Recipes and food adventures with Adam Roberts

  • Announcing The 2012 Foodie Photo Scavenger Hunt! (Now World-Wide; with over $3500 in prizes from The Culinary Institute of America)

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    Announcing The 2012 Foodie Photo Scavenger Hunt! (Now World-Wide; with over $3500 in prizes from The Culinary Institute of America)

    Readers, are you ready for something outrageous? Something unbelievable? Something so over-the-top that you might pinch yourself and wonder if it’s April 1st? Well have I got news for you! The Culinary Institute of America—the world’s premier culinary college—has agreed to sponsor my first-ever WORLD WIDE Foodie Photo Scavenger Hunt. They’re offering up to the…

  • Stop It With The Small Plates! (Except Where They Work)

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    Stop It With The Small Plates! (Except Where They Work)

    Dear Restaurant Owners, The jig is up! Do you think I’m a chump? Do you think I don’t see through you and your small plate menus? You’re trying to get me to spend more money than I want to! Instead of offering up an individual-sized appetizer for $12 to $15 and an entree in the…

  • Marinated Roasted Cauliflower Salad

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    Marinated Roasted Cauliflower Salad

    Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about sponges. Well: not actual sponges, but sponge-like behavior. Specifically the sponge-like behavior that occurs when you cook something–pasta, beans, vegetables–and then add them to an incredibly flavorful, incredibly potent mixture (a sauce, a dressing) allowing all that flavor to get sucked up inside. This is why it’s always…

  • Lynn’s Paradise Biscuits

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    Lynn’s Paradise Biscuits

    Once upon a time, my friend Patty told me that the best biscuits she’d ever had in her life were at Lynn’s Paradise Cafe in Louisville, Kentucky. “They were huge,” I remember her saying, “and buttery and fluffy and AMAZING.” When Patty told me this (back in 2009), I was working on a project that…

  • If You Have A Grill, You Should Be Grilling Pizza

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    If You Have A Grill, You Should Be Grilling Pizza

    Our friends Mark and Diana, who live up the street from us, have made a terrible mistake. The mistake is this: they fed us grilled pizza and now we’ll be demanding it on a regular basis. How did I not know this? I mean, I knew this–I’ve watched Ina Garten throw a grilled pizza party…

  • Waiting For The Dough To Rise (A Passover Meditation)

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    Waiting For The Dough To Rise (A Passover Meditation)

    On Passover Saturday, I Tweeted that I was making Everything Bagel Bombs from the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook and moments later I received this text from my mom: “Do you not know bagels are taboo on Passover or are you just stirring the pot? Most bagel stores in New York are closed.” I called my…

  • Pineapple Upside-Down Cake with Toasted Coconut Ice Cream

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    Pineapple Upside-Down Cake with Toasted Coconut Ice Cream

    If you’ve ever seen “Fiddler On The Roof,” you probably know the term “yenta.” A yenta, in Yiddish, is a busybody, a meddler; in “Fiddler,” though, she’s a specific person, a matchmaker. My whole life, I’ve always been something of a yenta. I love to get involved with people’s life decisions, telling people where to…

  • The Ultimate Eggplant Parmesan

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    The Ultimate Eggplant Parmesan

    Mario Batali’s recipe for Eggplant Parmesan–which I consider, in my humble opinion, to be the Ultimate Eggplant Parmesan–does something most Eggplant Parmesan recipes don’t: it honors the eggplant. Instead of coating slices of eggplant in egg and breadcrumbs, frying them in a skillet, and piling them up with tomato sauce and cheese until you have…

  • Today’s Meat is Tomorrow’s Sandwich

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    Today’s Meat is Tomorrow’s Sandwich

    Of all the shameful things a home cook can do, the most shameful is letting leftovers go to waste. I’ve been guilty of this; maybe I’m craving sushi instead of yesterday’s lentil soup, and the lentil soup sits, gathering mold over the weeks, and getting tossed when it might’ve provided a perfectly satisfying second night…

  • Smothered Pork Roast Over Rice

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    Smothered Pork Roast Over Rice

    Have you ever made a roux? Like: really made a roux? I’ve made a roux in quotes–a “roux”–whenever I’ve taken a roasted chicken out of its cast iron skillet, added some flour to the pan, cooked it for a minute or two and finished it up with a big glass of white wine. That makes…