Writing about food since 2004.
Category
dinner parties
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Radishes with Butter & Salt
Everyone has a favorite dinner party moment. Me? I have to confess that my favorite moment comes at the end: when the food’s been served, the wine bottles are empty and I collapse on the couch with an extraordinary sense of accomplishment, satisfaction and relief. For Craig, it’s the opposite: he loves the moment at…
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Sugar Snap Peas with Whipped Ricotta
We ate a wonderful dish at Franny’s a few weeks ago of sugar snap peas (my favorite springtime vegetable) served on a cloud of whipped ricotta resting in a sea of olive oil. It was such a beautiful dish–the bright greenness of the snap peas, the cooling creaminess of the ricotta–that not only did I…
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How To Host A Vegetarian Dinner Party (Answer: Mushroom Bourguignon)
My friend Lisa was there at the very beginning of this blog. Six years ago, she and I would have debates about the worthiness of olives, we’d sing songs about pumpkin cake, and often we’d cook together. Then I moved far away to a country called Brooklyn and even though Lisa and I still saw…
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Roasted Chickpeas
Let me say right off the bat: this is not a great recipe. It has the potential to be a great recipe–I really wanted it to be a great recipe–but as it stands right now, it’s in need of some serious tweaking. And that tweaking may just be the simple addition of a Tablespoon of…
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Breasts are trouble. Legs are easy.
[Hey, this is Adam The Amateur Gourmet. I’m on vacation in Barcelona, Spain and while I’m gone I’ve asked some awesome people to fill in for me. Now, I have to confess, when I e-mailed prospective guest bloggers, there was one person I was certain would never say yes. That person is one of the…
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The Churros That Saved The Dinner Party
Have you ever had a son or daughter who plays the piano like a real champ, such a champ that you invite all your friends over one night and set up a little concert–with fliers and cocktaials and a video camera on a tripod–and when your son or daughter finally sits down to play they…
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Alex’s Birthday Dinner
You may recall that the worst meal I’ve ever cooked for people in my life was the meal I cooked for my friends Alex and Raife in March of 2007 (see here). Rereading that post, I don’t think it was as awful as I remember it being; but the pressure was high because Alex, one…
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Dara
My friend Dara, who I met because she went to film school with Craig, cooked me not one, but TWO fantastic meals over the past two weeks. The first was an intimate dinner with her, her husband Kieran, Craig and myself; the second was a Rosh Hashanah dinner for a small group of mostly non-Jews…
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Have A Summer Dinner Party
The weekend is here and you’re finally free to relax, to read, to toast yourself in the sun. But here’s what I think you should do: on Saturday? Go to a farmer’s market. If you don’t have one in your town, ok, you’re off the hook; but if you do, head over there and buy…
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The Secret To A Successful Dinner Party Is A Big Pot of Food and Dessert
Friends, I’ve made a discovery. If you want a fun evening of food, camaraderie, and drinking, you needn’t fuss over a really lavish dinner. You need only do two things: (1) make a nifty, crowd-pleasing dessert; and (2) prepare a big, simmering pot of something delicious.
