Gail Simmons is such a glamorous presence on “Top Chef” that it’s easy to forget she’s first and foremost a great cook.  She’s also a fellow Canadian so I took a great deal of heat from Andrew for not knowing what a Bumbleberry was.  I’d…

When Andrew and I plan a dinner party, the menu starts to percolate once the RSVPs have been received.  We try to think of our audience and we try to make things interesting.  Generally that means doing something completely new.  We have a fair amount…

I must admit to having been slightly taken aback when Andrew told me his weekend plans included making Ice Cream Sandwiches.  Not that I didn’t want one.  And when the smell of his dark chocolate ‘biscuit’ wafted through the kitchen, I could hardly wait until…

Our Godchild hit a major milestone this month. Olivia graduated cum laude from Poly Prep Country Day School in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn. For four years she has left her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and  travelled to school, a considerable journey.  There…

This weekend begins what is always called “The Unofficial Start of Summer”.  Never mind the Equinox is over three weeks away and it’s been horridly cold and rainy this month.  Nevertheless, this is the weekend that New Yorkers give up their weekends in the city…

This dessert is a showboat.  It looks like it came straight from Paris’ best patisserie.  And indeed its inspiration did.  It was Dorie Greenspan’s introduction to French pastry, an all-strawberry version and the first pastry she tasted when she first set foot in France.  It…

        Picture your favorite summer stone fruit—cherries, peaches, plums, nectarines, fresh apricots, pluots*– sumptuously emerging from a rich almond cream, their colors a promise of their juicy interiors, a perfect summer pleasure in a perfect buttery crust and there you have it: A great dessert…

         One of the great joys of summer is that Andrew is back at the beach and back into baking.   It’s not that we don’t have temporary bursts of wonderful cakes, pies and cookies at other times of the year, but in Summer he settles…

I must confess that I am more than a little put off by the name of this remarkable pie.  I mean really?  “Slab” as in cold, stone slab or “slab of meat” both of which are less than appetizing and have little or nothing to…

Photo Courtesy of Fine Cooking Magazine. All rights reserved. Once again, I am sharing one of Andrew’s great summer desserts.   Surely one of summer’s great pleasures are its fruits and berries, especially when they are local.   And what can compare to any fruit dessert coupled…

           What is a “pluot”?, you may well ask. It’s the Labradoodle of fruits.  Actually it’s more like a Cockapoo or even a Maltipoo in size. The Pluot is a plum and apricot hybrid bred first in California in the 1800s.   Initially it…

Oven and Camera Ready! Vanilla Ice Cream on the side is highly recommended When you have a blog to write, you tend not to repeat recipes once you have made them.  You’re pretty well under the gun to cook something you’ve never tried before simply…

 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…