Reading: Book Reviews

The Times reviews cookbooks and the hybrid book explosion of memoirs with recipes. On the Big Sur Bakery Cookbook: A Year in the Life of a Restaurant: “And the recipes for breakfast pizza and brown-butter rhubarb bars are worth the cover price (or the airfare).”(I’ll pay both, please.) On Orangette Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life, [...]

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Rule of yum (sorry): Leave well enough alone

At this point you can probably tell I heart Mark Bittman. What’s not to like about unfussy, tasty food? Like playing up strawberries with something other than Cool Whip but with almond creme anglaise per this recipe. I am crazy enough to spend all day making puff pastry from scratch, but more often than not, [...]

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Just plain depressing: Dairy farms in straits

It’s tough times for the dairy farmer, both organic and conventional across the states, though you couldn’t tell from the bustling Ronnybrook Farm stand at the Union Square Farmers Market.  My heart broke when I read there’s a rise in suicides among them and this from an LA Times article: Some farmers now are thinking [...]

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Mark Bittman’s Chocolate Chunk Cookie Dough

From the May 5th “Freeze That Thought” story in the Times. Contrary to popular belief, something can be frozen and still be fresh. Of course, freezing has its limits, too, like that unidentifiable piece of meat that’s now encrusted with an icy fur coat (…is it…breathing??!). But the freezer is a very valuable tool to [...]

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Toodloo for today

I sincerely would love to sit here in this still, cramped corner in a small NYC apartment and provide some sort of pastry-related distraction to you, dear, lovely, patient readers. Alas, I have a long list of to-dos, and a tic, itching to check all the boxes off. Whether any of the list items will [...]

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What is a foodie?

Just had this conversation with a friend who works at a food mag. Ah ha! So Gael Greene was the one. Related, here’s a “list” I submitted to McSweeneys which got rejected. It was my third submission. I can never figure out the criteria; it just has to be funny, smart and subversive, right? They [...]

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Meet you at the E, F, R or V to Queens

It’s Indian mango season, so I just called Patel Brothers in Jackson Heights to check when they’re arriving: TOMORROW! Last I remember they were $20/box. Totally worth it for the juicy, not-as-pulpy/stringy mangoes for lassis, curds, may-haps a semifreddo?? Wheeee!

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Reading: Food-related idioms

From Harper’s Magazine, March 2004 issue, an excerpt from How Koreans Talk, A Collection of Expressions, by the NY Times reporter Choe Sang-Hun and Christopher Torchia. I’ve just culled the ones that had to do with sweets and food: Rice cake in the picture: Pie in the Sky The other man’s rice cake is always [...]

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Wake + bake?

Cute shirt. But don’t “bake” + bake, kids.

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Let us explore this dichotomy

…of liking the recipe but being skeptical of the source. I’ve heard some Stories about Johnny Iuzzini from fellow classmates (that’s not a typo, stories with a capital “S”). And c’mon! His book is called Dessert Fourplay! Its tagline should really be Mining the Sexual Fantasies of Hungry Suburban Housewives. But good for him, cashing [...]

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