The lovely and extremely talented Elizabeth Karmel The 4th of July is upon us and there’s never a better time to fire up the grill and celebrate the joy of being an American.  And there’s almost nothing more American than beef.  And…

Eric Rippert Recently, Andrew and I went to hear Eric Rippert, Fish Chef Extraordinaire  and proprietor of the perennially four-starred Le Bernardin restaurant in New York.  Chef Rippert appeared at a food forum at the YMHA hosted by Adam Gopnick of The New Yorker magazine.  …

 There’s a twitter feed called “Drunk Ina Garten” written by someone as a parody.  And every time I post an Ina Garten piece, the guy who tweets it picks up on it in about five minutes flat, re-tweets it and I get tons of hits…

Paola’s Restaurant  1295 Madison Avenue at 92nd St. NYC Tel: (212) 794-1890 Reservations and Information: www.paolasrestaurant.com Paola’s Pici con Asparagi          Not too long ago, I was early for a lecture in Carnegie Hill, a family-friendly East Side Manhattan neighborhood known to tourists by…

Uncle Andrew…there from the very beginning. Last weekend, we celebrated Father’s Day with all the necessary cards, salutations on Facebook, telephone calls filled with praise for Dear Old Dad.   I know how much it meant to me and how much I admire the Dad in…

A Fusion between Indian-inflected Spices and Great Canadian Beef           This was one of the first posts I published back in 2010 when I started to blog.  Because my readership was nowhere near what it is now, I should not have…

         Rhubarb season, like asparagus season, is eagerly awaited at our house.  Andrew cannot wait to get his hands on the slender red and green stalks and get into the kitchen to bake. The first rhubarb of the season is always preferable to what comes…

         To say that I’m a fan of our local Long Island asparagus is the definition of an understatement.  I really cannot get enough of the stuff.  It’s a fixture in our refrigerator for as long as it lasts.  The asparagus I am particularly attached…

           Hugh Acheson is an Atlanta Chef who owns 5 restaurants there.  His first cookbook “A New Turn in the South: Southern Flavors Re-Invented for Your Kitchen” (Clarkson Potter 2011) was awarded “Best Cookbook in American Cooking” by the James Beard Foundation in…

         Spring has been notable here for tempting us to believe it’s actually arrived. This is followed by plummeting temperatures the next day convincing us all it has not.  In New York City, you can count on the oddest collection of outfits this time of…

  Did you know May is National Strawberry month?  Neither did I. But a couple of weeks ago, I was left with a clamshell half-filled with beautiful Driscoll strawberries that I didn’t want to see going to waste. Driscoll is not a species of strawberry. It’s a…

One of the joys of the Internet, is the arrival, almost daily, of recipes from my favorite Food magazines, one of which is Saveur. A few weeks ago, a recipe for Macaroons landed in my email box.  I sent it on to Andrew and the…

      Richard Landau is a chef in Philadelphia at a vegetarian restaurant called “Vedge”.  He and his wife, Katie Jacoby, are also authors of a cookbook by the same name (The Experiment 2013).  In the run up to the book’s publication, Rich contributed this…

L. to R. Eric and Adam  One night last week, Andrew, our friend Kathy and I all went to see Eric Rippert, the Chef Extraordinaire at New York’s Le Bernardin. Chef Rippert was appearing at the YMHA as part of the “Conversations with Chevaliers” series.  The…