Writing about food since 2004.
Category
Adam Roberts
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Bucatini Carbonara
There are lots of conversations in food media, by people much smarter than myself, about “authenticity” in cooking and what that even means. The trend seems to be that we’re shifting away from the word, which is a relief, since I’m about to share my go-to Carbonara recipe and who knows what a real Italian…
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Flourless Chocolate Cake
There are certain recipes that stay with you. They follow you throughout your life and when you return to them, it’s like visiting an old friend. That’s how it is with this flourless chocolate cake that I first made for my playwriting thesis class (taught by Pulitzer Prize-winner Marsha Norman) at NYU’s Tisch School of…
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Ottolenghi’s Coriander-Crusted Cod with Winter Couscous
Breaking out the Ottolenghi is serious business, especially on a Tuesday night. But our old friends and new neighbors Rob, Kath, Andrew, and Cara were coming to dinner and even though my original plan was “protein plus vegetable plus dessert,” I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to dazzle with preserved lemons and unidentifiable spices. I…
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Six Hour Birthday Lasagna
Lasagna is the perfect birthday food. It’s festive, it feeds a crowd, and depending on which recipe you choose, the work that goes into it can become a gift in and of itself. Such was the case with this lasagna that I made for Craig’s [age redacted] birthday this weekend. The recipe comes from Chris…
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Best Sticky Buns Ever
Hyperbole on a food blog? Well I never! Look: I’ve eaten many a sticky bun in my day (that sounded dirty) and the best sticky buns I’ve ever experienced were the ones that I ate in my kitchen just two days ago when I made the Sticky Sticky Buns from Joanne Chang’s essential Flour cookbook.…
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Brioche for Beginners
I’m currently listening to Julia Child’s memoir, My Life in France, on Audible. I’m embarrassed it to say that it took me this long; I suppose I thought I already knew the story because I’ve watched both Julie & Julia (multiple times) and Julia (which I really loved; I interviewed the showrunner, Daniel Goldfarb, on…
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Reverse-Seared Ribeyes
Remember that scene in Mary Poppins where they all go up the chimney and come out all sooty? That’s what my dinner guests usually look like when I cook steak. The whole kitchen fills up with black clouds as I sear the meat in a large cast-iron skillet, flipping and continuing to cook while frantically…
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Almond Cake
We all have our ride-our-die recipes. These are the recipes we love above all others, the recipes that we’d go to hell and back for, the recipes that we want chiseled into our gravestones. In my particular case, I have two: the cavatappi with sun-dried tomatoes that I talk about all the time, and this…
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Chicken Sauce Piquant
It’s funny the things that inspire us to cook dinner. I was recently scrolling through TikTok (as one does these days) when a video popped up of Emeril Lagasse making a roux. I’ve long been curious about the process of making a true roux; from everything that I’ve read, it’s a long process — you…
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Claire Saffitz’s Meyer Lemon Bundt Cake
Bundt cakes often look better than they taste. That’s because, at the end of the day, you’re dumping a bunch of cake batter into a big heavy mold that needs to cook for a while to have stability, but also (very often) dries the cake out in the process. So how do you make a…
