• A Sour Cherry Coffee Cake In Winter

    A Sour Cherry Coffee Cake In Winter

    Most food blog posts are meant to inspire, but this one is meant to mock. Yes I am mocking you! When sour cherry season rolled around last June, did I, like you, stuff myself silly, popping every last sour cherry into my mouth until I had none left? No, sir, I did not. Like a…

  • Stewed Borlotti Beans with Polenta

    Stewed Borlotti Beans with Polenta

    My favorite way to cook, the cooking that makes me happiest, is the kind of cooking you do on the fly: no planning, no prepping. You just see what you have already on hand and you make dinner. And often that dinner is way better than the dinner you spend a week prepping for, shopping…

  • The Best Biscuits in Atlanta

    The Best Biscuits in Atlanta

    Is there such a thing as biscuit terroir? In wine, as in coffee, we can talk about the soil and growing conditions of the grapes or beans and how that affects the end product. But with biscuits, there are so many variables–the butter, the flour, the baking powder and the buttermilk–you can’t explicitly tie the…

  • Toast Your Oatmeal

    Toast Your Oatmeal

    It’s such a simple idea, the kind of idea that makes you wonder why you didn’t think of it before. I got the idea from Kim Boyce’s marvelous baking book, “Good To The Grain” (the winner of Food52’s Piglet tournament of cookbooks.) From the title of this post, I think you’ve sussed it out; the…

  • Mississippi Mud Pie (From The Sky)

    Mississippi Mud Pie (From The Sky)

    It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No it’s me, The Amateur Gourmet, blogging to you live from Delta flight 2243, en route to Atlanta, Georgia. Yes, this is an absolute first for me, my first blog post written from a plane. And I choose, as my subject matter, a dessert that I made back in…

  • The Return of CHEESE FOR DINNER (with Heidi’s Oat Soda Bread)

    The Return of CHEESE FOR DINNER (with Heidi’s Oat Soda Bread)

    You may remember May 12, 2009 as the day in history when I served cheese for dinner. I wrote a post about it called Cheese For Dinner and 47 of you left comments because you were so shocked and disturbed by the idea. Cheese for dinner? How can you eat cheese for dinner? Actually, most…

  • The Salvadorean Bakery, Delancey & A Glogg Party

    The Salvadorean Bakery, Delancey & A Glogg Party

    There are three experiences I forgot to tell you about from my trip to the Pacific Northwest this year. The first experience happened on a morning in West Seattle (I’d written “East Seattle” and then Craig corrected me) with our friends David and Celia and their new baby, Johanna. Early in the morning, before my…

  • Marion Cunningham’s Raised Waffles

    Marion Cunningham’s Raised Waffles

    In the food section of my brain, there are two major filing cabinets: (1) New York City restaurants organized by location, allowing me to choose the perfect spot to nosh no matter where we are in the city; and (2) a recipe file. My recipe file is mostly organized by ingredient (chicken, peas, bacon), though…

  • Dinner with Chinese Scholars at Grand Sichuan

    Dinner with Chinese Scholars at Grand Sichuan

    Speaking of Chinese food (what is this, a stand-up act?) the other night we had the unique opportunity to dine with Craig’s cousin Dave, a senior at Georgetown, and several of the friends he met while studying abroad in Beijing last year at our favorite New York City Chinese restaurant, Grand Sichuan in the East…

  • Grace Young’s Vinegar-Glazed Chicken

    Grace Young’s Vinegar-Glazed Chicken

    It’s been tricky to keep the contents of my cookbook a secret. For example, certain chefs have led me to purchase certain cooking equipment and/or ingredients that have transformed the way I cook at home. Do I share those revelations here or do I wait for you to experience them in Spring 2012, when the…

Food Person Book Cover