A funny thing happened on my way to making this great salad. Two funny things actually, both of them involving Kale.  (But you’ll have to wait a few words to hear them.)  The basis for this wonderfully lemon-y salad recipe came Anna Stockwell from…

  We were having friends for lunch over the weekend and I wanted to make Chicken Salad.  For the recipe I took out three contenders. Patricia Well’s “The Paris Cookbook” (Harper Collins 2001) had one that would have put us right in the heart of…

Month after month, Martha Stewart Living takes us into the spectacularly photogenic homes of equally photogenic families. They share Martha’s passion for the domestic arts in their wonderfully curated and art directed living spaces.   And there is always a prominently featured menu item that is…

         I could eat our local asparagus until it was coming out of my ears.  Thanks to growers in Mexico and Peru,  asparagus is now a 12 month a year vegetable in New York and almost everywhere else. However, nothing but nothing comes close…

Claire Saffitz The bones of this great recipe are from a Bon Appetit writer named Claire Saffitz.  Ms Saffitz has an intriguing background.  She is a graduate of both Harvard and McGill Universities.  At both places she studied History but by the time she got…

        Last Sunday, we gave a pool party for our god-daughter.  It’s an annual event to celebrate her birthday for the four of us who are called “The Uncles”.  Andrew and I and Terry and Shawn have watched Olivia grow up and we’ve been there…

         My dear friend, Cate, who bears more than a passing resemblance to the other Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, came to lunch over the weekend.  Cate, of course, asked that I not go to any trouble.  So I really didn’t. Still I wanted to give her…

  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…

Chef Cosmo Goss “Hop Chef” Gail Collins, the columnist who calls the New York Times Opinion pages home, loves a good name.  One of her all-time favorites is Butch Otter, the Governor of the great state of Idaho about whom Collins wrote: “ That is…

         I just came back from the Thousand Islands, a natural wonder that occurs where the Great Lakes pour into the St. Lawrence River.  These islands range in size from tiny outcroppings in the river to islands where there are farms and…

                My first Cobb Salad was the first of many I ate on the terrace of the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel.  It was irresistible with its mosaic of ingredients that arrived at the table beautifully arranged on the plate.  The…

Our Farmers’ Markets are brimming with more and more produce every week.  The carrots and beans, tomatoes and radishes are in and the Red Bliss potatoes are still baby-sized and beautiful.  So you can imagine my delight at opening Joanne Chang’s latest cookbook, “flour,too” (Chronicle…

         For the last few summers, one of our salads of choice has been the Watermelon and Tomato rendition first published here in July 2010: http://chewingthefat.us.com/2010/07/watermelon-and-tomato-salad.html.  Nothing says ‘cool off’ like watermelon and this salad combines the sweetness of the fruit with the tang of ripe…

         I frequently take part in surveys about where I eat and what I eat and when.  It goes with the territory when you write about food. Inevitably, there’s a question about how long ago I’ve visited a fast food restaurant.  I invariably answer “Never” because…