CHEWING THE FAT

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…

         Who doesn’t love a great pot pie?  Meat and vegetables and gravy under a blanket of pastry, these pies are American Classics.  But they go back in culinary history considerably longer. In the Roman Empire, the pastry was banquet fare.  Sometimes the crust revealed…

        Solomon and The Queen of Sheba as painted by Piero della Francesca Nobody seems to know why, but February 26th is World Pistachio Day.  The day even has its own website: www.worldpistachioday.com And, as the site points out, it’s hard to…

Do you have recipes that sit there tempting you but that look too winter-y when you discover them on the first warm day of Spring?  That’s what happened to me with Rick Bayless’ flawless recipe for Pork Tinga.  But the other day, I was going…

         King Louis XV  Who doesn’t love a bowl of French Onion Soup? Topped with melted Gruyère cheese over crusty bread, your spoon digs into the bowl to get to the rich beef and onion broth.  It’s a classic recipe that became…

         Food Trends are an annual pursuit for everyone from Bon Appetit to the BBC.  The list that intrigued me most, however, came from Pinterest, the on-line picture sharing site where anyone, anywhere can post any image at all that interests them.  “Food” makes up…

         New York loves its meatballs.  There are now no less than 6 Meatball Shops alone and on the Upper West Side, if you can’t get into the one there, Nicky Meatball’s “Polpette” (that’s meatball in Italian) is a couple of doors away.  The meatball…

         Anthony Bourdain is an astonishingly good food writer, right up there with MLK Fisher in my book.  Before he became a familiar figure on Television and the star of his former show “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations” and “The Layover” and his current one on…

         The first time Andrew and I ever tasted a Sablé, we’d made a pilgrimage to The Essex Market where Dorie Greenspan and her son Joshua had opened “Beurre et Sel”, a tiny hole in the wall that sold nothing but these out-this-world butter-y crispy…

You may be aware that there’s a football game being played this coming weekend that is the Granddaddy of them all.  This year’s game has the Northwest facing off against the Northeast in Glendale AZ, which at this writing will still take place despite a…

Basilica de Santa Maria del Fiore The story behind Peposo, a rich stew that owes its flavor to just two key ingredients –Chianti and Black Pepper—is as fascinating as the finished dish.   I read it in Cook’s Illustrated, which, in its usual fashion, went to great…

One night, not too long ago, Andrew asked for something light for dinner.  I shouldn’t have been all that surprised because as the blog has been laden with cold weather comfort food, so has our table. I love the indulgence of these winter recipes but…

Here’s true comfort food that you can play with to your heart’s content.  It’s virtually impossible not to make something warming and filling out of this recipe because the recipe is as flexible as can be.  It’s also a great way to empty the fridge,…

I am a big fan of the loin lamb chops that you can buy at Costco in packages of between 10 and 12 chops. They are all completely trimmed with none of the extraneous fat I often see on the chops in the butcher case…