• Reasons To Make A Crumb Cake This Weekend

    Reasons To Make A Crumb Cake This Weekend

    1. Because it’s the weekend and you can eat whatever you want and not get fat. 2. Because crumb cake works equally well as breakfast, as an afternoon snack, a post-dinner dessert or a late night treat. 3. You have four sticks of butter in your refrigerator and you don’t know what to do with…

  • Stuffed Eggplant with Lamb and Pine Nuts

    Stuffed Eggplant with Lamb and Pine Nuts

    Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem is so popular Julia Moskin of The New York Times did an article about “Jerusalem fever.” Do I have Jerusalem fever? Well, I’ve been cooking from it gradually, making that fattoush a few months ago, and that beet dip I posted about yesterday. The beet dip was for this week’s Clean Plate Club…

  • Beet Dip

    Beet Dip

    “Dip” is a funny word because, really, does it make you hungry? It connotes a drop in the road or a dippy person. It’s also kind of retro. “How about some chips and dip,” says a mom on a black-and-white TV show from the past, doesn’t matter which one. Oh: it also connotes chewing tobacco…

  • My Heart’s Aflame For Chengdu Taste (My Mouth Too)

    My Heart’s Aflame For Chengdu Taste (My Mouth Too)

    This is the place. I’ve been in L.A. for two years, stalking my way around the San Gabriel valley, slurping noodles at Tasty Noodle House and tearing into salted egg yolk pastries at Sea Harbour. Secretly, I was looking for a place that would put our favorite New York Chinese restaurant, Grand Sichuan, to shame.…

  • Pici (Or: Handmade Pasta For Idiots)

    Pici (Or: Handmade Pasta For Idiots)

    For those of you who aspire to make pasta at home but don’t have the time or the will or the resources (like, a pasta machine), here’s a recipe for you. It’s called Pici and it’s one of the more satisfying things I’ve made for dinner in recent memory. You may be thinking: “Adam, didn’t…

  • Real Live Jujubes (Not From A Movie Theater)

    Real Live Jujubes (Not From A Movie Theater)

    So at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market, where I bought the ingredients to make my soul-stirring Summer’s End pasta, I spied an unusual sight–something I’d never seen before: a crate of Jujubes, identified as “Japanese Dates.” Jujubes are a real thing? A fruit? Not just a movie theater candy? I was intrigued. So I filled a…

  • Summer’s End Pasta with Tomatoes, Zucchini and Dill

    Summer’s End Pasta with Tomatoes, Zucchini and Dill

    What you are looking at, in the above picture, is the best thing I can imagine eating right now. Mario Batali once said on one of his shows that the best time to eat corn and tomatoes isn’t August, it’s September. My trips, recently, to the farmer’s market confirm this: the tomatoes couldn’t look plumper…

  • Journey To Nicaragua By Way of Pico Blvd.

    Journey To Nicaragua By Way of Pico Blvd.

    There are many cheesy, self-helpy things to say about going outside of your comfort zone and eating unfamiliar foods from unfamiliar cuisines as often as possible. Lately, though, I’ve come to realize that adventuring on the scale of Jonathan Gold and Robert Sietsema or, for that matter, Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern has to be…

  • Why You Shouldn’t Go On Top Chef (Unless You Should)

    Why You Shouldn’t Go On Top Chef (Unless You Should)

    As the 300th season of Top Chef looms, a few predictions: in the first episode, there will be an arrogant know-it-all who claims a superior set of kitchen skills, only, when asked to debone a chicken, he’ll crumple into a heap and cry, “My mother never loved me!” A duo of lesbian sashimi experts, formerly…

  • I’m Gonna Get You Socca!

    I’m Gonna Get You Socca!

    It’s time to admit that my love affair with chickpeas has gone too far. Not only did I post about making a big pot of chickpeas a week ago, and also a salad of roasted beets, carrots and chickpeas that week, I already have another chickpea dish to blog about coming up–one with tomatoes, basil…