One of New York’s great Celebrity Chefs cuts cooking time on an Italian Classic Chef Bobby Flay has been one of my favorite New York chefs ever since I worked above his store. That is to say when my office was above Mesa Grill, his…

# 1 Candidate for Dinner any night this week This recipe is amazingly easy to put together and quick to cook.  That makes it a candidate for any weeknight dinner you have this week.  And I even found a hack that made it even easier.…

Bring a dish of Summer Sunshine to your Winter table in under 30 minutes flat. I nominate this dish for being a great big bowl of happy colors, great flavors, and almost instant gratification.  It comes together in under 30 minutes. That alone qualifies it…

A new take on Baked Ziti, an Italian Classic from Recipe Developer Extraordinaire Alison Roman If you’ve ever cooked a recipe from Alison Roman, you’ll be mightily impressed by the spin she puts on Classics.  And this dish is a classic.  Ziti al forno, which…

As some of our readers know, we recently moved out of the apartment we’d lived in for 23 years and moved down one floor to an apartment where we plan to live the next 23 years.  But all the Marie Kondo-ing in the world hasn’t…

When you live in a food town like New York, you discover places all over the city that are worth a detour anytime you’re close to them.  A recent doctor’s visit put me within two long blocks of the Sullivan Street Bakery.  I am so…

I consider Pizza a perfect food.  In one slice, you combine dairy, vegetables, carbohydrates and protein.  And you pick it up with one hand to eat it—no utensils necessary. All right, I use a fork which is contrary to New York pizza etiquette but not…

When it comes to Buttermilk, I can come up with three recipes that require it: Waffles, Fried Chicken and Biscuits.  Buttermilk comes in quarts. The only recipe of the three that requires that much Buttermilk is perhaps the chicken marinade which is used to tenderize…

I love pasta in all its forms and I serve it at least once a week. Since I seem to be incapable of making two servings of sauce, inevitably we end up with a freezer full of single portions.  I do not always label these.…

Andrew’s sister Lauren and I have an ongoing contest to find people who comment on a recipe they’ve so radically altered it bears no resemblance to the original. Despite having tinkered with the ingredients, the quantities, the cooking time until the recipe is unrecognizable, you’d…

As often as not, Andrew volunteers to bring dessert whenever we’re asked out to dinner.  On this particular occasion, he asked our friends Bill and Peter if they had any requests.   Peter asked for ‘something nutty’.  I seemed to remember an amazing tart Andrew had…

When I served Chicken Marsala one recent weeknight, Andrew asked if I was working on Italian restaurant classics.  As part of its 150th issue, Saveur magazine had published a collection of 150 Classic Recipes which ran the gamut from Buffalo wings to Middle Eastern Kibbeh,…

The Original Parm at 248 Mulberry St. NYC         Italian cooking is such an ingrained part of the American diet that dishes like Pizza and Spaghetti and Meatballs are barely labelled Italian anymore.  They’re just good old American staples at this point. But as Lasagna and…