We “awoke with a start” realizing it is full-tilt fig season when a reader wrote to say she applied our tomato drying technique to figs, which she has in abundance on her tree. Oh my. It’s fig season! What is so grand about figs is that they are perfect unadorned or paired with the simplest of foods, prosciutto…
Read More
One of the things we love about wine and spirits authority Anthony Giglio is his complete lack of pretention on matters of food and wine. So, of course, when asked to recommend wines to drink with pork rinds, pizza, Doritos and Dunkin Donuts (!!) and other humble junky foods we secretly love, he rose the occasion. You’ll…
Read More
Our friend Holton Rower has been learning about cooking salmon on a cedar plank on his Weber grill through trial-and-error, a method we totally endorse. His first go wasn’t completely successful but it was clear that the cedary smoke is a perfect marriage with salmon. If you don’t have wood coals to cook over, cedar…
Read More
While putting together our post on Sea Shell Salt Cellars the other day, we stumbled on this lovely idea: impressing cookie or pie dough with a small ridged scallop (or other) sea shell. Then we wondered what to we recommend that we KNOW will take the impression? H-m-m-m. Eh voila! Our friends at Kitchen Repertoire’s…
Read More
We can’t remember a cherry season lasting SO long, with such an abundance of plump cherries. If we owned a restaurant, a bowl of iced cherries would be our featured dessert. (It’s also the perfect, surprising, understated end to a dinner party.) There is little better… …except perhaps
Read More
Although you can serve chopped salads year round, they are perfect summer fare. They are easy to make, portable enough for picnics and barbeques and refreshingly juicy in warm weather: salad, vegetable and salsa all rolled into one. They are a wonderful foil for simply-prepared meat, poultry and fish. Every cuisine seems to have its own version…
Read More
Our old friends from the food world Frances Boswell and Dana Gallagher have teamed up to create a lovely labor-of-love blog called Kitchen Repertoire. Their simple mandate is a breath of fresh air: We are 20 year veterans of the magazine industry; a food editor and a photographer. We live real lives with kids and…
Read More
It is peak pea season and we can’t think of a better, easier, more delightful way to eat them than this simple recipe from Canal House Cooking Volume No. 3: Winter & Spring. Unshucked peas-in-their-pods are cooked in a hot cast-iron skillet until blistered. Then you just salt and eat: the perfect hors d’oeuvre for a summer…
Read More
Recently, our friend Jane Lear wrote us to say “This great tip stuck in my head, and I finally had a chance to reference it in this week’s food advice column for TakePart about ways to use less water.” The tip that stuck in her head —YAY! we LOVE that— was wine and spirits writer Anthony…
Read More
I’ve never tired of the classic Italian formula of a raw vegetable — most commonly arugula, thinly sliced fennel or raw baby artichoke hearts — dressed with olive oil, lemon and thin shavings of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. One day when I was looking around my market, I thought, “Why not try not making it with sugar snap…
Read More
Last Saturday, interior designer Suzanne Shaker emailed us images of the Strawberry-Rhubarb Crumble she was making at her wondrous Shelter Island home. The recipe is from Sally’s cookbook A New Way to Cook. On Sunday, Suzanne sent a follow-up email with a gluten-free improvisation she’d made on the basic recipe. We’re publishing the recipe, below, along with…
Read More
This image from Livet Hemma looks exactly like a Strawberry-Rhubarb Milkshake I devised years ago when I was monkeying around with rhubarb and strawberries, which are full-tilt right now. It got me hankering for one, and reminded me what an unexpected and delightful dessert they make for dinner parties. So I thought I’d share how to make it…
Read More
Peak season for artichokes is March through May and the markets are still full of plump globes. So I am making this recipe often to serve as an hors d’oeuvres with drinks before dinner parties, and the occasional panful for my supper. It chases after the flavors of fried artichokes I’ve had in Italy, but…
Read More
Outerlands, a restaurant in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset neighborhood, is known for its menu of seasonal food, rustic dishes and the strong sense of community created by the space. There, meals are a way for people to gather together, relax, and enjoy a shared experience. Recently Williams-Sonoma Taste featured one of Outerland’s collective meals in which staff, family…
Read More
This beautiful image of wooden spoons we saw on From Moon to Moon reminded us just how much of a pleasing sculptural element they be when serving up food. Like chairs, wooden spoons can have distinct personalities. The odder they are, the more impact they have.
Read More
Spotted at Ikea’s Blog Livet Hemma, this a swell little idea for jazzing up a tabletop: stripe-on-stripe table cloths created with swathes of fabric. via Livet Hemma
Read More
Although regular confetti often has a slightly cheesy feel, Etsy seller Knot and Bow’s colorful fat tissue paper confetti dots seems like they’d be a festive way to updo a tabletop or party space, for a planned “bombing” beforehand, or a surprise one last minute. Anywhere.
Read More
With the difficult weather, you may find your self on-the-hook for a Valentine’s gift for tomorrow. If you’ve got the basic makings in your pantry for brownies, we recommend our tried-and-true Essential Chocolate Cake for Improvising recipe. It’s as easy to make as a brownie, with a good deal more bang for the buck, AND there are endless ways to improvise on its essential formula, adding in all sorts of unexpected flavorings to delight your beloved.
Read More
Chocolate pudding is a guaranteed hit at dinner parties where guests revel in the unexpectedness of a classic kid’s dessert in a grownup setting.
Malted milk powder builds in an additional layer of richness and surprise; the pudding tastes like a malted milk ball, but there are LOTS of ways to improvise on the basic recipe.
The other day a friend called to say he’d made the apple crumble from A New Way to Cook. He was thrilled that it was so easy, yet offered many of the satisfactions of a pie (which he was afraid to make) with much less work. I’d forgotten how easy and delicious crumbles are, nothing more…
Read More