Recipes and food adventures with Adam Roberts

  • Brunch at Red Rooster & Craig’s Birthday Dinner at Soto

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    Brunch at Red Rooster & Craig’s Birthday Dinner at Soto

    Some new restaurants deserve their buzz, others not so much. Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster in Harlem deserves its buzz. It’s not really about the food, though the food is very good; it’s about the concept, the location, the community-mindedness of the enterprise.

  • How Did I Lose 15 Pounds Writing a Cookbook?

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    How Did I Lose 15 Pounds Writing a Cookbook?

    Last week I thought I was dying. No really: it was Craig’s birthday and I took him out to Soto where we ordered the tasting menu (this is after taking him to a taping of The Daily Show.) The food started to come–a tiny amuse bouche, then a bowl of miso soup–and after the soup,…

  • Dorie Greenspan’s Mustard Bottle Vinaigrette

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    Dorie Greenspan’s Mustard Bottle Vinaigrette

    When food icons have food blogs, you need to read them. That’s certainly true of Dorie Greenspan’s blog. Her posts, like Dorie herself, are wise, witty and warm. And they’re full of good advice–like where to get pastries in Paris or how to whip up begger’s linguine–but the advice that’s stuck with the most was…

  • A Sour Cherry Coffee Cake In Winter

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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)

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    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)

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    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

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    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…