
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…
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…
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…
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…

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…

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…
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…
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…