The moment I’d resigned myself to having eggs for dinner, even though I’d had them for lunch, because I’m the worst dinner eater/cooker ever these days, I looked out my window into the backyard and spotted all these bright red ornaments.

I made this chicken last week, which will forever be known as Ice Cream Week (decision still pending on that project, btw), and I keep forgetting that I need to tell you about it. I’ve been too busy gallivanting around in this gorgeous sunshine, walking along the Hudson River Park and the High Line, making [...]

It’s time to address what’s been going on over here. I’ve been working on an ice cream project. Okay, but that’s all I’m going to say for now. As I’ve mentioned before, making ice cream requires a lot of egg yolks, thus leaving you with a lot of egg whites. When I first started making [...]

Wait, what is this? Oh riiight, it’s that soup I made back I have no idea when. But I remember it being good, real good, like a peanut soup but with almond butter instead of peanut butter, aromatic of fresh ginger and lime, and with collard greens and sweet potatoes thrown in for…a bit of [...]

I feel a bit uncomfortable referring to butternut squash as simply squash, since to me “squash” refers to the crook-necked yellow variety that my mom would always make. But up north the default squash seems to be butternut, a winter squash, which makes perfect sense seeing how it’s winter here for most of the year.

“How the hell does one complicate a roast chicken?!?!” was the response I got when I texted my cousin that I’d made a really good roast chicken, “but it was a complicated one.” How does one turn a dish that should be simple and straightforward into a four-hour-long headache of loads of dirtied pots and [...]

The husband requested filet mignon for dinner. I said, “boring!” The compromise was that I got to make a sauce. Filet doesn’t need one, of course, but where is the fun in simply searing some salt-and-peppered steaks in a pan?

Does chicken with roasted grapes sound a little odd to you? It did to me, which is why I needed to make it.

When we’re feeling like we’ve been eating “badly” and need to cleanse, we eat fish to reset ourselves. It totally works. But I hardly ever get creative with it because I like fish best when it’s simply roasted, seasoned with herbs, fresh or dried, whatever I have, and finished off with plenty of lemon juice. [...]

I have a huge pink recipe binder full of clippings from magazines and newspapers and annotated printouts from blogs and emails, as well as handwritten recipes on index cards from grandmothers, but I’m pretty sure this is the only recipe in there that I actually typed up as a Word document, printed out, and three-hole [...]

Turkey sausage! Turkey sausage. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was cooking treif in my home. But I also don’t want to discourage anyone else from using pork sausage. In fact, I think you should make this with pork sausage and invite me over for dinner tonight. Oh wait, I can’t do it tonight. [...]

Your eyes do not deceive you. This is in fact cheesesteak pie, birthday dinner number two. For those of you who don’t know what I’m referring to, allow me to get you up to speed. For his birthday my husband requested that I make him three separate dinners (every time I read this it seems [...]

Friday was the husband’s birthday, and he requested three separate birthday dinners because apparently he thinks he’s entitled to that kind of thing. Coincidentally, all three meals revolve around red meat in some type of crusting, and they’re all supposed to happen, oh, within a month or so. Each of these meals is supposed to [...]

I hope you didn’t get too excited over there because these stuffed peppers were terrible. So bad, in fact, that I may do something I never, ever do: throw out the leftovers. Wasting food seems sinful to me, but what’s worse? Tilting the container of leftover peppers into the garbage and pretending they never happened, [...]

My first encounter with turkey legs was traumatic. Early on in our courtship, the husband and I took a trip to Disney World (yes, we were still basically children). And there was this place in the Magic Kingdom, in Frontierland, that sold smoked turkey legs. We figured they had to be amazing because all the obese [...]

This is the week of ridiculously quick and easy pan sauces. Like, requires-three-ingredients-takes-two-minutes quick and easy. It’s also the week of working through some of the recipes I tore out of my Gourmets over the years. Sigh. They really make me miss that magazine. There were so many dishes like this one and the salmon, [...]

So you know how a few months ago I said I had sworn off pan-searing salmon because it stunk up my apartment for days? Well, I relented. For the first time in about three years, I did it. And it did stink up the house, but so what? There’s an easy remedy for a fishy-smelling [...]

There is this thing called Thanksgiving Part II the Sequel. It’s one family’s answer to a dilemma many of us face every year: two (or more) Thanksgiving dinners to attend. Rather than compete with all those other gatherings, Thanksgiving Part II the Sequel has forged its own path and carved out a place for itself [...]

You know the peaches are good when there’s a whole beehive’s worth of bees buzzing around them. And you know you really want some of those peaches when you’re willing to just thrust your arms right into the danger zone. I’ve had more close encounters with bees this summer than I’d care to. Not that I’d [...]

The husband requested lamb chops for dinner, and I do everything he says. I wanted to make some sort of pesto to go with the lamb, and this one, a variation of what is apparently a mainstay of Georgian national cuisine, intrigued me. There was cilantro, parsley, apricots, walnuts, walnut oil…yum, yum, yum, yum, and [...]

Well now that summer’s in full swing, an oven-roasted chicken is probably one of the last things you want to be making, right? In fact, I’ve probably picked the worst possible day to present you with this recipe, what with temperatures in these parts reaching record highs. You’d probably prefer a recipe for, say, beer-can [...]

I got a request for more main courses on the site and so, in an effort to provide one person with near-instant gratification, I whipped up one of my old standbys, and I’m just going to have out with it: this is a Rachael Ray recipe. Yes, yes, we all despise her. We detest her stupid [...]

I care less and less about dinner these days. I would never skip it outright, but I’ve begun to think of it as a mere stepping stone on the way to dessert. While the husband would rather have another helping of stir-fry or pasta or chicken or what-have-you, I’m gobbling down my main course in eager [...]

Not a spring dish, remarked the husband. We’d been on a diet rich in asparagus, fiddlehead ferns, leeks, and ramps, and there’s not even a smidgen of green in this one. Oh…except for that smidgen I just noticed right in front there, a snip of chive in the polenta, so I guess I lied. But [...]

I was on the phone with my mom the other day and she was telling me about a recipe she made (story of our lives): roasted chicken breasts served atop pumpkin-sage grits. You scoop up some of the grits with your fork, she said, then you pierce a piece of the chicken and mmmmmm, there’s just [...]

This is a sophisticated baked pasta that still speaks to your inner child. Slivered radicchio, normally tough and slightly bitter, submits to a simmering sauce of butter, onions, and whole peeled tomatoes, which is then enriched with cream. Parbaked pasta is layered with the sauce, diced fresh mozzarella, and melt-in-your-mouth mini chicken meatballs that have been coated in flour [...]

Why is tuna so often paired with Asian seasonings, more than any other fish? Probably the same reason that duck is so frequently paired with cherries. The flavors just work. It’s safe. It’s familiar. And that’s exactly how I felt when I tasted this tuna. It was just right. The marinade (rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, lime, sesame oil) didn’t [...]

with Potato Puree, Swiss Chard, and Horseradish Cream The key to throwing a successful dinner party is not planning ahead. It’s not thinking carefully about the guest list to ensure that you’ll have an eclectic group of people to have “interesting” conversations with each other. It’s not making sure that you begin the night with an empty [...]

After cooking salmon a bunch of times by coating it with salt and olive oil and searing it in a pan to give it a nice crispy crust, I swore off that method forever because it would stink up my apartment for days. It scarred me. It was the reason why I staunchly refused to [...]

Well this reeks of infiltration. Who hacked into this blog?!?! So I have a confession to make: I’ve never eaten a chili dog, and I didn’t eat one this time (although I had to try a bite, OK two bites, and it was delicious). This was all the husband’s doing. He’d been talking for days about [...]

Sometimes things get a little, um, frenetic in this kitchen, and you know what doesn’t help the situation? Me attempting to string up a bizarre lighting contraption with a dangling cord in an effort to improve the food photography, which really just resulted in me feeling like I had a freakin spotlight shining on me [...]

Once in a great while, a recipe comes along that I am so enamored with, it gets awarded a permanent spot in my repertoire. This is a very special honor because I am always wanting to make new things, of course, and so a repeat performance is rare. So in honor of Valentine’s Day, I’d [...]

with Roasted Potatoes, Buttered Peas, and, for dessert, Individual Molten Chocolate Cakes There seems to be a prevailing notion out there that everything’s better with bacon. Which is, I presume, why this dish is hailed as “certainly one of the most delicious beef dishes concocted by man.” Strong statement, Julia, strong statement. True? I wouldn’t [...]