• May Flours

    Clear your cache (or bypass your cache), reload the site and behold our May banner: a springy play on words suggested by Twitter follower @amosbkln. Thanks to Amos, to Lindy for her beautiful illustration, Leah for all the colors and Justin for putting it up. Good job, team!

  • Banana Cake

    Banana Cake

    I made the banana cake of my dreams this weekend, a banana cake so good I had to give half of it away because I knew I would eat it all. What made it so good? It was a homey, cozy, PTA bake sale kind of cake; there was nothing fussy about it, no caramelized…

  • Winning Hot Dog Limerick

    Congrats to KJR, the winner of our Hot Dog limerick contest who gets two free tix to the Serious Eats Hot Dog Hootenanny this Sunday (please e-mail Alaina Browne with your info.) Here’s the winning limerick: “There once was a hot dog named Frankie / Whose bun was as thin as a hankie / So…

  • Be A Weiner Winner

    Serious Eats has generously offered to give away two tickets to Amateur Gourmet readers for its Hot Dog Hootenanny this Sunday at 3 PM at Astor Center. Tickets are $25 but if you want yours free, write a hot dog limerick in the comments (please keep it clean!) and the funniest one will be published…

  • The Big Reveal: Amateur Gourmet on Food2

    Remember a long time ago, after I finished The FN Dish, I told you I had a top secret project I was working on, something I couldn’t tell you about yet? Well, at last, the project is here and I’m incredibly excited to share it with you: it’s my brand new web show The Amateur…

  • Penne with Broccoli Rabe

    Penne with Broccoli Rabe

    Broccoli rabe is usually the first thing I buy at the farmer’s market when the weather gets warmer. It’s a transitional vegetable: something that bridges us from the dark and murky vegetables of winter to the bright and sprightly vegetables of summer. Raw, it tastes rather fresh and green, but cooked, it takes on all…

  • A Springy Lunch at Al Di La

    A Springy Lunch at Al Di La

    Al Di La is one of my favorite restaurants: not just in Park Slope, but anywhere. As anyone who’s been there for dinner knows, they don’t take reservations and often the wait can be more than an hour long. So going to Al Di La is often a special occasion, a complicated affair that requires…

  • The Barefoot Contessa’s Wheat Berry Salad

    The Barefoot Contessa’s Wheat Berry Salad

    There are many words one might use to describe me–“enthusiastic,” “smiley,” “mildly irritating”–but “hippie” probably isn’t one of them. Sure, I may walk around in sandals in the summer, but who doesn’t? And true, Janice is my favorite Muppet and my aunt Cindy (my dad’s sister) was photographed blowing a bubble at Woodstock (see here)…

  • It’s Time We Finally Met

    Readers, A wonderful thing has happened. The Six Apart Team has benevolently upgraded me from dusty old Movable Type 3 to sparkling new Movable Type 4. What does this mean for you? It means that, at long last, you can have user profiles! That’s right. Right now, in the comments of this post, you can…

  • Food Tech #4

    Doesn’t he look a little familiar? And why does he smell so much like wood? [Ok, I’ll explain: when I hosted The FN Dish, I interviewed Ted Allen on the set of his show “Food Detectives.” They asked if I wanted to be a “food tech” and there I am! Not sure if this clip…