• Roquefort Cheese and Green Onion Tart

    Roquefort Cheese and Green Onion Tart

    The ladies who lunch really exist. I saw them on the Upper East Side, where I stayed for several months recently, and they don’t necessarily wear hats anymore (“Does anyone still wear a hat?”) but they know how to command a room. Two women I sat next to at Maison Kayser completely ignored their bread…

  • Cooking on T.V.

    Cooking on T.V.

    The green room was filled with male models who do construction, the actor Alden Ehrenreich (star of “Beautiful Creatures”), a mob of make-up people, hair people, managers and agents all hovering around a plate of half-doughnuts, half-bagels and half-muffins. I hovered on the sidelines with my book publicist, Molly, and didn’t allow myself to feel…

  • Roasted Butternut Squash and Red Onion with Tahini and Za’atar

    Roasted Butternut Squash and Red Onion with Tahini and Za’atar

    One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Or, to put it another way, I lost my round of The Piglet. Granted, there was no way I could ever have triumphed over Naomi Duguid’s brilliant Burma. She totally deserved her win. But I have to confess, I took great comfort the next day when Yotam Ottolenghi’s…

  • Chicken Gets Frisky When You Give It Whiskey

    Chicken Gets Frisky When You Give It Whiskey

    The other day I Tweeted a recipe and people really dug it. It’s not so much a recipe as it is an idea: “Next time you take a roast chicken out of the pan, pour in a glug of Maker’s Mark and whisk in 3 Tbs butter on high heat. You’re welcome.” The truth was…

  • Salad on the Same Plate as Dinner

    Salad on the Same Plate as Dinner

    There are three kinds of people in this world: people who eat salad before dinner, people who eat salad after dinner (aka: the French) and the strangest group of all, people who eat salad on the same plate as dinner. I grew up in a “salad before dinner” family. On those rare occasions when we’d…

  • Cocoa Puffed Chocolate Mousse

    Cocoa Puffed Chocolate Mousse

    In my first book, I told the story of the chocolate rose. In case you missed it: my mom once gave me a chocolate rose to give the girl across the street for Valentine’s Day. I nervously carried it over, rang the doorbell, and ended up giving the rose to her sister to pass on…

  • How To Completely Fail at Making Chocolate Cups

    How To Completely Fail at Making Chocolate Cups

    No good deed goes unpunished; or, in my case, no attempt to craft a timely, seasonal post–this one for Valentine’s Day–goes un-disastrously. I’m not usually that kind of blogger, but this time around I thought, “Well, why not have a beautiful, chocolatey Valentine’s Day-oriented dessert on my blog for Monday morning? What harm could that…

  • Lunch at Chung King in the San Gabriel Valley

    Lunch at Chung King in the San Gabriel Valley

    Last we left our hero Chinese food explorer, he became so bewitched by Tasty Noodle House in the San Gabriel Valley he went not once, but twice. To refresh your memory, the San Gabriel Valley is home to some of the best Chinese food in the United States. Yours truly made a pledge to thoroughly…

  • Bagna Cauda (The Butter Garlic Anchovy Sauce of Your Dreams)

    Bagna Cauda (The Butter Garlic Anchovy Sauce of Your Dreams)

    When a significant other goes out of town, most people use that opportunity to watch bad movies, to pig out on ice cream, and to spread out gratuitously in bed while sleeping. Me? I make risky foods. No, I don’t mean risky in a danger sense–I’m not eating supermarket ground beef tartar–I mean in a…

  • Say Hello To Our New Bakelite Flatware

    Say Hello To Our New Bakelite Flatware

    I’m 33 years-old, soon to be 34 (get your gifts ready, we’re talking 2/18), but no moment has made me feel older than the moment I found myself, on a Friday night, spending hours on E-Bay looking at flatware. “How did this happen?” I asked myself when I realized what I was doing. “I used…