• Cornmeal-Crusted Catfish

    Cornmeal-Crusted Catfish

    I recently downloaded the Monterey Bay Aquarium app for my iPhone. It’s a great way for those of us who want to buy sustainable seafood to know what’s ok and what’s not. Only a few fish get the designation “Best Choice”–most fish, like monkfish, cod, flounder, and skate are to be avoided, and other fish…

  • How I Cooked Dinner for The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck

    How I Cooked Dinner for The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck

    Picture it: you’re in your kitchen, starting to make dinner, and you look out your window and there on the street below is The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. What do you do? Why you turn to Twitter, of course.

  • Radishes with Butter & Salt

    Radishes with Butter & Salt

    Everyone has a favorite dinner party moment. Me? I have to confess that my favorite moment comes at the end: when the food’s been served, the wine bottles are empty and I collapse on the couch with an extraordinary sense of accomplishment, satisfaction and relief. For Craig, it’s the opposite: he loves the moment at…

  • Sugar Snap Peas with Whipped Ricotta

    Sugar Snap Peas with Whipped Ricotta

    We ate a wonderful dish at Franny’s a few weeks ago of sugar snap peas (my favorite springtime vegetable) served on a cloud of whipped ricotta resting in a sea of olive oil. It was such a beautiful dish–the bright greenness of the snap peas, the cooling creaminess of the ricotta–that not only did I…

  • Jambalaya

    Jambalaya

    My dad used to watch a cajun cooking show (yes, my dad, who’s probably never cooked a meal in his life, watched a cajun cooking show) where the host would yell out with his thick N’awlins accent: “Spiccccy cajjjun fooood!” (Did you ever see that show? I think it was on PBS and the host…

  • Strawberry Shortcake

    Strawberry Shortcake

    “Whoah,” you’re probably thinking, “am I on drugs? What’s going on here? That picture, it’s so good, so professional, so unlike any picture I’ve ever seen on this blog before. What gives?!” I’ll tell you what gives: I didn’t take that picture! (Collective gasp.) No, that picture was taken by my new best friend for…

  • Excellent Pork Chop House

    Excellent Pork Chop House

    When going to lunch with a James Beard award winner, it’s best to let them choose the venue. Such was the case when I had lunch with Rachel Wharton last week. I first met Rachel years ago when she profiled me for The Daily News and we ate lunch at S’Agapo in Queens. I thought…

  • Gazpacho and Blue Cheese Toasts

    Gazpacho and Blue Cheese Toasts

    I know there are curmudgeonly food people out there who are down on Food TV, specifically the high-octane food competition shows that command such a large audience on Bravo and Food Network. But this is a story of how one of those shows inspired me to turn an ordinary weeknight dinner (one of my killer…

  • Spatchcocked Chicken

    Spatchcocked Chicken

    Have you spatchcocked your chicken lately? For a long time, I’ve roasted my chickens the traditional way–sometimes trussing, sometimes not; sometimes stuffing with Meyer lemons, sometimes sprinkling with fennel seeds & cayenne pepper–but almost always keeping it whole. Then I read J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s article on Serious Eats: “How (Not) To Roast a Chicken.” In…

  • Shrimp & Mussels

    Shrimp & Mussels

    Protein has been the subject of much debate around our dinner table lately. “You know,” said Craig when I served him pasta for the umpeenth time the other night, “if you’re trying to get in shape” (see newsletter) “you should probably serve more protein and less carbs.” It’s a fair point, but here’s the deal:…

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