Golden Hof
A few weeks ago Deb Perelman, aka Smitten Kitchen, reached out to me and asked if I had any interest in seeing a staged reading of Moonstruck starring Patti Lupone. That’s like asking me, “Would you like to spend several hours in actual heaven?” I immediately said “yes” and then we got to the important stuff: where would have dinner first? After careful research (doing a Google search) I remembered Golden Hof, a new Korean restaurant in Rockefeller Center from the team behind Golden Diner.
Rigatoni with Sausage and Butternut Squash
Over my twenty years of doing The Amateur Gourmet, I’ve been approached by fans a handful of times. Usually the exchange is quick and pleasant: I feel a thrill for being recognized and hopefully they feel a thrill for meeting their favorite nerdy, gay, old-school food blogger. However the exchange goes, I’m always on the same side of it; until a few months ago when the roles reversed and I fan-girled out over meeting my favorite food influencer, Hailee Catalano.
Raoul’s
There’s forced cool and there’s real cool and Raoul’s in SoHo, which has been around for fifty years, is the real deal. I grabbed a five PM reservation yesterday (that’s how cool it is: the only reservation you can get is for five PM) before seeing a show at The SoHo Playhouse, not really knowing much about what to expect except that Raoul’s always shows up on lists of SoHo’s best restaurants.
Espresso Tahini Granola
Here’s how I know if I need to buy a cookbook or if I can put it safely back on the shelf: I open to three random recipes and if those three recipes look really, really good — like ones I’ll actually be excited to make — it’s a keeper. And that’s how it was when I saw Rachel Simons’ Sesame on the shelves of my local book store. I fell in love with the cover design (so chic), I fell in love with the voice, and I fell in love with the granola.
Balthazar
Not to toot my own horn, but Balthazar — one of the most beloved, important restaurants in New York City — features a quote from me on their Press Page: “At its best, I think it’s New York’s most authentic French bistro, and if you catch it at the right moment you can find yourself transported across the Atlantic.” What’s funny is that I don’t remember writing that and I can’t find the post where I said that; there is this post from 2004 called “Transported at Balthazar” where I weirdly compare it to Cirque Du Soleil and complain about the texture of the pork belly.
Marbled Pumpkin Bread
There’s are certain cheats that are universally acknowledged as acceptable by food people and one of them is that it’s totally fine to use canned pumpkin in place of fresh pumpkin in baking recipes. I realize a lot of you are rolling your eyes at that: “Who in their right mind would ever trouble to use fresh pumpkin in a baking recipe?” Well you’re talking to someone who did just that, only it was a Kabocha squash.
The Burger Joint 2.0
One of our favorite New York secrets, back when we lived here in the early aughts, was nestled behind a red velvet curtain in the lobby of The Parker Meridian hotel. If you were going to see a show or a concert at Carnegie Hall, you’d walk through the ornate marble lobby and, against all odds, wind up in a delightful, greasy spoon called The Burger Joint.
Garam Masala Miso Chicken Thighs with Fennel
Back in 2004, when I first became interested in cooking but didn’t have the money to buy all of the cookbooks I wanted, I would take index cards to Borders (remember Borders?) and copy down recipes by hand that I could make later. I remember frantically scribbling The Barefoot Contessa’s Herbal Iced Tea recipe with Celestial Seasonings Red Zinger and Lemon Zinger from her first cookbook, eyeing the security guard across the way to see if he was on to me.
Quince Preserves
My first awareness of quince came from the movie White Men Can’t Jump when Rosie Perez, whose character dreamed of going on Jeopardy, memorized “Foods That Start with the Letter Q.” (Besides “quince” there was “quail,” “quiche,” and “quahog.” Not sure of the fifth!) But I didn’t eat a quince — or cook a quince — until I was in my twenties.
Pasta Night
I first met Renato Poliafito on April 22nd, 2009. I know that because I wrote a post about it when my friend Josh and I trekked out to Red Hook to visit the beloved bakery, Baked, that he ran with his pal Matt Lewis. We immediately hit it off: not just because we both love baked goods — specifically rainbow cookies! — but because our families both live in the same community in Boca Raton, Florida.
How to Make the Perfect Apple Pie (Step-by-Step with Photos)
First things first: there’s no such thing as the perfect apple pie. The perfect apple pie is whichever apple pie you love the most. That said: there are good apple pies and there are bad apple pies. Bad apple pies have a stiff, flavorless crustl a gooey, gloppy, synthetic filling. and they taste like something you defrosted from the freezer section instead of something that was made with love.
Sausages Braised in Cider with Apples and Onions
I can’t channel spirits, but I can channel recipes. Yesterday I was making an apple pie for our friends Jenny and Jared who were coming for dinner and I couldn’t quite figure out what to make for an entree. I knew I wanted it to be autumnal. I knew I wanted to use the apples that we picked this past weekend in Tivoli (the same apples that went into the pie). I knew pork needed to be involved (because pork + apples = good; haven’t you ever seen a pig with an apple in its mouth?). I wanted to serve it over polenta.
Apple Bundt Cake
A new Dorie Greenspan cookbook is always a cause for celebration. Her latest, Dorie’s Anytime Cakes, is just the kind of book her loyal fans want from her: a cookbook full of expert advice that’s also cozy and comforting . Reading her headnotes is like having your favorite teacher show up at your house with a wooden spoon and a bagful of ingredients eager to teach you how to make an apple pie.
Pasta e Fagioli
The cookbook that I wrote almost fifteen years ago (!), Secrets of the Best Chefs, has a lentil soup in it so good, Smitten Kitchen wrote about it. That soup, which was taught to me by the late Gina DePalma, will live on in perpetuity as one of the great combinations of sausage, lentils, and tomatoes ever to exist in human history.
Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud
It started with a tremor.
For the past year, I’ve had a tremor that Craig would notice whenever I held up my fork or the remote control or my phone to play Connections. We chalked it up to twitchiness or nerves but then the tremor persisted and became really noticeable. A friend saw my hand shaking while talking to me on the couch and said, “Wow, you must be really nervous for your book tour.”
Vegan Dan Dan Noodles
My favorite recipes are the ones where the least amount of effort yields hugest returns. That’s why I love Hetty McKinnon’s work so much: she knows how to make the most out of just a few simple ingredients. And her latest cookbook, Linger, is packed with just the kind of recipes I want to make for myself, for others, for solo dinners over the sink, and for big dinner parties with lots of exciting platters of food.
French Louie
It’s funny how your neighborhood becomes the lens through which you see the New York restaurant scene. When it’s twelve degrees outside and wind is slapping your face like Joan Crawford in “Mommy Dearest,” are you really going to trek to the Upper East Side from Brooklyn to check out a new two-star bistro? Or are you going to stay local and patronize a similar restaurant where everyone already knows you because you go so often?
French Apple Tart
If you told me twenty years ago, when I first started cooking, that one day I would be able to spontaneously whip up a French apple tart, I would have balked. “What am I? A French grandmother?” But that was before I knew how to pinch together a pie dough in a matter of minutes, how to peel and slice apples quicker than a Top Chef contestant, and how to have everything cleaned up and put away more efficiently than Mary Poppins.
Spicy Cauliflower Pasta
Whenever I’m asked “what’s your favorite cookbook?” my instant response is always The Zuni Café Cookbook by Judy Rodgers. What’s funny about that is that as much as I adore this book — it’s a constant presence on my most prominent cookbook shelf — I rarely, if ever, cook from it.
