Fearless cooking from a tiny NYC kitchen.
It is an error that needs correcting that in the near-20 years of plugging recipes into this url, only a few truly star cucumbers — and highly unrepresentative too, given that we are probably eating some format of cucumbers at half the nights of the week with dinner, and snacking on them throughout all of the other days. Crunchy, cold, hydrating, inexpensive, and taking well to any region of…
Do you ever look around at the ingredients available to you, the energy you have to give to the cooking process — or, as I recently explained to a medium-sized child shortly before I got uninvited from future family events, the amount of fudge you have left to give from your, uh, bucket of fudge — and decided to boil spaghetti, toss it with garlicky olive oil, and call it dinner? Read more »
I realize as far as recipes go, suggesting one needs one for lemonade is questionable. What’s next, a set of detailed instructions for salted water, simple syrup, or buttered noodles? ( Whoops! ) But it turns out I have opinions on everything and there’s no time like the n th heat wave of the summer to share what I consider the correct, best formula for lemonade and it is — who could have ever…
In something I never expected to have to clarify, this is a hot dog recipe but it is not a recipe for hot dogs. I know that I have a history of making foods from scratch that most sane people do not feel the need to — cream cheese , fig newtons , bagels , vanilla extract , and [coming soon] almond extract too — but I do still leave “ grinding meat with spices, salt, and curing agents into a…
In 2007, when this website was still in its infancy, I shared a recipe for a layered strawberry chiffon shortcake . I’d never made a chiffon cake before, but I brought it to a friend’s rooftop birthday BBQ, correctly assuming that no one would be unhappy with a towering, featherweight cake sandwiched with whipped cream and fresh strawberries, however inexpertly made. Read more »
One of my most exasperating traits — or, perhaps one that makes me ideally suited for this space I invented, coincidentally, to suit my collection of traits — is that I have a terrific amount of random ingredient preparation ideas in the overflowing file cabinet of my brain that will spill into conversations the second I hear the triggering keyword. Read more »
I’m not sure if this is a sign of hitting a certain age — like a sudden interest in bird feeders (check, and please tell me about yours), or beekeeping (well, in the TikTok sense, not sorry ), and animated conversations on the best pillows (I hate mine) — but I’ve found over the last year that I have very strong opinions on chicken salad and the correct way to make it, which, naturally, is my way.…
While I’m not from a cheesecake family — it is never unwelcome, but we are more deeply devoted to things like pastry creams , chocolate pudding , and stellar coffee cakes — I married into one, which means that even though this site’s cheesecake archives are very well-populated, not a single peep of protest could be heard as far as my apartment walls reach (to be fair, a short distance) as I…
If there’s anything that’s been consistent about this site in its near-20 years of beaming (babbling?) hypertext to servers and back to you, it’s that I’m very bossy when I get into something new, especially cocktails. When I fell in love with Porch Swings , I wanted you to as well. Ditto for Blood Orange Margaritas (but only when in season), a Perfect Manhattan era that spanned over a decade,…
I’ve been pining for a springy way to combine leeks and lentils in an unfussy, one-pot, weeknight-friendly meal but would get stuck on one thing: how annoying leeks are — and I say this from a place of adoration! I think leeks are one of the most stunning vegetables, an ombre of chromatic ringlets from buttery yellow to pea green and back to a pale shade of lima. They look exactly like spring…