CHEWING THE FAT

         Earlier this spring, Andrew and I set off on one of our city adventures.  We headed to Red Hook, Brooklyn, known to be a hipster haven and now, sadly, likely better known for having been flooded out by Hurricane Sandy.  The place took a…

            Marcella Hazan just celebrated her 89th Birthday.  As a salute to this great lady, a Facebook friend of mine who has taken the time to answer many Italian food questions for me, I wanted to celebrate too. Fortunately, March 2013’s…

                    The Un-Official start of summer officially starts this Friday. Out our way, that generally means a lot of premature wearing of summer clothes because we’ll still have a couple of weeks before it gets warm. The cool nights won’t stop…

Ready to be folded, Mu Shu in a Moment!            Restaurant General Tso’s Chicken the good, the bad and the ugly. In our bid to eat healthy, Chinese food has taken quite a hit. We never order it for takeout.  And our visits to…

When I wrote about our culinary adventures in St. Barthelemy, FWI in March, one of our readers, “Mike”, got into a spirited discussion about how the scallops I’d waxed poetic over, were not local.  In fact, he was pretty irate about seafood in general and…

Balena 1633 N Halsted St  Chicago, IL 60614 (312) 867-3888 As Sam Sifton recalls, when the waitress at Chicago’s Balena restaurant approached the table with a steak knife, everyone’s eyebrows went up. No one had ordered steak.  The waitress explained the knife was for the mushrooms. …

If foraging for ramps, make sure you’re not mistaking day lilies for the real deal. Photo: Courtesy of Kerry Heffernan             Ramp season is upon us and we’re off.  Every other foodie in New York will race to their local greenmarket in search of…

Sometimes when I write a post, the food gods seem to be hovering overhead.  This recipe came to my attention when it was posted as a great idea for a Mother’s Day meal. Talk about timely.  Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 12th this year.  Since presumably…

Italian Immigrants bound for the US. Notice the preponderance of men. If you frequent good old Italian-American Red Sauce restaurants, you may be well acquainted with a close cousin of this dish: Chicken Scarpariello.  Its origins, however, are not in Italy but in an Italian…

Sauteed Trout Photo Courtesy of Food and Wine Magazine Brook Trout I try to serve fish once a week.  Its health benefits are well known and even its fat content is healthy—it comes in the form of Omega-3 fatty acids which not only protect your…

I don’t know when sliders took over the world but they’re everywhere. And while they may have started out as mini-hamburgers, now you can find them on all kinds of menus, stuffed with everything from Turkey to Texas barbecue.  Let’s face it, their size is…

It’s awfully close to putting-away-the-pot-pie-recipes time.  But this one is so good, I hope it gets in under the wire and if not, do save it for a rainy day.  It’s that good.  The reason I rushed to make it was that I’d managed to…

Last week, I had the strongest craving for a Patty Melt.  I confess that the Patty Melt is far and away my absolute favorite chopped meat sandwich. You must never call a Patty Melt a hamburger because to purists, the Patty Melt is emphatically not…

Peppermint Patty Flourless Chocolate Cake decked out for Easter        One of my oldest and dearest friends, Michael, was the first person I ever met with Celiac Disease, the root cause of which is gluten.  He suffered terribly through college, fearing the worst and not…