I’ve been gathering cook books by whatever method I can...and beggers usually can’t be choosers. I borrow nearly anything I can lay my hands on. I owe lots of money to the library. And whenever I get to head home I usually make it out with an armful books my mom hoarded over the years ( I promise I’ll return them!). One of those was The Louisville Courier-Journal Cookbook. By a...
I don’t think I can ever tire of the holy trinity comprised of tomatoes, basil, and carbohydrates. Whether it’s a straightforward pasta of raw tomatoes in olive oil with basil tossed with spaghetti, a bruschetta on grilled bread, or with fresh mozzarella and some balsamic or red wine vinegar—it always tastes fresh, simple, and surprisingly hearty.
Sometimes around the end of summer, or the...
I’d venture a guess and say that there’s nothing I cook more than pasta. For someone as devoted to simple cooking with simple ingredients as I’ve become, there’s no dish more fitting and open to invention, nor in possession of a learning curve that’s forgiving at first, but can take a lifetime to master. It’s easy enough to make a tomato sauce and boil some pasta—college stud...
Before this point in my life--some 24 years in--I’d never willingly eaten cauliflower. Sure, it'd been sneaked into some of my dishes. But I know for a fact that it has not played an integral role in any dish I’ve ever made. A quick scan of our directory reveals only 1 mention of its name, and that was for a curried cauliflower dish that we didn’t even cook! One of Blake’s form...
Since moving to Boerum Hill , groceries have been tough. We used to live steps away from a B61 bus stop, which takes you directly to Fairway , where almost any food or ingredient can be bought, and at reasonable prices (though their produce isn't always the best). But now going to Fairway truly is a hassle, and I don't think we've since been. Shopping in Manhattan is fine in small...
So, I’d been eating too much meat. After days of centering every single meal around some big cut, I realized it was time for a little break. There aren’t too many times in my life that I can honestly say this, but what I wanted was zucchini. And for those in need of a zucchini recipe, there really is only one place to go: Chocolate and Zucchini .
This adoring blog is in no need of mo...
By some miracle, my girlfriend and I have recently moved into a beautiful, spacious, freshly painted apartment with a backyard, a washer/dryer, and a dishwasher: three luxuries that most New Yorkers offer up onto the pyre of compromise very early on. It’s simply assumed: you won’t have those things. You live in the city because the people that live here are interesting, and there are o...
A couple months ago I was eating at Otto , which is the place to bring friends who are visiting: a bit touristy, but very affordable; good to great food that’s easy to share; and most importantly, they have olive oil gelato , which floors just about everyone who tries it. One thing we always do is order lots of the $4 vegetable dishes, like tiny radishes with anchovy-mustard sauce, o...
I'm not sure why, but it wasn't until last week when my mom handed me a fresh copy of Heat , that I realized I had forgotten to read it. I'd read another Bill Buford book, his manic and terribly disturbing Among the Thugs , along with his New Yorker profile on Batali and a narrative on his experience slaughtering animals in Tuscany, the latter two of which are included in some form in...
I’ve already done my public fawning over Thomas Keller’s cookbooks. The absurd attention to details, the flowery short essays about “the importance of onion soup” in the philosophy of bistro cooking, the potential of preparing-ahead the “building blocks” of cooking (like soffrito and aioli ) that allow you to continue preparing uncomplicated dishes with simple, inspired combin...