• Red Lentil Soup with Harissa and Lime

    Red Lentil Soup with Harissa and Lime

    Cooking seasonally doesn’t just mean winter, spring, summer, fall. It also means looking out your window and getting inspired. If you live in L.A. and you’ve been looking out the window lately, you may have noticed a little rain falling from the sky. Actually, a lot of rain. God knows, L.A. needs it, and I…

  • Lemon Meringue Pie

    Lemon Meringue Pie

    Cooking clichés are cliché for a reason: they usually contain some wisdom. Take this one: “The simplest things to make are often the hardest.” I had this lesson hammered home to me in Japan, where just a tiny wedge of sweet potato was somehow the most incredible sweet potato of my life. Or in Kyoto…

  • Swiss Chard Lasagna with Gruyère and Hazelnuts

    Swiss Chard Lasagna with Gruyère and Hazelnuts

    When celebrated food writer David Lebovitz is coming to dinner, you have a lot of planning to do. Do you make something fancy? Something casual? Something French? American? After lots of cookbook perusing and soul-searching, I remembered a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe I saw in The Guardian for Swiss Chard lasagna with Gruyère and hazelnuts. And…

  • Naturally-Sweetened Granola

    Naturally-Sweetened Granola

    When it comes to granola, we’re all living in denial. The word evokes such feelings of healthfulness, it’s actually become an adjective to describe somebody who’s wholesome. “They’re a little too granola,” you might say about that guitar-playing, “aw-shucks” guy in your reading group. But the truth is that granola is PACKED with sugar. I…

  • Crispy Parmesan Chicken

    Crispy Parmesan Chicken

    When Craig told me our friend Lucci was coming for dinner on Monday night, I said “great!” I figured I could throw something together, it being a Monday and all. But when Monday rolled around I was at a loss. Do I make something complex, like a stew? Do I make a simple and satisfying…

  • Salted Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies

    Salted Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies

    When the Oscars rolled around this year, I went through all of my dessert cookbooks looking for the most elegant dessert. And then I remembered: people like to drink wine during the Oscars. And when they’re done with their pizza, and eating dessert, what dessert still goes well with wine? Something salty. Which is why…

  • Citrus Upside-Down Cake

    Citrus Upside-Down Cake

    Some desserts just elicit an “ooh” or an “ahh” when you bring them to the table. This citrus upside-down cake is one of them! I’ve made this cake (which comes to us from Melissa Clark) several times for dinner parties over the past few years. Every time I bring it out people stop their conversation…

  • The California Veggie Sandwich

    The California Veggie Sandwich

    Now that the secret’s out (the secret being that we’re moving back to NY after twelve years in L.A.), it’s time to talk about what I’ll miss the most about California. Will it be the beaches? It won’t be the beaches. Will it be the glamorous movie premieres? It won’t be the glamorous movie premieres.…

  • Birthday Enchiladas

    Birthday Enchiladas

    When Craig and I first started dating back in 2006, my friend Patty asked what sign he was and when he said Aquarius she weighed that against the fact that I was an Aquarius and concluded: “It’ll never work. Two Aquariuses? I don’t see it.” Seventeen years later, we’re still two Aquariuses battling it out.…

  • Noodles with Mushrooms, Chiles, and Lime

    Noodles with Mushrooms, Chiles, and Lime

    When you cook a recipe with lots of ingredients, you expect a big impact. So it would follow that cooking a recipe with just a few ingredients would be less impactful; that it would be simple in the way mashed potatoes are simple: straightforward, satisfying, but not complex. And then someone sends you a recipe…