The Wednesday Chef

Month: May 2006

  • Amanda Hesser’s Warm Chicken Salad

    Chicken salad always seems to be the most impossibly chic and yet dated thing to eat on a warm day. I imagine monochromatically-dressed ladies sitting daintily at their Upper East Side luncheons, nibbling discreetly from heavy china plates and sipping iced tea from tall, thin glasses. I don't know where I got the impression that…

  • Amanda Hesser’s Flat-and-Chewy Chocolate-Chip Cookies

    The first summer weekend – it feels impossibly new and yet so familiar all over again. Empty avenues, packed parks, the scent of a hundred backyard barbecues wafting through the city. We did our patriotic duty and had our own barbecue this weekend – with a dubious grill that needs a scrubbing like nobody's business,…

  • Simone Beck’s Bread Pudding with Prunes and Apricots

    I am of the school that finds bread pudding to be one of the world's most perfect desserts (since you can also eat it for breakfast or as a midnight snack and don't we all know that that kind of versatility is what makes a dessert an Important Dessert?). Stale bread, light custard, a few…

  • Ed Doherty’s Feta Cheese Crisps

    Would you like to know what disaster looks like? This is what disaster looks like. Those shredded bits of feta and herbs were meant to bake up into crispy brown rounds to be nibbled on with a glass of wine as an appetizer at an easy Sunday dinner last night in Queens. Instead, I found…

  • Suzanne Goin’s Soupe au Pistou

    After all that cooking and praising I did of Suzanne Goin’s delicious recipes, I’m now the proud owner of her cookbook. I leaf through it from time to time, stopping to gaze at her gorgeously written recipes and beautifully-staged photographs, and I daydream about having enough time to cook everything in it. When I was…

  • Samuel Sewall Inn’s Maple Scones

    Readers of this blog know that when scones show up on the screen here, it's because I've made another batch for Ben. He's an avid breakfast pastry fan – and because I'm totally retro, I try to keep his freezer stocked, because don't we all know that the way to a man's heart is through…

  • Michaela Rosenthal’s Ginger-Sour Cherry Biscotti

    I'm not partial to cookies that look like their creator suffered an attack of ADD whilst putting them together: stuffed to the gills with all sorts of nuts and chips and nuggets and chews. Maybe it's why I've never wanted chopped nuts sullying my chocolate chip cookies (or brownies, for that matter), or feeling overwhelmed…

  • Diane Morgan’s Gratin of Fennel and Tomato

    After a long weekend of excess (crab cakes, scrapple *gasp*, and Hershey kisses at the beach with dear friends; a four-course 30th birthday dinner capped off by chocolate cake from Billy's; croque madame and attitude for Sunday brunch followed by bottles of beer and our first run of Ben's backyard grill on Sunday afternoon… are…

  • Mark Bittman’s Fideua

    Ben's sister's boyfriend is a Spanish talent in the kitchen and he was the first one to introduce me to fideua, utter heaven if you love pasta and paella equally and don't know which to make for dinner. When I found a clipping for fideua in my recipe binders last night after work, I wanted…

  • Daniel Young’s Garlic Soup with Mussels

      Run, don't walk, to your local fishmonger today and buy two pounds of mussels, stat. Because I seem to be on some kind of a roll again here, and we have to take advantage of moments like this, of recipes proffered from newspapers that turn out to be recipes you will love and treasure…