CHEWING THE FAT

The incomparable Joanne Chang Christmas Baking is as much a part of the holiday as decorating the tree or singing songs of Christmas.  And if you have children, it’s great fun to get them into the kitchen and bake a few cookies.  This year, the…

         At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the stir-fry is the savior of every harried home cook.  When you have to get dinner on the table in as short a time as possible, a stir-fry’s hard to beat.  It’s all a matter…

         The bones for this recipe came from a famous English cook and television personality who shall remain nameless.  It’s not that I don’t devour the prose in the cookbooks the chef’s written.  It’s beautiful and seductive.  But when it comes to the recipes I’ve…

         No matter how gray a day it’s been, coming home to a dinner of beautifully pink and gold shrimp paired with sweet peas, fresh scallions and ginger medallions is a visual treat.  The simple salting and rinsing of the raw shrimp gives them a…

            Just before Thanksgiving, Andrew heard from a friend from his college days requesting a dessert recipe using raspberries.  Well it took all of two minutes to remember a spectacular cheesecake he made earlier in the season.  But why it has…

         Nathalie Dupree has just published “Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking” (Gibbs Smith 2012), an immense compendium of Southern cuisine, which runs 720 pages and contains some 650 recipes. Amazingly, Nathalie writes in her introduction that 300 pages and 100 photographs never saw…

        I don’t think it constitutes a trend but two of my food magazines published recipes for basically the same dish this month.  The magazines in question hardly rival Gourmet.  “Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food” is geared to the home cook and one who…

         Our friend Michael of The Bridgehampton Florist, comes from a family of home bakers whose cakes are consistently the best things we’ve ever tasted.  We’ve featured the most famous, “Beatty’s Chocolate Cake” https://chewingthefat.us.com/2010/07/beattys-chocolate-cake.htmlwhich made its print debut in Ina Garten’s “Back…

Alice Waters’ Spicy Cauliflower Soup Above Cousin Bar’s Pear and Parsnip Soup with Red Pepper Puree          This morning I got an email from an old friend and devoted reader of Chewing the Fat.  He lives in Weehawken, NJ, which is one of the areas…

         There are certain recipes I obsess over.  I have folder marked “Re-Visit” and in it there must be at least five recipes for baked pasta dishes.  They all are fundamentally the same.  The pasta is cooked and then a sauce is mixed into it,…

            I love a little side of history when I am serving up a dish with roots as deep as Fried Green Tomatoes.  With the exception of grits and hominy, what’s more southern than this all-over crunchy firm tomato that’s been battered into a deep-fried…

Kristi          My friend Kristi is something else.  She lives in Dallas where she runs her own business finding “real people” for clients in Advertising and Marketing. She’s the best in the business so she’s in perpetual motion.  She travels all over the place for her…

         It was quite a coincidence when Andrew came back from his trip to Dallas with not one but two dishes his sister Lauren served him while he was there.  And that same day, my dear friend Kristi, sent along an original recipe of her…

I got over my fear of Phyllo and made this sensational pie.          I’ve been staring at a recipe for this pie for months now.  As appetizing as it looked, the main barrier to getting it made was a terror of working with Phyllo dough. …