Category

Essays

  • 10 Food Rules Worth Breaking

    10 Food Rules Worth Breaking

    Most of us know the rules when it comes to cooking: wash your hands after handling raw chicken, don’t wash a cast iron skillet with soap, etc. Yet, over my many years of cooking (both with chefs and by myself), I’ve learned that certain rules are time-wasters that do very little for you or your…

  • What’s Stopping Me From Becoming A Vegetarian?

    What’s Stopping Me From Becoming A Vegetarian?

    I’m on the edge. This story got me there, this one (which I could only read part of) almost pushed me over. Superbugs and industrial slaughterhouses are facts that live in my brain now and they reside there with images from Food Inc., essays by Michael Pollan, and all the other tracts and screeds I’ve…

  • A Tribute to Peter Workman

    A Tribute to Peter Workman

    [Photo via Workman.com] Regina Schrambling has penned a lovely, loving tribute to Peter Workman who died this weekend at the age of 74. I was really surprised and saddened to hear of his death, especially since my most recent cookbook was very much the result of his extraordinary input. My original idea was for a…

  • Don’t Throw Out That Chicken Skin (Also: A Meditation on Self-Control vs. Self-Denial)

    Don’t Throw Out That Chicken Skin (Also: A Meditation on Self-Control vs. Self-Denial)

    At the grocery store, you may have noticed, you can’t buy skinless chicken thighs that have bones. You can buy boneless, skinless chicken thighs or you can buy chicken thighs with the skin and bones still attached. If you want your chicken thighs to have bones and no skin, you’ll have to remove the skin…

  • An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (For Dinner)

    An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (For Dinner)

    Elizabeth David has a famous book called An Omelette and a Glass of Wine that, I’m embarassed to say, I’ve never read. Still: I’m aware of it. So aware, in fact, that last week when I came home from the gym, exhausted, I decided to put that title into action. I had eggs from the…

  • You Really Ought To See Babette’s Feast

    You Really Ought To See Babette’s Feast

    Watching a movie is tricky business when you’re dating a filmmaker. It’s never just a casual, “Let’s just throw something in the DVD player” kind of deal; it’s usually a: “Would you rather watch Wild Strawberries or Piranha 3-D?” Luckily, my resident filmmaker is in New York editing his own movie and I have total…

  • Cooking on T.V.

    Cooking on T.V.

    The green room was filled with male models who do construction, the actor Alden Ehrenreich (star of “Beautiful Creatures”), a mob of make-up people, hair people, managers and agents all hovering around a plate of half-doughnuts, half-bagels and half-muffins. I hovered on the sidelines with my book publicist, Molly, and didn’t allow myself to feel…

  • Salad on the Same Plate as Dinner

    Salad on the Same Plate as Dinner

    There are three kinds of people in this world: people who eat salad before dinner, people who eat salad after dinner (aka: the French) and the strangest group of all, people who eat salad on the same plate as dinner. I grew up in a “salad before dinner” family. On those rare occasions when we’d…

  • 10 Food Blog Posts That’ll Get You Traffic

    10 Food Blog Posts That’ll Get You Traffic

    This past weekend I gave a lecture at Food Blog South in Birmingham, Alabama. The title of my speech was “10 Food Blog Posts That’ll Get You Traffic” and though I was slightly nervous going in–this was my first time both attending and speaking at a food blog conference–I felt validated, after it was over,…

  • In Praise of Chopped

    In Praise of Chopped

    With The Taste launching on ABC and Top Chef enjoying its 74th season, I’d like to offer up a radical idea: the best cooking competition show on TV is Chopped. These other cooking shows, with their high-stakes drama and interpersonal conflicts, are 30% cooking, 70% fluff. Chopped is 90% cooking, 10% fluff. Iron Chef comes…