• Abbaye de Citeaux, The Soon-To-Be-Forbidden Cheese

    Abbaye de Citeaux, The Soon-To-Be-Forbidden Cheese

    I was wary of getting an iPhone because I didn’t want to be so reachable. With just a plain, ordinary cellphone I get enough calls; with an iPhone I’d also get buzzed every time I got an e-mail. And with all the PR e-mails I get to my Amateur Gourmet e-mail address that’s a lot…

  • nibbles 5.20.08

    * The Leite’s Culinaria blog has a nice post on Pimiento Cheese, complete with recipe. Remember: this is the cheese Craig and I ate at Watershed in Atlanta. It’d definitely be worth making at home. * The new bonappetit.com is looking pretty nifty. Congrats to them on the new site. * Also, congrats to Serious…

  • Calf’s Liver

    Calf’s Liver

    Working through a favorite restaurant’s menu will sometimes bring you to a dish you never expected to order. Case in point: Al Di La, in Park Slope, is one of our favorite restaurants. We were there this past Thursday night to celebrate the arrival of Craig’s parents and his impending film school graduation. Having been…

  • Smoked Salmon Dip

    Smoked Salmon Dip

    Cooking is a funny process. If I gave you a spoonful of cream cheese and a spoonful of sour cream and told you to put them both in your mouth at the same time you’d gag and say, “Sick, man, get out of my face.” But if I mixed that sour cream and cream cheese…

  • A Ceramic Knife

    A Ceramic Knife

    In certain movies, there’s always a bad guy who thwarts a hero or a town from getting what he, she, or they want but, at the end, learns to love that thing for him or herself. For example, I’d like to cite “Footloose” and “Chocolat,” two movies that I’ve seen but totally forgotten. I do…

  • The Top 10 Greatest Dishes of All Time

    as determined by me, at 12:05 AM, in no particular order. Almond Cake Pasta (my #1, if I was ranking) Caesar Salad Rib-Eye Steak Roast Chicken The Prune Hamburger (it has lamb in it) The Anchovy Pizza at Franny’s Cassoulet The Lobster Roll at Pearl Oyster Bar and Bagels Notes: 1. I realize that this…

  • Vegas Days 3 & 4: Picasso, The Cook Off & Grand Tasting, “Love,” Daniel Boulud Brasserie, Craftsteak

    Vegas Days 3 & 4: Picasso, The Cook Off & Grand Tasting, “Love,” Daniel Boulud Brasserie, Craftsteak

    If you go to www.endoftheinternet.com you reach a page that tells you “sorry, but you’ve reached the end of the internet.” I bring this up because on Saturday night, at Craftsteak at the MGM Grand, I received a message from my stomach that said: “Sorry, but you’ve reached the end of eating.” It waved a…

  • Vegas Days 1 & 2: Spago, “O”, François Payard & Dorie Greenspan

    Vegas Days 1 & 2: Spago, “O”, François Payard & Dorie Greenspan

    Here we are in Vegas, in our hotel room at Caesar’s Palace, and I have 30 minutes to tell you everything we’ve done so far before today’s epic schedule, the highlight, of course, being my battle with Dr. Melfi….

  • Food Bloggers Have The Best Recipes (Luisa’s Potato Focaccia, Molly’s Chocolate Granola)

    Food Bloggers Have The Best Recipes (Luisa’s Potato Focaccia, Molly’s Chocolate Granola)

    Newspaper recipes don’t excite me. With their perfect margins, their definitive type, their antiseptic language, I very rarely open the Wednesday Food Section of The New York Times, read a recipe, and run home to make it. Perhaps it’s a function of old media vs. new media, in that the old media feels creaky and…

  • Don’t Hold The Anchovies

    Anyone who grew up in the 80s watching “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” will recall a very specific phrase that kicks in whenever the characters decide to order a pizza. I feel like you hear this phrase in “E.T.” when Eliot’s brother has friends over for poker and maybe in…