• Katy’s Pizza

    Katy’s Pizza

    Pizza god Adam Kuban of SliceNY and Serious Eats had this to say the last time I made pizza: “AmGour: I love ya and all, man, but you gotta spread that dough out thinner!” A thin crust, it turns out, is the sine qua non of perfect pizza. The great pizzas of New York–Di Fara,…

  • How To Make An Apple Pie

    How To Make An Apple Pie

    Some of us have Oedipal complexes, others have Electra complexes, but very few of us have a complex based on apple pie. Allow me to lay on your therapist’s couch for a moment: I have a serious pie issue. My apple pie is inadequate–it comes from Martha Stewart–and though it often inspires a happy nod…

  • Cacciucco at The Union Square Cafe

    Cacciucco at The Union Square Cafe

    Some people are haunted by ghosts, others are haunted by a sense of meaninglessness in a vast, expanding universe; but me? I’m haunted by food. Restaurant dishes, dishes I make I home: it doesn’t matter. I crave them, I want them. Lately, I’ve been haunted by a dish I ate two weeks ago with my…

  • Party Food

    Party Food

    Quick, rank the following from least important to most important, on the subject of “what makes a good New Year’s party”: a. food; b. music; c. decorations/lighting. Many of us food lovers would like to believe that music and decorations rank less than food when it comes to a happy New Year’s eve, but now…

  • 2008 Wrap-Up

    2008 Wrap-Up

    You’re probably sick of all these 2008 wrap-ups (someone over at Serious Eats certainly is!) so I’ll try to keep mine short and sweet. 2008 was a wild year for me. In my job as host of The FN Dish I met many of my food world heroes: among them, Alice Waters, Mario Batali, Anthony…

  • Adam “The Amateur” vs. Randy “The Ram”

    I take it most of you are familiar now with “The Wrestler,” the sensational new movie from Darren Aronofsky and starring the irascible Mickey Rourke? What many of you might not know is that many of the characters who show up frequently on this blog had a hand in making the movie. First and foremost…

  • Holiday Bounty

    Holiday Bounty

    When it comes to gift-giving, it’s good to have a thing. Those without a thing are hard to buy gifts for: you choose between scarves and candles and ponder the merits of fuchsia vs. chartreuse or hyacinth vs. gardenia. But when someone has a thing, you just get them something that fits their thing. Like…

  • The Kindness of Food Bloggers

    The Kindness of Food Bloggers

    What’s worse than traveling during the holidays? The answer: traveling from one snow storm to ANOTHER snow storm during the holidays. That’s what I attempted to do yesterday in what may have been the worst travel day of my life (though I’m sure you’ve experienced worse.) Let’s not talk about the 12 hours on the…

  • Heidi’s Lentil Soup

    Heidi’s Lentil Soup

    Hillary Clinton says “it takes a village,” but I think it takes a recipe. What I mean is sometimes you think you don’t like a certain dish because you’ve had so many bad versions of that dish, but then suddenly you encounter a recipe for that dish that takes you by surprise and you find…