A friend and I recently went to check out Amai Tea & Bake House, because we like having tea together and I am big on supporting food bloggers in their endeavors (Amai is run by the blogger behind Lovescool). We really enjoyed the tea sweets there, and when I got home I found Amai’s recipe […]

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, […]

Here is an absolutely luscious, rich winter dish. I started off working with an Alice Waters recipe, but then I was inspired by Michael Ruhlman‘s love of veal stock to meat things up a bit to great effect. Way I see it, he’s absolutely wrong in declaring veal stock to be “a selfless stock” – […]

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, […]

Yes, February is a bit late for me to be posting Christmas photos. But I have a pile of links to share with you that I’ve been collecting since last October or so, and I never did share any Christmas photos with you at all. I’m a typical agnostic cultural Jew in Brooklyn, raised by […]

This cake is obscenely rich; it is more of a custard or pudding than a cake, almost. It is so moist that it may seem undercooked until you remember just how many eggs and pureed kumquats you poured into that wet batter to make it. It started out as a recipe for orange cake, but […]

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 […]

First things first. I would really appreciate it if you would go vote for me in Culinate’s Death By Chocolate contest. Also, I heard today is crepe day, so we made a Hungarian crepe cake! My grandmother says that she used to make this with a different filling in each layer – jam, ground walnuts, […]