I suppose I should have known that when attempting to bake three pies in one day – the most important food day of the year, I might add – one cannot expect all three of them to shine. If you have already managed a glorious squash pie and a stellar apple pie, well, then it…

Our vacation on the Cote d’Azur was lovely in many ways, but foodwise, it was nothing special. Oh sure, the cheese from the maitre fromager was lovely, the cracklingly fresh baguettes we bought almost every day were splendid and difficult not to wolf down in one go, and the gorgeously fresh and flavorful steaks we…

We’re back! It was a perfect vacation. And how could it not be? When you have a view from your apartment window that looks like thisand drive to hilltop towns that look over the Mediterranean with succulent plants all around like thisand go to covered markets in seaside towns where you can buy oils and…

I’d like you to meet my very first food processor! The last time Ben and I visited his mother in the Hudson River Valley, I saw this forlorn machine sitting in her garage, cobwebby and neglected. Ben’s mother had a Cuisinart that she used in her kitchen, but this older workhorse was just gathering dust.…

You might have noticed that I never post about recipes from Epicurious. It’s not because I don’t like their recipes, but rather it’s because the reader reviews do the job I’ve taken on for myself with the newspaper recipes. It’s a very useful place to find recipes and food information, though I have sometimes tired…

A few weeks ago, Melissa Clark wrote an article for the NY Times about Pierre Reboul, the pastry chef at Kurt Gutenbrunner's new restaurant, Thor, in New York City. Gutenbrunner is also the chef at Wallse and Cafe Sabarsky, which is one of my favorite New York places. The atmosphere, the food, and especially the…

I know that Jack climbed up a magical beanstalk, but when I saw this woody branch in my CSA basket a few days ago, I imagined him climbing up it instead, using the bulbous growths as steps all the way up to the hungry giant’s lair. There are days when the newspaper cooking gets to…

These could also be known as My Bumpless Madeleines. The recipe was excerpted from Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of South-West France (which is being reissued now, and is gorgeous) in an article from the LA Times this summer about Wolfert's house and life in Sonoma. While I worship at the altar of Wolfert, these madeleines…

Doesn't that look dull? And trust me, this post probably won't be much of anything either. I've been back for three days and the closest I've come to cooking was getting on Ben's nerves as he kindly roasted a chicken for me on my first night home again, and then microwaving spinach in the plastic…

Way back in the beginning days of this blog, I mentioned in a post off-handedly that my hand-held mixer was stuck at the highest stage, making whipping egg whites and creaming butter exercises in frustration and rendering my kitchen bespattered every time I had to use it, which was often. Little did I know that…