Spring may be on its way, but it’s not here yet. It was snowing in Brooklyn today! Plenty of time left to hunker down with winter vegetable based soups while shivering our way through March. (I’m on this big kick now where I make a pot of soup every weekend to eat for breakfast for […]

I got the new Fuchsia Dunlop cookbook! Oh, come on, you know you’re jealous. It’s as delightful as the last few, but with more non-spicy recipes and simple home cooking. My celebrity crush on her remains undiminished. As usual, even when testing a recipe from a new cookbook I couldn’t leave well enough alone. We […]

I hate mushrooms. The flavor is fine, but the texture grosses me out. Wait, no, I only like expensive mushrooms. They have a different and much nicer texture. Morels, chanterelles, yum! Wait, no, I also like mushrooms that have been finely chopped and sautéed with onions and/or shallots. That fixes up the texture, too. Point […]

This is another Dave invention, but of course. It’s sweet and spicy and we’ve made it a bunch of times over the past year, so it’s way past time for me to share it with you! The spicy awesomeness of these beets comes from wasabi oil, which you can find locally if you live in […]

I was a major chicken salad kick this past summer, sort of. I mean, I hate mayonnaise, so my definition of chicken salad is more ‘shredded cold chicken with a bunch of really flavorful stuff mixed in’. But that works great for me! Basically, I cook some chicken breasts on the bone, let them cool, […]

Hi again! Sorry I’ve been missing for so long. I’ve had an extraordinary year, and mostly I just haven’t had a great setup for taking photos of all the wonderful food I’ve been cooking. A friend scolded me and then mailed me a light box, with the condition that I use it to start posting […]

East African Sweet Pea Soup (adapted from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant: Ethnic and Regional Recipes from the Cooks at the Legendary Restaurant by the Moosewood Collective) Hurry, hurry, you have to make this soup! I took a Hipstamatic photo just so I could post it for you all the sooner! I adapted this from one […]

We had a big going-away barbecue for my brother Jordan, who is off to Ghana for the summer as of yesterday. How better to say goodbye than with cherries and satay and live music from all his fabulous musician friends? It was a fantastic excuse to remake my favorite satay recipe, chicken marinated in a […]

God, look at those charred peppers! They’re the long, vaguely gnarly, kinda slender but not really, fairly spicy but not very, probably Italian ones I find at my local organic Korean grocery store. I love them with a deep and abiding love. Dave, however, is pretty sure that nightshades give him stomachaches, so I don’t […]

Dear people who live in or visit London, Have you stopped by Ottolenghi yet? You should. It is a happy place that makes people happy. I spent about 2 hours fighting through insane crowds and delayed buses to get there during a London tube strike once (not counting the time spent flying across the pond […]

The last half dozen times or so we made peposo, we ate it all too quickly for me to get a photo for you and post about it. It’s a winter staple in my household, and I regret not having posted it sooner. Sorry about that! I happened to have my camera out at the […]

Going through older post drafts, I’m always a bit startled when I come across a photo that I actually really like! It always seems to me that surely I must have posted all the good photos already, and only left the dregs as drafts. But apparently not. Salad may not seem that exciting, but for […]

We’ve served this sauce at the restaurant twice now, and I’m not tired of it yet, which is an absolute miracle for me. It was another one of Dave’s brilliant sauces, where he came up with the main idea and all I had to do was taste and give him a few suggestions for rounding […]

Everyone loves romanesco, the green fractal cauliflower that has been appearing more and more in stores and greenmarkets in the area over the past few years. It’s gorgeous, in a geeky sort of way, and very tasty, especially when you let it get a good pan sear during the cooking process. Don’t let the green […]

I had so much fun cooking this! The recipe comes from Chez Panisse Cooking, and it’s one of those recipes you look at and you just know it’ll be an adventure to create. I mean, pigeon essences! What could be better? Dave practically cried at the thought of pounding those beautiful pigeons through the food […]

I know, I know, Alton Brown says you should always make your stuffing separately, not actually stuff your bird with it. But we made this stuffing when friends from out of town were visiting, and it was splendid stuffed right into the duck we roasted for dinner one night. I’ve had a cold for the […]

When we catered the VIP suite at SalonCon in September, we tried to think of a fun and interesting way to make sure people got some protein in their diets during the day. Conferences and conventions are notorious for people taking poor care of themselves, and failing to eat real food or get enough sleep. […]

My dear friend Ariana gave me her pasta maker, because she never used it. But me? I use it all the time. I love rolling the dough through the rollers, thinner and thinner, and goofing around shaping filled pasta of various sorts. Well, everyone needs a hobby. This is another variation on Fesenjan, that wonderful […]

I actually think it’ll be easier to get back to posting regularly once I use up all the drafts I have waiting to be posted. Seems a bit backwards, but it’s sort of like the way deadlines make it easier to get work done. (Good thing I am in a profession with an overabundance of […]

I’m feeling very justified in my lifelong Depression-era housewife mentality lately, I must say. Times are rough for everyone, and it feels like they’re just getting worse. Good thing I’ve been doing home canning and jam-making for years, not to mention saving bacon grease in a can in my freezer and freezing chicken carcasses every […]

Let me explain. No, it is too much! Let me sum up. I got it into my head that I had to pick up some duck hearts. These things happen. It turns out that you can buy duck hearts at Ottomanelli’s Meat Market (285 Bleecker Street, NY, NY) in 5 pound bags for something like […]

This tomato jam is adapted from a recipe for a Moroccan chicken tagine. Sweet and savory, this jam is best served with hearty entrees. It is not suitable for home canning, so please don’t use this recipe to preserve your gorgeous summer tomatoes unless you first make sure to adjust the recipe, for your own […]

These are dead simple, very tasty, and wonderfully vocal – both the pop rocks and people’s reaction to them. Shell your fava beans. Remember, favas need to be removed from the pod, and then the skin has to be removed from each bean individually. It’s a pain in the ass, but worth it once in […]

Everyone knows that ramps and bacon go well together. Everyone who knows about ramps, that is – and if you don’t, get down to the Union Square greenmarket or the Park Slope Food Co-op (if you live in NYC) or wherever your local source may be sometime in the next week or so before they […]

Just a few announcements here, as I share the recipe for the pork shanks we served at Jack last weekend. If you’re a blogger of any sort living in NYC, you should come join us at the Brooklyn Blogfest tonight. It will be held at (hold you breath, wait for it, wait for it…) the […]

There’s something about temperature contrasts that really works for me, so I love the hot soup and cold salsa here with every bite. The salsa is also pretty key for me because when it come down to it, I just don’t like smooth soups without any texture to them. The greenmarkets are full of these […]

Well, we survived our opening night at Jack! It was tons of fun, and I hope that everyone outside the kitchen enjoyed it as much as we did. We’re gearing up for our next dinner on May 3rd, and oh, oh, did all the locals see? Apparently ramps finally hit the Union Square greenmarket as […]

This is another recipe adapted from A Drizzle of Honey: The Life and Recipes of Spain’s Secret Jews by David M. Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson, a cookbook full of recipes for foods cooked and eaten by Jews and conversos in the Iberian Peninsula during the time of the Inquisition. About a year and a […]

When Aki and Alex posted about making kimchi broth, I was inspired. It seemed like the perfect excuse to finally make some grits, which I’ve been meaning to do and yet not getting around to for a long time. These grits are spicy, brilliantly flavored, creamy, meaty from the pork stock, and just an all-around […]

I don’t have much time to write out these recipes for you today, what with planning for my occasional restaurant, Jack, taking up all of my non-lawyering time right now. We are busy making sure we have all the plates we need, picking up linens, and working out some menus for months down the line. […]

Yesterday morning, I took and passed the final exam for New York’s food protection certification. Not a difficult hurdle, but it’s nice to have that under my belt at last. If you’re at all interested in ever working in food preparation in New York, I suggest you go out and get the certification now, while […]

I’ve been focusing so much on heavy, rich winter dishes lately, it’s really time to switch gears and try something different. Something clean and fresh and light to clear the palate. So instead of a braise, why not a try a nice quick pickle to go with a simple dinner? Crunchy, salty, spicy, and satisfying, […]

This is one of our great successes this winter. Oxtail braised with sweet spices, tons of kumquats, low and slow until the sauce is richly fragrant, smooth and thick. The meat is shredded off the bone into the strained sauce with balsamic vinegar stirred in for added complexity, and served with homemade chestnut flour pasta, […]

This soup is of Georgian origin, where pairing red beans and walnuts appears to be some sort of national pastime. It sure beats baseball. This is a rustic soup, lusciously creamy and actually good for you, too. (Unless you overload on the olive oil, that is. Since I don’t specify quantities there, on your own […]

About two weeks ago, I received an email from Edelman Interactive, offering me a free promotional fish – a Kona Kampachi from Kona Blue. Given that I was under no obligation to blog about the fish at all, and I love fish, I accepted. I was offered my choice of fillets or a whole fish, […]

I love Momofuku, especially now that the Noodle Bar has moved to a larger location where Dave and I can actually bring our friends and chat with them at a table over dinner instead of just hoping to find one or two spaces at the bar. The food is amazing, and being the devoted carnivore […]

Here is a meat pie to warm and satisfy you, now that winter has come and I am waiting on the edge of my seat for the first real snowstorm of the year. Loosely inspired by Moroccan basteeya, this pot pie marries a rich and savory meaty filling with traditionally sweet spices, and you can […]

This post may seem a bit late, but it’s timely, really. Channukah came so early this year, you might as well make latkes for Christmas! Or New Year’s Eve. Or you can make latkes to celebrate my birthday from afar on January 2nd. All those pans shown above were in a row during the East […]

Inspired by the miso butterscotch pork belly Dave and I had with our friend Allyson at Tailor earlier this fall, these ribs are meatier, heftier, and to my belly more satisfying than Sam Mason’s creation. The pork belly was just splendid, and it’s just that I personally prefer less fatty meat, cooked on the bone […]

This puree was inspired by a dish we had at Alinea, during the most impressive meal I have ever been served. The dish that inspired us was lobster (butter-poached, I believe), served with lobster mousse, sunchoke puree, and sweet orange, all surrounded by the hyacinth aroma released by boiling water being poured over hyacinths in […]

For my first attempt at making this sweet, salty, spicy, satisfyingly crisp bite o’ banchan, I followed this recipe from one of my favorite Korean food blogs, Evil Jungle Prince. Unfortunately, it turned out to be way too fishy for me. (This may have something to do with my misreading the measurement for anchovy sauce […]

Shortly after my bacon was complete, I just had to tell my brother, Josh Sucher, about my pride and delight. We ended up typing back and forth at each other about it, because such is our relationship – we used to IM each other while sitting in our separate bedrooms down the hall from each […]

My grandmother has congestive heart failure, which means that she is restricted to a low-salt diet. When she gets sick in the winter this goes straight out the window, because she tends to order in salty soup from the local take-out Chinese food place on the corner. I try to stave this off by delivering […]

Date molasses. Date molasses! I was introduced to this stuff by a friend who made a brilliant spicysweet ice cream with it (which I will one day make, play with, and post, quite probably). It’s an intensely flavored syrup that you can find in middle eastern grocery stores, and it lives in our pantry alongside […]

This post actually contains two recipes: Roasted Leg of Lamb Stuffed With Pork, Chestnuts, and Morels and Lamby Cranberry Beans with Itsy Bitsy Potatoes. Dave and I just took the Pork and Apples class taught by Aki and Alex of Ideas in Food. We really enjoyed it quite a lot. I’m mostly thrilled that I […]

This is meant as a direct response to the question – what do you do when you come across a monstrously large sweet potato that stares you in the face and demands to be bested? You puree the sucker into soup, that’s what.

This is way, way too buttery to be considered healthy, but I do consider it delicious. Red lentils shining like jewels among the pasta, bursts of flavor from the spinach, and that’s all it takes to keep me happy. It is surprisingly gingery! The ginger comes out as a floral flavor here, not particularly sharp. […]

My family and I sailed around the Cyclades in Greece a few summers ago, and while we felt that the cuisine on the islands became tedious after a while, there were a few things we never tired of: dolmas, spanikopita, and milk pies. My dolmas are a bit of a stretch from traditional Greek or […]

As anyone who grows vegetables can tell you, it is easy to find yourself drowning in summer squash. We’re not gardeners (I have a black thumb of death), but even so we find ourselves overwhelmed by the sheer abundance of squash this month. Last week, Dave and I were wandering around Prospect Heights (a nearby […]

I can’t really take any credit for this recipe, aside from the eating. It was almost completely the brainchild of our friend Bonnie, who had all the ideas except adding in the crispy garlic, which Dave came up with. I’m just playing photographer and stenographer, this time. (Incidentally, Bonnie makes and sells the cutest, awesomest […]

My partner, Dave, has a wonderful perk at his company, TOPP. Every other Friday, a small group of employees cooks lunch for the entire parent company. A different group each time. Everyone gets to participate. Whenever it’s Dave’s turn, he makes my dreams come true by bringing men home to cook for me. That is, […]

This started out as an attempt at making Fesenjan, an intense Afghani and Persian concoction of chicken in a thick pomegranate walnut sauce. Dave got a bit carried away with it, though, and with the replacement of chicken stock and pomegranate molasses for mere pomegranate juice and a big splash of Shaoxing rice wine later, […]

Burdock root, also known as gobo, tastes something like a nutty artichoke potato. The long, slender, flexible roots don’t look like much, but they have a lot of flavor if you slice them thin and braise them to bring it out. Don’t bother peeling off their thin skin, which is both tasty and good for […]

What do you do with a freezer full of banana rum ketchup? You make banana burgers, of course! These were entirely Dave’s creation. He put them together one night while I was out at the gym, trying to find a boxing class that would be right for me. He timed them so that they would […]

When I think of cucumber salad, I think of all the love and sheer stubborn energy that only your grandmother can bring to the table. My grandmother, my Ima, makes very classic Hungarian cucumber salad, with vinegar and (again, you guessed it) paprika. Alanna of A Veggie Venture learned to make cucumber salad with sour […]

I first tasted fava beans a few days ago. I’m not sure how I managed to miss them until now, but I did. But now that I know how creamy they are, how fresh green and buttery in texture, I will be sure not to miss them again! Preparing fava beans to be cooked is […]

Rosa of Rosa’s Yummy Yums made this wonderful banana ketchup last spring, and I’ve seriously been waiting all year to try it out. See, Rosa? I didn’t forget! Of course, I had to make a few modifications along the way. But that’s what food blogging is all about. I brought this to a friend’s barbecue […]

And now we return to your regularly scheduled LambBlog. (It’s just that lamb is so cute and so tasty!) The sour cherry braising sauce is sort of sweet and sour and spicy and very rich. It is based on our homemade sour cherry sage flower jam, though you could probably substitute sour cherries, sage, and […]

If you have studied symbolic logic, you are familiar with the logical operator x-or. ‘A x-or B’ means ‘either A or B, but not both’. A friend of mine once suggested that there must also exist the illogical operator x-and, where ‘A x-and B’ means ‘A and B, but not both’. He put forth the […]

Until this past year, I thought that I hated all salads. I spent my life passing on my salad course at restaurants to my mother to eat for me. I knew that I liked spinach, sure, but that certainly didn’t count as salad in my mind. Last summer, my friend Coby introduced me to a […]

This started out as a mint chutney, until we chanced upon some gorgeous persimmons at the store. And I have been craving cucumbers lately. (To be fair, I am almost always craving cucumbers.) As we combined our key ingredients, we realized that it would be a shame to cook or overspice them. And so a […]

I know, I know, I am posting too many recipes which call for urfa-biber lately. I am almost at the point where I will have to offer to mail a package of urfa-biber to anyone who wants it and has something interesting to swap for it. This recipe was adapted from Paula Wolfert’s The Slow […]

The best thing about these meatballs is the coating. Each meatball is dipped into a coating made of stock, dark soy sauce, and cornstarch, then seared until nicely brown before being braised further. The seared layer of soy sauce coating each meatball is a tremendous burst of flavor, and absolutely makes the dish for me. […]

I just noticed that my photo of Sweet and Sour Lotus Root won in the Originality category for Does My Blog Look Good in This? – March, 2007. I am delighted and extremely flattered. Thank you! On to the tale of the cauliflower. We hosted a fairly non-traditional seder this year. We served pomegranate ginger […]

I could tell you a tale of pork nests, and I have included a recipe below. This is a food blog, after all. But instead, there is something even more important I would like to tell you. (This is actually not the big news I was alluding to a few weeks ago. I will disclose […]

I hate shelling chestnuts. I always end up with sharp bits of shell poking the tender flesh beneath my fingernails until it hurts and bleeds. This is unappetizing, but true. I love eating chestnuts, though. I was raised on chestnut puree as a snack food of choice, after all. So when I came across this […]

My friend Lisa and I were out and about the other day, when we happened to wander past the farmers’ market at Union Square at around 5:45 pm. Most of the stalls were already gone, or were in the process of packing up to leave. We passed one of the few remaining open stalls, which […]

I don’t feel like I have any right to post recipes for Indian food. I mean, I’m a native New Yorker with a Hungarian/Ukrainian/Israeli/Jewish background, who used to cut class in high school to go out for dim sum just a few blocks away in Chinatown. And more to the point, there are so many […]

Colette Rossant’s Apricots on the Nile: A Memoir with Recipes is precisely that, a tale of how she grew up with her grandparents in Egypt, interspersed with recipes for the foods of her youth. The story is charming and sad, about a little girl abandoned by her flaky mother and then reclaimed against her wishes […]

As I’ve mentioned before, I love chowder. What you may not know is that I also love oysters. (In fact, I love all seafood, except perhaps jellyfish and sea cucumbers.) This leek and oyster chowder is scrumptious as only a simple dish can be. The broth is creamy and flavorful, and the oysters themselves are […]

This recipe is ludicrously long, but given that it comes from Paula Wolfert’s The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen: Recipes for the Passionate Cook, that should come as no surprise. If you have a weekend to spend lounging about the house and letting things cook, though, these lamb shanks are absolutely luscious and worth the time. They […]

Soup’s On! February is soup month, according to Alanna of A Veggie Venture, and this is my contribution. This stew was mostly a stone soup, but it also turned into an excuse to try out my new curry powder, Two Knives Special Curry Blend from Auntie Arwen’s Spice Blends. It’s a fairly mild curry, but […]

Actually, it’s a rhizome. But never mind that. I ordered sweet and sour lotus root at a restaurant not too long ago, and it was my favorite dish of the evening. Naturally, I tried to replicate it at home the very next day. I looked at the wildly different recipes in Fuschia Dunlop’s two cookbooks, […]

What do you do with leftover string beans sitting in your fridge? Start craving a stir-fry, perhaps. That could be the answer. Start poring through your favorite Chinese cookbooks, such as The Breath of a Wok: Unlocking the Spirit of Chinese Wok Cooking Through Recipes and Lore by Grace Young. Find a recipe for a […]

Winter means constant braising, and stew, and curry. Curry means flipping through half my cookbooks before finally settling on this recipe from Madhur Jaffrey’s Far Eastern Cookery. With a few changes, the most important being some fresh galangal and ground cardamom thrown in to add much-needed high notes to perk things up and bring them […]

I’m sorry, we ate the stewed spare ribs up so fast, all I have left to show you are the bones. Okay, okay, fine. I saved a bowl for you. The ribs were lusciously tender, the meat quite literally falling off the bones in the pot. That’s what hours of slow braising in a sand […]

Okay, this is probably the last post I’ll be making to clear out my old photos taken with my Canon PowerShot S400. (I want to post only better photos taken with my new 30D from now on.) When we were visiting Dave’s mother, Barbara, she suggested that we make some butternut squash risotto, having been […]

My partner Dave and I spent a fun evening a few weeks ago making green curry paste over at a friend’s new apartment, a portion of which was ours to take home and freeze. It’s always fun trying to follow recipes with our fussy friends – does the recipe call for ginger? Pfeh, we have […]

When I first served this to two couples we had over for dinner, the women declared it too spicy, while the men dug in enthusiastically. I won’t try to interpret that data, but there it is. I’m not sure why any of them found it to be so spicy, though. I am sensitive to spicy […]

Now that I have my new camera, I figure I should post older recipes that have been sitting in my drafts folder with photos taken with the old camera, just to get them out of the way. This is one of the first meals I made after returning from Hungary this past summer. Pancakes were […]

The latest edition of Fine Cooking had instructions for making these potatoes. You get some baby red potatoes and boil them until they are soft. You then place them on a baking sheet and squish them flat, about 1/2″ thick. Sprinkle on some salt and pepper, and pour olive oil over them fairly liberally. Bake […]

Tami of Running With Tweezers set a Super Souper Challenge this month, asking everyone to share their favorite soup recipes. This is the first time I’ve made this soup, but it may become one of my favorites from now on. It’s adapted from a recipe I’ve had bookmarked for a while now in A Taste […]

I know it’s past the deadline for Hey Hey It’s Donna Hay Day #8: Tempo di Risotto, run by Cenzina at il cavoletto di bruxelles, but nonetheless, this risotto was so tasty and such fun to make. Truffle salt is my latest discovery. Truffle salt is just a blend of ground dried truffles and sea […]

The preparation for this dish must begin a month in advance, unless you already have a jar of preserved lemons lying around. The lemons are preserved in water and salt with a layer of oil on top, and for the first week you must shake the jar daily to redistribute the salt. After that, the […]

I keep seeing these tiny, adorable clams in the Chinatown fishmarkets whenever I’m out shopping around there. They live in vast bins, not far from the live frogs and periwinkles that I keep meaning to learn how to prepare. I have this thing about eating cute things. I like doing it. If I see something […]

This is my entry for The Spice is Right VIII: Frankenstein’s Monster, where we are creating culinary mash-ups using spices from one cuisine in recipes or with techniques from another. Here, I have used Sichuan peppercorns to add a tingle to a bowl of classically American shrimp chowder. The deadline to post your entries is […]

Ivonne from Cream Puffs in Venice and Orchidea from Viaggi & Sapori are hosting a one-time event called Dishes of Comfort. They ask us to write about something we consider comfort food, one of the special dishes that meant a lot to us when we were young. My grandmother has a fairly limited culinary repertoire. […]

October is over, Halloween has passed, and pumpkins are quickly going out of style. It’s hard to find tasty baby pumpkins, anyway, so these function more as cute bowls than anything else. But the meatballs were absolutely delicious, and the mildly intriguing taste of the squid ink pasta balanced well with them. Kids in particular […]

Originally I was not going to bother posting this recipe, because it is such a simple thing, and not all that much to look it. Never mind that it is delicious and addictive and goes unbelievably well with our favorite skirt steak for a quick and easy autumn dinner. Never mind that it is an […]

Perhaps the best Afghani restaurant I have ever been to is Helmand in Cambridge, MA. Bamiyan in NYC has a special place in my heart, because we discovered it when Dave was trying to keep me fed while I was taking the bar exam, but Helmand won me over with their Kaddo Bourani. The way […]

Well, I finally purchased a tagine, so my tagines will actually deserve the name from now on. I seasoned it by soaking it in water for about an hour and a half, then rubbing the inside with olive oil and baking it for a nice long while afterwards. I have been rereading all the Paula […]

I just purchased a copy of Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking by Fuschia Dunlop. It came very highly recommended, and rumor has it that this is the best text on Sichuan cooking available in English today. I’m very excited and looking forward to trying out a whole lot of Dunlop’s recipes. […]

I took no part in cooking this meal. Me, I’m just the scribe and photographer this time. The ribs were experimental meats purchased in Brooklyn’s Chinatown. The sour cherries come from my parents’ sour cherry tree, and I did help with the picking and pitting. We made most of them into jam and pie and […]

I was so excited when I saw cabbage-stuffed peppers on a menu in Hungary. How wonderful, I thought. But when I ordered them, they turned out to be pickled. I’m sure that is delightful to some of you, but personally, I do not like pickled anything. (Oh, all right, Japanese pickled ginger. And mango slices […]

These are made in much the same manner as the last stuffed zucchini blossoms I posted about, except that they are filled with spicy duck breast instead of the sweet cheese filling I used before. I am so excited that this time we found blossoms with baby zucchini attached! I think someday I will have […]

I have the most amazing new cookbook – A Drizzle of Honey: The Life and Recipes of Spain’s Secret Jews, by David M. Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson. It is full of recipes for foods cooked and eaten by Jews and conversos in the Iberian Peninsula during the time of Inquisition. To my great delight, […]

I was at Kalustyan’s the other day, looking through their spices, when I wandered up to the second floor to check out their tea selection. There is a small deli section up there, where they sell prepared foods, which I had never examined before. I glanced over, and the man behind the counter thrust a […]

This is my contribution for The Spice is Right IV: It’s Too Darned Hot!, though, in truth, I am probably the only resident of New York City who is not completely sick of the heat by now. I am cold-blooded and reptilian, and nothing makes me happier than soaking in the warmth. I am trying […]

My favorite Afghan restaurant is Bamiyan, on the corner of E. 26th St. and 3rd Ave., just a few blocks away from Kalustyan’s. I discovered it when I was taking the bar exam last summer. Dave’s job over those few days was to make sure that I actually ate dinner, when all I wanted to […]

A friend and I were once on a bus to Boston, discussing the origin of ketchup (a/k/a catsup). I insisted that it had to be a relatively recent invention, because the tomato is a New World fruit. She thought it was older. So I called up my brother, asking him to look it up for […]