Last time I saw him in concert, Arlo Guthrie told the story of how his grades dropped in 6th grade, leading his family to send him to see a shrink. His mother had to go with him. He put pegs into holes, looked at ink blots, took all the tests. The shrink sent Arlo out […]

I was reading Clotilde’s recipe for Leek and Apricot Strudel with Pinenuts over at Chocolate & Zucchini, and started thinking about what it would take to transform it into Danielle food. I’d have to take out the pinenuts, of course. I don’t like those. And the breadcrumbs, which I prefer to avoid in sweets, though […]

For once, the photo is completely unrelated to the post. That’s a photo of me spinning fire on a rooftop in Williamsburg (Brooklyn, NY, USA) on July 4, 2004. Photography by Dov. Why am I posting a photo that isn’t of food? Well, I’m moving on April 1, so I’m having trouble finding the time […]

There’s a restaurant on the Lower East Side called Stanton Social, which is designed around a menu containing nothing but small tasting dishes meant to be shared with everyone at your table. Dave and I went there not too long ago at my honorary aunt’s recommendation, and everything we tried was excellent. I fell utterly […]

To be honest, what I’ve actually been searching for is a good recipe for Sali Boti, a Parsi lamb and apricot dish that I have every time I go to this wonderful Indian restaurant in Cambridge. I haven’t really seen any trustworthy recipes for it, though. If anyone reading this knows of any, I’d be […]

Josh, the elder of my younger brothers, took a bite out of a store-bought chocolate the other day, and declared, “This is amazing! What is this delicious taste that is filling my mouth? I know it, I know that I know it, but I can’t think of what it is!” It was a maple cream. […]

My mother’s side of the family is Hungarian. Her parents were born in a small town in Hungary, and their paths took them from there to Auschwitz, from Auschwitz back to Hungary (with a few countries in between), from Hungary to Italy (briefly), from Italy to Israel (where they helped found a moshav), and finally […]

I’ve been sorting through my mother’s cookbooks lately, taking out the ones I want to keep. She has so many interesting Thai and Indian and Chinese cookbooks that I can see already what I’ll be eating for the next few months, at least. This recipe was the first thing that caught my eye when I […]

Cocoa nibs are nothing more than pieces of roasted cocoa beans, the basic building blocks of chocolate. They’re slightly bitter, with an intense flavor that can vary greatly depending on their origin. While you can taste a hint of the chocolate they can become, they really have a unique and incomparable flavor of their own. […]

The original recipe for this tart in The Union Square Cafe Cookbook calls for more butter, more sugar, and a higher temperature for the initial baking than what I have laid out below. After fussing with it a bit, though, this is what I came up with. It’s a wonderful confluence of textures: the tart […]

I checked in on my everywine vinegar tonight, and gave it its weekly libation of wine. I have begun to think of it as a monster to whom I must make sacrifices, a beast I must ply with wine in order to keep it drowsy and slightly less likely to kill. I feed it from […]

“I’m not stupid, you know.” “Quit bragging.” “Stop being rude.” “When was the last time you read a book? The truth now. And picture books don’t count – I mean something with print in it.” Buttercup walked away from him. “There’re other things to read than print,” she said, “and the Princess of Hammersmith is […]

The lace pattern of these cookies is created by the bubbling of the very thin, caramel-based batter. When the cookies are removed from the oven, the bubbles collapse, creating the lace between them. When summer comes around, I intend to use the same technique to make honey lace cookies sandwiching homemade sour cherry jam. Lace […]

Dave and I spent an entire weekend trying to make this cake, and we utterly failed at life at least twice during that time. On our first attempt, we undercooked it, and then we tried to remove it from the pan before giving it a chance to fully cool. Unsurprisingly, it oozed all over the […]

Weekend Cookbook Challenge #3: Foods in Shades of Orange is my first food blog event (as a participant rather than as an onlooker, that is). In honor of the occasion, I turned immediately to my newest cookbook, Jacques Torres’s Dessert Circus at Home.