Recipes and food adventures with Adam Roberts

  • Scorched Sugar Snap Peas with Burrata

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    Scorched Sugar Snap Peas with Burrata

    At its most basic level, cooking is playing with fire. And as anyone who was ever a kid knows, lighting things on fire can be fun? But dangerous. But fun? Fast forward to the me of today, and now I have no desire to light things on fire, but sometimes I have the desire to…

  • Almond Cake

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    Almond Cake

    We all have our ride-our-die recipes. These are the recipes we love above all others, the recipes that we’d go to hell and back for, the recipes that we want chiseled into our gravestones. In my particular case, I have two: the cavatappi with sun-dried tomatoes that I talk about all the time, and this…

  • Borlotti Bean Soup with Swiss Chard

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    Borlotti Bean Soup with Swiss Chard

    The pandemic really changed people’s relationship to beans. In the time before we were all locked into our abodes, bored out of our minds, beans had a negative connotation; as in “that’s not worth a hill of beans” or “you’re full of beans.” Now being full of beans is a good thing. People look at…

  • Matzo Brei with Lox, Eggs, and Onions

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    Matzo Brei with Lox, Eggs, and Onions

    Here’s the thing about my Jewish childhood: I grew up eating lox, I grew up eating eggs, and I grew up eating onions (lots and lots of onions), but I didn’t grow up eating matzo brei. What can I say? It was a blindspot in my otherwise very Jewish upbringing. And it’s a shame because…

  • The Ultimate Chocolate Banana Bread

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    The Ultimate Chocolate Banana Bread

    Banana bread is a great way to pretend you’re that eating something virtuous when, really, you’re eating cake. That’s what makes this chocolate banana bread, from Jessie Sheehan’s Snackable Bakes (my new favorite baking book), such a treat. There’s no pretense here about “healthfulness” or “low-calories” or “gluten-free” (not that there’s anything wrong with that).…

  • Red Lentil Soup with Harissa and Lime

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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…