepper. Avocado if you feel fancy. Raw onions, just a bit, taste sweet when combined in with the vinegar.
There's this one salad dressing recipe.
It's beyond amazing. It belongs to my girlfriend's mother. Red wine vinegar is put into the bowl, and you add garlic, dried basil, salt, pepper. Then you whisk in oilve oil, really getting your wrist into it so it combines and emulsifies with the vinegar. 3 parts oilive oil to one part vinegar. Toss in a handful of great Parmesan. Now, the key: put sliced mushrooms in for 5 minutes or so... 
On Sunday night, I was subconsciously looking for a kind of willing-the-weather-to-change activity. After a cool week of light sweaters and no sweating on the subway platform, Saturday and Sunday heralded the return of muggy weather, which was very unwelcome. The threat of rain provided sufficient justification for me to hole up and read and watch movies all weekend (save a trip to Bensonhurst to nab some homemade ravioli and salamis)--in retrospect, it's possible that the weather wasn't so bad--since I barely left the house. But by Sunday afternoon, I was stuffy and stir-crazy.
Flipping through cookbook after cookbook, risotto after risotto caught my eye. I was looking for something straightforward, comforting, a bit gourmet, autumn ingredients. But I lacked the ambition to forage for squash, pancetta and... 
Just like your grandmother, I now own a cast-iron skillet. It seemed like the logical choice after I realized the finite possibilities of non-stick, yet was not ready to burn my whole month's salary on an All-Clad frying pan. This cost $19. It's heavy as a brick--actually, more like a couple bricks. You can toss this war-horse around with glee and it will take it all. Clang it around as loud as you can, see if it cares.
But it is finicky in some respects. Cast iron skillets apparently don't like to be washed, have to be seasoned, and if any of these aren't followed, those eggs will do nothing more than adhere like cement to the bottom.
Or, this is what I'd been told. I read many post about how to...
Traditionally, I've wondered why farmers' markets are so expensive. It's almost a given that the price per pound for things can reach double what you'd pay in a grocery store. It doesn't make any sense to me: we're cutting out lots of middlemen, the farmer and I, by communicating directly with one another. There's no shipping the tomatoes halfway around the world, no large distributor that's taking a cut from the deal, no grocery store that marks things up to pay its employees and rent. So how come things cost more?
I'm still not certain. But I like what Deborah Madison has to say on the subject:
There may be more efficient ways to shop than going to the farmers' market. But the experience rewards us in so many ways that...
This wasn't one of those Manhattan street fairs that blocked traffic on random weekends and offered the same tired stand of roasted corn, corn dogs, and grease laden elephant ears, block after block. Brooklyn's Atlantic Antic (rated number one street festival by Time Out!) was as hodge podge as Atlantic Avenue always is, except now the music spilled onto the streets and so could the beer (sort of).
And, sure, there were loads of wonderful bands, basketball games, political action groups, and the like to keep you busy in the 80 plus degree, absolutely... 
As we were pulling the dark brown breaded chicken nuggets from the bubbling pot, dropping them onto the oil-soaked paper towel to cool and drain, the whole thing struck me: this is the most unhealthy food I’ve eaten all year. It follows: Kids eat total crap in school. If it isn’t fried, it’s poor quality meat seasoned like crazy, processed and emulsified and water-injected and generally squeezed through a process to make bad ingredients somehow taste good, but "good" in a half-truth, crooked sort of way: good at first and tasty and addictive, but destructive in the long term.
It isn’t until I’ve begun cooking for myself that I’ve thought carefully about ingredients, learned that better quality ingredients used in simpler ways equals... 
Besides meatloaf, it's the ultimate mystery meat. Coated with a thick brown sauce and usually hard as a rock, Salisbury steak was the meal I most genuinely hated during my school years. Its presence institgated the hoarding of dinner rolls and the unfortunate act of talking to girls, just so I could make off with one of their mini cobs of corn. It was a tough day on the streets, and one I don't like to think about often. But is there more to this cast off hamburger? Could Salisbury steak actually taste good?
I guess we'll never quite know for certain whether Dr. James Salisbury's last bite of food was his namesake dish. But I firmly believe that he probably passed on with the general impression that he had somehow helped the human... 
Hot Dogs are the universally pretty-tasty food. From middle school to college cafeteria dining, the fair ladies in hairnets have always had quite a hard time messing up the basic formula: buy from distributor, boil or steam, place in bun and send the smiling kids off to the condiments line to fight over packets of pickle relish, and who has to end up with the dijon mustard once the packets of preferable classic yellow are gone. Then that kid would be subjected to "Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon" jokes and generally laughed at. Okay, so maybe that was just me.
They're good on the streets of New York "dirty water boiled," they're even better grilled at Gray's Papaya and Papaya King, they're fantastic surrounded by the compelling and kitchsy surroundings of Coney Island--but here's the truth:... 
Billy Madison: I guess that Snack Pack is pretty good huh?
[the little kid smiles and nods]
Billy Madison: Wanna trade me the rest of it for this banana?
[the little kid smiles and shakes his head]
Billy Madison: You know how how hard I could beat you?
From Internet Movie Database.
In any serious discussion of school lunch food, you cannot forget to mention the packed lunch. Anyone who brown-bagged it remembers peeking into the lunch sack before breakfast had even digested, just to see what would be waiting for lunch. As soon as you sat down at the cafeteria tables, the trading and comparing began. The kids stuck with celery sticks were on their own, forever cast off into the cafeteria abyss. Those with better food could safely mingle and compare trophies... 
And like that, it's over. Summer's stronghold has disappeared. The
days no longer top out in the 90's, the sweat only beads down my face
around noon, and that funk has actually started to lose it's grip on
the 14th Street Station. Last week I only walked on the side of the
street completely covered in shadow, and now I can walk wherever I
choose. Really, I'm not sad.
But I just got a grill, a real small grill. So I've decided to make
one last stab at summer, one last time to remember perfect Brooklyn
nights and hot days at Coney, just to give it one last goodbye, so I
can happily dive into fall. I'm grilling like it's June and the hot
days will never end.
Not that I have any idea what I'm doing. Set me in front of a
couple burners and I'll at least pretend that I have it all under
control, but figuring how much charcoal to... 
If you were functioning on the subway this morning, you probably saw a steady stream of backpacked kids parading around with wide mouths and unsure stares. That daze was the stern face of school, the great unknown and the official end to summer. Standing amongst those kids, I tried remember my own back-to-school feeling, the churning stomach, the moment when I knew it was all over, and that I'd have to enter those classrooms again.
I thought fondly on art class, walking in lines, passing notes, and playing kiss-n-catch on the playground because my classmates and I were that innocent. Buried amongst those feelings, amidst the deep nostalgia about random school events that were probably much more sinister than I remembered, sits school food.
My...
(Hey Everyone! Check out an updated version of pulled pork and a recent trip down to North Carolina in search of the real thing.)
My bike careens to the left until I start to feel the rush of a truck. I cut back right, trying to make up for my error--I guess this is a line I’m crossing--but for some reason I can’t ride straight.
I blame the night before. Sure, the asphalt of Van Brunt St. does not exactly run level, and I am balancing a 7 pound hunk of meat on my left handle bar, but mostly I can’t...
Back in the days of heroicism and yore, legends and lore, shish kebab was invented. In between bouts of maiden-rescuing, treasure-finding, and windmill-attacking, the roaming horseman of the world's countryside decided that they hadn't done enough for mankind. One evening, as the stars shone brightly and the last few vagabonds were settling lazily against rocks for a pipe and a night's sleep, one awoke with a start. In a (literal) stroke of genius, he lopped off a piece of animal flesh from the night's hunt and plunged the end of his sword into it, swinging it around, over his companion's head, and toward the white-hot smoldering coals of the fire. With a look of wild invention on his face, he turned and twisted the sword and the gamey smell of cooked flesh began wafting and rousing the just-sleeping horseman. Following... 
Grilled chicken breasts are the obligatory un-hamburger. They tend to grace all backyard cookouts because someone ultimately didn't want red meat. And even though most chicken breasts lack flavor, cook unevenly, and will undoubtedly be dry, they, like burgers, can be easily pressed between two pieces of bread. They keep the cookout rolling, but they're essentially a cop out.
So when it came time to approach chicken for grill week- I guess it had to be done- I had to think of a different way to approach grilled chicken, one that wouldn't seem unappetizing from the onset. And that was hard.
Because whole chickens don't lie flat on a surface, it would seem that a whole chicken would be out of question. ...
All content copyright Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer.
