Category

pasta

  • How To Do A Cooking Demonstration

    How To Do A Cooking Demonstration

    There a came a moment on Saturday at The Baltimore Book Festival where I looked out at the crowd and down at the food in front of me and realized: “Holy (expletive): I have to cook something for all these people!” It wasn’t supposed to be that way. When I was first invited to The…

  • What To Do With Sugar Snap Peas

    What To Do With Sugar Snap Peas

    A mountain of sugar snap peas greeted visitors to the Union Square Farmer’s Market on Friday. I was there because on Friday night I was hosting a screening of “Showgirls,” a movie that Craig delights in as “sublimely disastrous.” Browsing around the market, I was trying to piece together a meal concept and, aware that…

  • Zite with Onions, Sausage & Fennel

    Zite with Onions, Sausage & Fennel

    It’s a big heaping mess, but boy is it good. The recipe comes from “The Silver Spoon Cookbook,” a birthday gift from Matthew my show’s director and a book that’s called Italy’s version of “The Joy of Cooking.” This specific recipe comes from the special back section where Italian chefs offer up their own favorite…

  • Do better ingredients make a difference?

    Do better ingredients make a difference?

    I make Cavatappi with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Cannellini Beans on a very regular basis. (Click here for the recipe). It’s a great pasta dish because the sun-dried tomatoes make it taste bright and summery and the beans make it hardy (hearty? how do you spell that?) and substantial. Everyone loves it and plus you get…

  • My Burnt Foot

    My Burnt Foot

    Picture it: my kitchen, last Thursday. I’m standing at the stove attempting to make Colman Andrews’ recipe for Rigatoni with Chickpeas and Anchovies from Nancy Silverton’s “A Twist of the Wrist” and I have a giant vat of water boiling for the pasta. The sauce is simple: you just take 12 anchovies, mash them up…

  • How To Make Broccoli and Cauliflower Bad For You (and utterly delicious)

    How To Make Broccoli and Cauliflower Bad For You (and utterly delicious)

    This is a recipe from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, a cookbook I’ve long dismissed as too complex, too fussy, too–well–not me. Flipping through it now, the recipes are long-winded, they go on for pages, and the pictures are too few and far between. And yet this is a cookbook that has something to say–I can’t…

  • How To Make Bland Pasta Better

    How To Make Bland Pasta Better

    The pasta you see above may call to you and cause you to eat your computer screen, but don’t be fooled. Before I put that pasta through Amateur Gourmet Pasta Rehab, it was a bland, boring mess. Two ingredients came from the farmer’s market: fresh corn and basil. The corn, as I should’ve guessed this…

  • Fun with Feta

    Fun with Feta

    Oh commenters, you complete me. I did a post last week called Summer Food where I asked you, my readers, what foods really capture the summer season. The responses were great, but one stuck out in my head as I made my way to the grocery store this weekend. That was KatyBelle’s. She said, “Anything…

  • Cavatappi with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Cannellini Beans

    Cavatappi with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Cannellini Beans

    Here’s how you know if the new recipe you’ve tried is successful: a few days go by, maybe a week, and suddenly you find yourself craving the thing you cooked the week before. This happens far less often than you think. For example, the other night I made Kung Pao Chicken from scratch and while…