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05/14/13 • PASTA PRIMAVERA Adapted from Canal House Cooking, Vol. no. 3 (winter and spring) Repeat a phrase often enough and it’s bound to lose something of its original meaning. Such is the case with pasta primavera, a dish that originated to celebrate and spotlight spring’s early glories, but that today has come to mean pretty much any pasta dish featuring pretty much any vegetable, regardless of seasonality. Of co

01/17/13 • SPEED DEMONS’ LASAGNA Adapted from America’s Test Kitchen  I know, I know, lasagna—not exactly consistent with the theme of last week’s posting in which I gave voice to a post-holiday impulse to lay off the sort of rich, rib-sticking foods I’m usually drawn to. What can I say? I did that for a few days, and then, well, I didn’t want to anymore. And in truth, I’m a big believer in giving your body wha

08/23/12 • THE HAPPY CLAM SAUCE From the Sept., 2007 Fine Cooking (click here to view the recipe) In the last few weeks I’ve begun to notice a subtle shift in peoples’ attitude towards the summer. Gone is the air of anticipation that was everywhere in May and June. So, too, is the vibe of communal celebration that marked the month of July, when people across the city seemed to be gathering at outdoor cafes until the

06/14/12 • SPRING’S BEST RISOTTO From Harvest to Heat: Cooking with America’s Best Chefs, Farmers, and Artisans by Darryl Estrine and Kelly Kochendorfer When I started this blog a little over a year ago, one of the intents was to challenge myself to cook outside my comfort zone. You see, despite the fact that I’ve been noodling around in the kitchen for years, turning out meals that, more often than not, are pretty g

02/23/12 • A LAYERED PERFORMANCE From Elle Decor (click here to view the recipe) Maybe it comes from growing up in a house where Sunday football was the sort of social event that had family, friends, even a few of my stepfather’s graduate students, gathered around the television, feasting on sandwiches and anything else my mom brought out of the kitchen, but today I like nothing more than inviting a group over for fo

10/26/11  • REIGNING MEATBALLS From the Oct., 2011 Esquire (click here to view the recipe) In the last week I’ve eaten pork braciola at Frankie’s 570 (the new West Village outpost of Frankie’s Spuntino); a big bowl of papardelle with a braised rabbit ragu at a newly resurgent Morandi; a large marinara and cheese pizza at Tappo in Chelsea; and, from the Sunday Gravy stand located at Smorgasburg — the open air food mar

09/29/11  • PESTO PASTA (AND POTATOES) From the Aug./Sept., 2011 Saveur I went out to East Hampton last weekend and since it was rainy and gray as I was packing, and since it was the first day of fall, like any reasonable person I grabbed things like heavy sweatpants and flannel shirts for what I anticipated would be a damp and chilly couple of days. Except I should have known that the weather never follows the calen

08/18/11 • ULTIMATE SHRIMP SCAMPI From the April, 2006 Gourmet (click here for the recipe) I seem to be eating a lot of spaghetti these days, and when I’m not eating it I’m thinking about it. For a long time I only ever thought about it and never ate it, as once upon a time I subscribed to a strict no-carbs policy. I’m glad those days are behind me, but even though I now eat bagels, baguettes, potatoes, muffins, gnoc

06/24/11 • CACIO E PEPPER From The Best of America’s Test Kitchen, 2011 (click here to view the recipe) Thumbing through the 2011 edition of The Best of America’s Test Kitchen I came across a recipe for a dish that’s been popping up in a lot of the cooking magazines lately — spaghetti with pecorino and pepper, or as it’s known in Italy, Cacio e Pepe. I don’t know why this one called out to me exactly: maybe it’s how

05/24/11 •  PASTA PRIMAVERA, 2.0 From the May, 15th 2011 New York Times Magazine (click here to view the recipe) One of the pleasures of the recently revamped New York Times Magazine has been the Eat column by food writer Mark Bittman. In part that’s due to his writing, which is always crisp and often quite funny, but also because many of the recipes he’s presented in his first few months on the job have been both en