Fig and Walnut Salami? You’re joking, right? Of course we’re joking, we’re always joking. Just not about the salami. When Jody and I make edible gifts we like to prepare something a little offbeat. For most of the year Italians, like Americans, equate salami with oblongs of cured meat, but come the holidays Americans and …
Peter Piper Under Pressure – Stuffed Peppers with Porcini and Aged Gouda
This is not a post about stuffed peppers cooked in a pressure cooker. This week’s recipe of Stuffed Peppers with Porcini and Aged Gouda is prepared the conventional way–in the oven. Dried porcini and their deeply infused soaking liquid meet regular mushrooms (we used cremini), spinach, tomatoes, brown rice and smoky, buttery aged Gouda in …
Parnsip Pototato Pancakes with Horseradish Sauce
It’s been a decade since we cooked or ate Thanksgiving dinner at home. Rialto is open, and Jody could hardly ask her staff to work if she weren’t willing to shoulder up to the hot line beside them. On Thanksgiving evening we did what we always do–we had dinner at the very end of service …
Thumbprint Jam Cookies
A friend and budding jam magnate, Bonnie Shershow, recently asked me for some editorial advice, which I was happy to give, and then rewarded me with a half-dozen jars of her preserves. We never have six unopened jams in my house. For awhile I can hold the line, the spirit being willing, but the flesh… …
Turkey Soup with Baby Bok Choy and Rice Stick Noodles
What a crazy few weeks it’s been–mostly due to Jody’s schedule around the opening of TRADE (doing well, thank you very much). Five pounds of additional padding has mysteriously appeared around my waistline, the price for ignoring my bicycle and spending too much time sitting at the TRADE bar nursing a Delirium Tremens in hopes …
Squid… glorious squid… squid, that’s what we live for… Squid with White Beans
You’d think I’d be able to pin down the first time I ate squid. Note that I said squid, not calamari. Squid is the in your face cephalopod that says Eat me if you dare. Calamari, by contrast, is Italian for “tasty bit of something fried in a batter by a female relative.” I mean, …
The horror, the horror… Celery Root Soup with Gorgonzola and Apple
How can something that tastes so good look sooooo creepy? Even the cozy daylight-balanced produce-aisle lighting of Whole Foods can’t dispel the sense that something wicked this way comes whenever I get to the celery root bin. Hieronymus Bosch, H.P. Lovecraft and Arcimboldo rolled into one beat-with-the-heebie-jeebie stick vegetable. You know that scene in one …
Lazy Man’s Sheet Pan Apple Tart
Although I can manage a country-style loaf of sourdough bread, more refined baking is my Achilles heel. I avoid making pastry the way I avoid hanging doors or framing windows. In a post-apocalyptic world where my survival depended on advanced carpentry skills to keep the zombies out I would muddle through, but in the meantime …
Fast Food for the Soul – Spaghetti with Kale, Salami and Toasted Garlic
I happened to have five bunches of kale in the fridge that I stripped and began cooking last Friday evening for no reason other than the obvious one that it needed to be cooked. Then our son Oliver and four friends rolled through the door from New York. Hi hi hug hug. Got anything …
In the garden of bitter delights – broccoli rabe with pine nuts and pomegranate
I love it when food makes an appearance in folktales or mythology. Trouble’s about to descend on River City. When Rapunzel’s pregnant mother wakes in the night, craving broccoli rabe, we know her husband is in for a rough go. When ravenous Persephone, kidnapped by Hades, is brought face-to-hungry-stomach with a pomegranate, ominous minor chords …
The Garum Factory 