• Nick and Toni’s Penne Alla Vecchia Bettola

    Nick and Toni’s Penne Alla Vecchia Bettola

    Once, long ago, I found the following statement on someone else’s food blog: “I’m sick of The Amateur Gourmet, all he cooks is pasta.” I usually let such cutting criticism roll off me, but this–like a piece of wet spaghetti thrown at the refrigerator–stuck. I haven’t stopped cooking pasta (not by any means: it’s my…

  • Where To Eat in New York

    Where To Eat in New York

    At least once a month, I get the same e-mail. It’s an e-mail I like getting because it addresses one of my favorite subjects yet, often, the e-mail sits in my inbox for a few weeks before I can answer it. Then, when I do answer it, I shoot out a scrambled, sputtery response that…

  • Collard Greens

    Collard Greens

    The original title of this post was going to be: “How To Turn Leftover Collard Greens Into Soup.” It was going to be a joke–you’ll see why in a moment–with only two words in the body of the post itself. But then I realized that many of you don’t have leftover collard greens sitting around…

  • Pimento Cheese

    Pimento Cheese

    Growing up, I hated mayonnaise and I hated cheese. Strange for a kid, yes, but the cheese-hatred had some basis: my dad hated it, so we never had it in the house. And I became so conditioned to hating cheese, it took me years (and a cheese-loving boyfriend) to get over it. As for the…

  • Saravanaa Bhavan & Jo’s Shanghai

    Saravanaa Bhavan & Jo’s Shanghai

    I have the good fortune to be friends with a guy named Dan Fortune, a DJ with an incredible knack for hunting down obscure tracks–mostly show tune oriented–performed by unexpected artists (Stevie Wonder singing “Hello Young Lovers” from “The King & I,” Nina Simone singing a medley of songs from “Hair,” James Brown singing “September…

  • Easy Apple Crumb Cake

    Easy Apple Crumb Cake

    A lot of people want to know: “Does Craig ever cook for you?” Normally the answer is “no, never, he just likes eating,” but last week the answer became: “Yes, but only when I slice my finger.”

  • Weekend Brunch: Poached Eggs on Roasted Potatoes with Hollandaise Sauce

    Weekend Brunch: Poached Eggs on Roasted Potatoes with Hollandaise Sauce

    Last weekend, I decided to make a very ambitious breakfast of poached eggs on roasted potatoes with Hollandaise sauce. It took a whole carton of eggs (three for the Hollandaise, four for poaching and the rest for throwing away after the yolks bled into the whites) but the resulting dish, as you can see, was…

  • The Recipe Tweaker

    The Recipe Tweaker

    This morning I tweaked a recipe and I wasn’t even cooking. I was reading Twitter (as I do every morning after reading The New York Times, Google Reader, and checking Facebook) and I saw my friend Elise Tweet about her beet hummus. I clicked to the recipe (see here) and then I Tweeted to her:…

  • Brunch at The Breslin

    Brunch at The Breslin

    April Bloomfield–the chef of The Spotted Pig, the late John Dory and now The Breslin–cooks bold food. That’s what everyone loves about her; her food is never, ever boring. It’s the metaphysical opposite of the boiled peas and carrots you remember from your middle school cafeteria. Her peas and carrots, if she ran a middle…

  • Momofuku Milk Bar’s Compost Cookie Recipe

    Momofuku Milk Bar’s Compost Cookie Recipe

    My mom loves Regis Philbin. Growing up, she’d watch Regis & Kathie Lee religiously; she even once went to a shopping mall, somewhere on Long Island, to get Kathie Lee Gifford to sign a copy of her book. These days, she and my dad Tivo Regis and Kelly in the morning and watch it at…