I am making a concerted effort to put some great vegetarian recipes together for all kinds of reasons—health, being eco-friendly and just giving us all more options for terrific meals.  And there’s another great reason to cook this right now.  It’s Lent!  Aside from its…

What I love about this recipe, which is from Bon Appetit Magazine, is that it’s the perfect escape from winter.  The dish looks like it was made in high summer with its cherry tomatoes, pickled red onion and fistful of parsley leaves.  Then there’s the…

Melissa Clark’s “Dinner. Changing the Game” (Clarkson Potter 2017) arrived just a little late.  The Instant Pot epidemic was fully underway and so this book took a back seat to her “Dinner in an Instant.75 modern recipes for your Pressure Cooker, Multi Cooker Instant Pot”…

In the Northeast, it has been below the freezing mark since Christmas Day. Literally dozens of records have been broken on an almost daily basis. Any thought of Spring is about as far away as April.   So I was taken aback when I saw a…

I love “Milanese”, which is basically what this recipe is.  Veal Milanese is its much more expensive cousin.  In Argentina, where it’s wildly popular, it’s called simply “Milanesa” and it’s made with Beef.  In neighboring Chile it’s called Escalopa.  In Mexico, it’s back to being…

Letizia Mattiaci of Alla Madonna del Piatto Lucky me!  I’ve been traveling most of the month of May.  I’ve done two almost back-to-back river cruises, one on the Rhine from Basel, Switzerland to Amsterdam, Netherlands with stops along the way in France and Germany.  A…

The way it works in our house is that I leave the recipe for whatever I am making for dinner sitting conspicuously on the kitchen counter.  It’s the first thing Andrew sees when he gets home and walks into the kitchen.  The only advance warning…

Gai Lan, Chinese Broccoli. I love Beef with Broccoli. It was one of the first Chinese dishes I ate when I came to New York.  Those were the days before Hunan and Szechuan restaurants took over from their Cantonese forbearers and forever changed the way…

I like Bobby Flay.  For quite a few years, I worked above his ‘store’. That would be his late lamented Mesa Grill. At Mesa, his take on Southwestern cuisine virtually introduced New York to the flavors of that part of the country.  Of course, along…

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,…

Who really wants to cook up a storm this week?  This is a week when we’d prefer to take a breather before heading into the weekend’s New Year’s celebration. Sign up for this particular recipe and you’ll be rewarded—not just with time saved—but with a…

       Our favorite restaurants often share one thing in common.  We go there without ever having to look at the menu.  We know the moment we walk in the door what we are going to order.  There’s the linguine  with clam sauce at West Bank…

         There are times when all I crave for dinner is a big bowl of pasta and the infinite possibilities it presents.  First of all there are almost unlimited varieties of pasta spanning all shapes and sizes and textures.  From tiny orzo all the way…

Grace Parisi in her Brooklyn NY kitchen The word “Quick” is a dog whistle when you write a blog like this.  Knowing how time-pressured most people are, when I see it  attached to any recipe, at the very least it requires a look.  And when…