Writing about food since 2004.
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Quick Notes
(1) Clear your cache and enjoy the new springy banner, a nice corollary to this week’s FN Dish. Thanks Erin, Leah and Justin, once again, for your great work. (2) My weekly features–Tuesday Techniques and Music While You Eat–will now be more sporadic than weekly. I’d rather do thoughtful posts every now and then than…
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Tuesday Techniques: French Apple Tart
I would like to begin this week’s “Tuesday Techniques” column–a column which appears regularly on Wednesdays–with a discussion of the word “technique.” I think people are intimidated by the word. It implies a “right-wrong” dynamic, something hammered home by Tom Colicchio on “Top Chef” when he criticizes improper technique. “You don’t know how to cut…
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Chocolate Covered Matzos
Passover is over, but I’d like to belatedly submit my review of the Dark Chocolate Egg Matzos I bought at Citarella a few weeks ago. Here’s my review: I didn’t really like it. Sometimes the combination of dry, crackly, salty bread-like substance (pretzels, for example) with creamy, bitter, unctuous chocolate is a winner, but not…
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Tuesday Techniques: Home Fries
Last week I started a series called Tuesday Techniques, a series where I cook my way through Jacques Pepin’s Complete Techniques the same way that Top Chef Judge Tom Colicchio did at the start of his career. Already, I’m on shaky ground: (1) my Tuesday techniques posts always show up on Wednesday, but Wednesday Techniques…
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Seared Scallops with Citrus Risotto
Visions of food sometimes arrive and you wave them away like an annoying fly. “Why am I craving lobster bisque right now?” you ask yourself while castrating a horse. “Get that craving out of my head!” But what you don’t realize, person who is reading this, is that a craving is a gift, assistance from…
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The A.G.’s Guide To Equipping Your Kitchen
So you’re getting married, moving into a new house with your betrothed and people are asking: “What should we get you?” You can register at a store like Williams Sonoma or Bed, Bath & Beyond but when it comes to the kitchen you don’t know where to begin. That’s the very situation my future sister-in-law,…
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Siggi’s Skyr
Let’s end the week with yogurt. Not just any yogurt, though; let’s talk about Icelandic yogurt, otherwise known as skyr. Now I’d never heard of skyr until I heard about Siggi. Who’s Siggi? He’s a friend of my friend Sasie, one of Craig’s film school classmates. When I first met Sasie and told her that…
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Tuesday Techniques: Cooking with Demi-Glace (Hunter Chicken)
Tom Colicchio, that most formidable of judges on “Top Chef,” shocked me the other night when, during an interview on PBS’s series Chef’s Story (with Dorothy Hamilton) he revealed that he hadn’t gone to cooking school, he taught himself everything he knows using Jacques Pepin’s “La Technique” and “La Méthode.” (This is corroborated on his…
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wd-50
So much has been written and blogged about wd-50, Wylie Dufresne’s humorously named restaurant on the Lower East Side, that many of you may feel like you’ve already been there without having been there. That’s certainly how I felt when we sat down for dinner last Tuesday, an anniversary dinner marking two years with Craig.…
