• Quick Breakfast Tacos

    Quick Breakfast Tacos

    After I made those excellent carnitas tacos, I had lots of Mexican ingredients leftover. Jalapeños. Corn tortillas. Sour cream. Well that’s not a Mexican ingredient, but it would be if I called it Mexican crema. So let’s call it crema so my first paragraph makes sense. This often happens after I make a big dinner:…

  • Lunch at Bottega in Birmingham, Alabama

    Lunch at Bottega in Birmingham, Alabama

    One meal. ONE MEAL. That’s all I really had time for when I went to Birmingham, Alabama this past weekend for Food Blog South. I got in late Friday night, spoke Saturday morning, had time for lunch (my ONE MEAL) then had the keynote, book-signing and after party to attend that night before flying back…

  • 10 Food Blog Posts That’ll Get You Traffic

    10 Food Blog Posts That’ll Get You Traffic

    This past weekend I gave a lecture at Food Blog South in Birmingham, Alabama. The title of my speech was “10 Food Blog Posts That’ll Get You Traffic” and though I was slightly nervous going in–this was my first time both attending and speaking at a food blog conference–I felt validated, after it was over,…

  • Broccoli Cheddar Casserole with Homemade Cream of Mushroom Soup

    Broccoli Cheddar Casserole with Homemade Cream of Mushroom Soup

    Eating paste has a special allure, when you’re a kid. First off, there’s the smell, which is chemical and funky. Then there’s the texture, the main pleasure behind eating paste, a texture like white peanut butter, but thicker, barely spreadable with the little wooden stick you dab into the jar. I’m not sure that I…

  • Uncle Jerry and Joe Turkel at Fromin’s Deli

    Uncle Jerry and Joe Turkel at Fromin’s Deli

    And now a funny story from L.A. For his birthday, I decided to take my 91 year-old Uncle Jerry out for lunch to his favorite spot, Fromin’s Deli in Santa Monica. It’s a pretty traditional deli with lots of character: salty waitresses, corned beef sandwiches, black and white cookies at the register. We were sitting…

  • In Praise of Chopped

    In Praise of Chopped

    With The Taste launching on ABC and Top Chef enjoying its 74th season, I’d like to offer up a radical idea: the best cooking competition show on TV is Chopped. These other cooking shows, with their high-stakes drama and interpersonal conflicts, are 30% cooking, 70% fluff. Chopped is 90% cooking, 10% fluff. Iron Chef comes…

  • Brittany Cake Aux Pruneaux

    Brittany Cake Aux Pruneaux

    The Neverending Story was one of my favorite childhood movies. I loved the back and forth between Sebastian eating his peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the attic of his school and young Atreyu on his white horse (well, not for long…Artax!) journeying to kill The Nothing. Mostly, though, I loved the idea of this…

  • Daube de Boeuf (Beef Braised in Red Wine)

    Daube de Boeuf (Beef Braised in Red Wine)

    It’s inauguration day and also Martin Luther King Day and here I am sharing a French recipe. Before you label me a communist, I hope you know this is entirely coincidental. On Friday, I made dinner for a few friends and while thumbing through my cookbooks searching for an entree, the dish that really caught…

  • New York Brunches at Allswell and Calliope

    New York Brunches at Allswell and Calliope

    When I lived in New York, I swore off brunch. “Brunch is for idiots!” I declared. “You wait forever, you spend a fortune, and for what? Food you can make just as good at home for way less money.” That’s why there are so many entries on my Breakfast Recipes page: I mostly make brunch…

  • Pink Grapefruit Halves and Those Who Love Them

    Pink Grapefruit Halves and Those Who Love Them

    2013 is the year of pink grapefruit halves. I don’t mean that in a broad sense, like a trend prediction, I mean that in a personal sense. This year is a year in which I’ve already eaten my weight in pink grapefruit halves and it all started, appropriately enough, on New Year’s Eve day with…