Recipes and food adventures with Adam Roberts

  • Date and Coffee Sponge Cake With A Coffee Glaze

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    Date and Coffee Sponge Cake With A Coffee Glaze

    Speaking of British food people, did you know that Daniel Day-Lewis’s sister is a cookbook writer over there? Her name is Tamasin Day-Lewis and hey, look, she’s on Twitter. I picked up her book Supper For A Song when I visited Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York; I’ve really enjoyed flipping through it, so…

  • Chicken Tagine with Preserved Lemons and Olives

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    Chicken Tagine with Preserved Lemons and Olives

    British food culture intrigues me. It’s a center-of-the-universe kind of thing; Americans think our food celebrities (everyone from Anne Burrell to Guy Fieri) are universally famous, whereas, across the pond, there exists a whole other universe of equally prominent food figures that most Americans have never heard of. We have Mark Bittman, they have Nigel…

  • Porcini-Cooked Rigatoni w/Tomatoes and More Porcini

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    Porcini-Cooked Rigatoni w/Tomatoes and More Porcini

    Nowadays, when I make a new recipe, there has to be something about it that really draws my interest. If it’s just a roast chicken with butter rubbed on it and some herbs stuffed under the skin? Eh, been there done that. But if it’s something really novel, but not overly novel, color me intrigued.…

  • An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (For Dinner)

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    An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (For Dinner)

    Elizabeth David has a famous book called An Omelette and a Glass of Wine that, I’m embarassed to say, I’ve never read. Still: I’m aware of it. So aware, in fact, that last week when I came home from the gym, exhausted, I decided to put that title into action. I had eggs from the…

  • Mystical, Magical Curry Leaves

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    Mystical, Magical Curry Leaves

    The other day I was in Atwater Village driving past a large Indian grocery store called India Sweets and Spices. I decided to do a very sensible thing: I parked my car and went inside. In the front, there’s an actual restaurant where you get food from a counter and the food looked pretty good.…

  • Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake

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    Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake

    The question often comes up: “Do you like baking more than savory cooking? Or the other way around?” I always give a thoughtful, complicated answer but there’s a much easier way to address the question: look to your right, scroll down. See where it says Recipes By Category? Look at the numbers. 36 salads. 22…

  • Steve’s Sous-Vide Salmon Adventure

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    Steve’s Sous-Vide Salmon Adventure

    [Back in December, Craig was shooting his movie in New York and Craig’s parents came to visit the set. While we were hanging out, I received an e-mail from a company called Sous Vide Supreme offering to send me a “demi” Sous Vide machine to write about on my blog. I politely refused (don’t have…

  • The Best Brownies of Your Life

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    The Best Brownies of Your Life

    Here they are, the brownies I’ve always wanted and never found. I didn’t know my brownie life was lacking; for years, I’d been melting chocolate in a double boiler along with some butter to make the Martha Stewart version. Those were always good. So were all the other brownie recipes I attempted with a similar…

  • Things You Can Do With A Big Pot of Beans (Or: My Take on the Mediterranean Diet)

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    Things You Can Do With A Big Pot of Beans (Or: My Take on the Mediterranean Diet)

    The New York Times recently published an article with a powerful first sentence: “About 30 percent of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease can be prevented in people at high risk if they switch to a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits and vegetables, and even drink wine with…

  • Marion Cunningham’s Last Word in Nutmeg Muffins

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    Marion Cunningham’s Last Word in Nutmeg Muffins

    If one day I go on trial for food crimes, I think I’m getting 20 years added to my sentence for the following: during my 3 months on New York’s Upper East Side, I never once–not ONCE–visited the famous Kitchen Arts and Letters, one of the city’s (and the country’s) greatest cookbook stores. I still…