Recipes and food adventures with Adam Roberts

  • Gazpacho and Blue Cheese Toasts

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    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

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    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

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    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:…

  • My First Soft-Boiled Egg

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    My First Soft-Boiled Egg

    Two Sundays ago, after a morning of bird-watching with our ornithologist friend Morgan Tingley, I ate my first soft-boiled egg. We were at Cafe Sabarsky, one of my favorite places in New York, and Morgan recommended the Wiener Frühstück for breakfast: a continental breakfast of orangensaft, ein weiches ei, weißbrot, butter, marmelade & honig von…

  • Bananas Foster Bread

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    Bananas Foster Bread

    As a kid, I was a sucker for platitudes. Especially this one, which I heard at EPCOT: “If you can dream it, you can do it!” Things don’t change that much, I suppose: this weekend I had a dream and I decided that I could do it. The dream was Bananas Foster Bread. I wanted…

  • On Taking Pictures of Your Food

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    On Taking Pictures of Your Food

    For the past six years, I’ve taken a picture of almost everything I’ve eaten. Yesterday, for example, I took a picture of my lunch. I was at The New French with my friend Diana and I had an interesting salmon salad with escarole and a Muscadet vinaigrette: I took a picture with my cell phone.…

  • Greek Salad

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    Greek Salad

    It’s true that travel is an important component of any burgeoning chef’s education, but sometimes you go somewhere and the lessons don’t stick. For example, I spent ten days last summer in Spain–most of that time in Barcelona–and though we ate some truly extraordinary food, I can’t really say that it changed the way I…

  • How To Roast a Leg of Lamb

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    How To Roast a Leg of Lamb

    “Pete’s Dragon” is a movie I hadn’t seen since childhood. I remember being terrified of Shelly Winters, covered in all that mud, and bored by the Helen Reddy boyfriend-lost-at-sea subplot. But when my friend Chris Dufault stated recently that “Pete’s Dragon” is one of his favorite movies, I felt a sudden need to see it…

  • Patched-Together Rhubarb Pie

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    Patched-Together Rhubarb Pie

    Delusional isn’t a word I’d use to describe myself. Sure, I have my flights of fancy and my exaggerated sense of what’s happening at any given moment, but am I so-out-of-touch that I deserve the “D” word? Doubtful! But I was delusional on Saturday when I took a bunch of rhubarb–rhubarb that I’d purchased with…

  • Penne with Ramp Pesto, Asparagus & Peas

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    Penne with Ramp Pesto, Asparagus & Peas

    I’ll admit, I get lazy when it comes to eating seasonally. It’s easier to pop into the grocery store across the street, where lemons, onions and garlic look the same the whole year round, than it is to march all the way up to the Union Square Greenmarket on a windy or rainy spring day.…