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 sometime in the next few weeks before they disappear for the year! Ramps are wild leeks, the incredibly pungent and delicious greens that appear for just a few weeks each spring. Even Wildman Steve Brill says that ramps are "simply......

If you're wandering what to do with the rhubarb that's starting to appear in stores lately, try pairing it with these shortbread cookies filled with nicoise olives. Alternating sips of rhubarb soup with crumbly, salty bites of olive cookies is a wonderful way to start a spring meal. Recipe after the jump.......

Restaurateurs Marc Meyer and Vicki Freeman took some time out of their hectic brunch schedule at Five Points to cook up some matzoh brei, a traditional Passover dish. They generally don't limit their matzoh brei eating to the Passover season. "We eat it all the time," says Vicki. At their house it is generally served plain, although Vicki admits to eating it with applesauce and sour cream when she gets it at Shopsin's. Marc......

Two chefs of popular seafood restaurants have settled a lawsuit out of court, denying foodies the chance to hear how restaurant plagiarism would be argued. The NY Times reports, "Both sides in the case agreed to keep the terms of the settlement confidential." Last summer, Pearl Oyster Bar chef and owner Rebecca Charles claimed that her former sous chef Ed McFarland took not only her recipes when he set up shop at Ed's Lobster Bar......

This recipe comes from Joanne Chen, author of The Taste of Sweet: Our Complicated Love Affair with Our Favorite Treats. In her new book, she goes on an exploration of sweets, bringing in historical anecdotes, scientific data, and refreshing honesty about her own sweet tooth along the way. For example, when given chocolate yogurt to eat in the dark and told that it was strawberry, 19 out of 32 subjects reported that it had......

Here is one last winter recipe before all the glorious spring and summer produce sweeps in. Chickpea-Stuffed Delicata Squash for the chickpeas 1 C (200 g) dried chickpeas 4 C water (or, better yet, mushroom broth) 1/2 C dried cranberries 1/2 C tawny port 2 large (4" diameter) delicata squash Salt, sugar, olive oil, and macademia nuts to taste Preheat your oven to 475 F. Mix the dried cranberries and port together in a bowl.......

This recipe is 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. The recipes were mostly gleaned from testimony denouncing the Jews during the inquisition. Jews were often identified by cultural signs, such as their culinary customs, and......

The New York Times had an article on gelatin clarification last fall, The Essence of Nearly Anything, Drop by Limpid Drop by Harold McGee. The idea is that you can create a perfectly clear broth that tastes like anything – chocolate, ranch dressing, brown butter, whatever you like. All you need is enough fridge and freezer space to set up a gelatin clarification system. McGee explained the basic technique very well: Create your broth by......

These grits are spicy, boldly flavored, creamy, meaty from the pork stock, and just an all-around success. The idea of making it with kimchi broth was inspired by Aki and Alex of Ideas in Food, who cooked barley in kimchi broth for another tasty-looking dish. The kimchi grits pair well with stir-fried shredded brussel sprouts, which are crispy and meaty from bacon grease. And just to balance out that meaty pickle fun, the shrimp......

Go make kumquat marmalade while you still can -- their season runs through mid-winter and with spring right around the corner, time's a-wasting. Get 1.5 lbs kumquats and slice them up thinly, reserving the seeds. Tie the seeds in a cheesecloth bag. Put the kumquat slices and the bag of seeds together in a non-reactive pot with 4 cups water and cover it and let it sit for 24 hours. The next day, put the......

Jodi Applegate and Ron Corning, co-hosts of Fox's Good Day New York, both claim to be serious foodies, and it was a toss-up as to which one would have the chance to share their favorite recipe with Gothamist. But New York Magazine went through Ron Corning's daily diet last month, and Jodi Applegate wanted to unveil her favorite recipe for Tuna Surprise here today. Because both anchors have to get up early in the morning......

Many people have a strong preference when forced to choose between sweet and savory -- french toast or eggs, cupcakes or french fries, chocolate or cheese? These days, however, the line is getting blurred, with more pastry chefs entering the savory fray, like Sam Mason's Tailor and Pichet Ong's P*ong, both with menus that bring sweetness into entrees and a savory edge to desserts. A dash of coarse sea salt gives an added kick to......

When you order chocolate mousse in a restaurant, the result can sometimes be heavy and bland. This mousse recipe is light and buoyant because it is made without any dairy, but luscious because it emphasizes high quality chocolate. Dairy products tend to blunt the flavor of chocolate, so if you want to highlight an exceptionally fine chocolate, it is best to substitute water for cream when making your emulsion. Anyone who has worked with chocolate......

Here's one of our favorite munchies, a healthy(ish) and interesting snack to add to your game plan for Sunday. It's also quick and easy enough to whip up during the commercials. Just slice up some green(ish) mango - you can cut it into chunks if you don't feel like julienning it (we use our mandoline). Serve it with a quick dry dip made of: 5 tbsp granulated sugar 1 tsp salt 1/2 tsp cayenne......

This soup is of Georgian origin, where pairing red beans and walnuts appears to be some sort of national pastime. It's a rustic soup, lusciously creamy and actually good for you, too. (Unless you overload on the olive oil, that is. Since we don't specify quantities on that, it's entirely your call.) Red Bean and Walnut Soup (adapted from Please to the Table by Anya von Bremzen and John Welchman) 1 lb. dried red beans......

Crunchy, salty, spicy, and satisfying, these quick pickled cucumbers add a nice kick to most any meal. We reduced the oil content from Kuo's original recipe to make it a bit lighter and healthier, and rinsed off the excess salt after maceration in order to obtain a more balanced flavor, at least to our palate. Quick-Pickled Cucumbers with Chili Bean Sauce (adapted from The Key to Chinese Cooking by Irene Kuo) For the quick-pickling: 2......

For New Year's Eve this year, we served a multi-course meal, full of complex and labor-intensive dishes. What had our guests raving and demanding seconds and thirds, though? These simple little flans, which we threw together on a whim the day before. This basic flan recipe has only 5 ingredients, and takes just about no effort whatsoever. Add some cocoa nibs and infuse the cream before mixing everything together, though, and you have a......

This puree was inspired by a dish we had at Alinea, during the most impressive meal we have ever been served. The dish that inspired us was lobster (butter-poached, we 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 the larger bowl holding the smaller bowl of edible food. It was one of the most luxurious experiences we have......

Inspired by the miso butterscotch pork belly we had at Tailor, these ribs are meatier, heftier, and to our bellies more satisfying than Sam Mason's creation. Betcha expected a Thanksgiving recipe for us today. Well, our family traditionally goes to Peter Luger's every year on Thanksgiving, so we can't help you there. If you're willing to flout tradition, though, we can't think of a better way to express gratitude for our loved ones than......

Quince is in season, and this year we mean to take advantage of it. Quinces are like apples' upscale cousins - tarter, rosier, more gussied up and elegant. While the apple is available right here, right now, the quince must be cooked for a long time until its pale flesh turns a ruddy hue and its lush sweetness is fully evoked. The apple wants you without hesitation, but the quince must be seduced. When picking......

The folks over at the all delicious, all the time site Serious Eats rounded up and presented a bumper crop of recipes from the newly released Mark Bittman cookbook last week, the 996-page How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food. The latest in Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” series, this giant book is exactly what those omnibus, fried-shallot-and-butternut-squash glossy vegetarian porn books strategically posed on chain bookstore discount tables purport to......

Not everything has to be complicated. These napoleons are dead simple and utterly delicious. The chocolate layers are made of an easy-schmeasy faux chocolate mousse, made by melting chocolate into heavy cream, chilling it, and whipping it like whipped cream. Phyllo is purchased, layered, and baked with minimal effort. And raspberries, oh, luscious, seasonal raspberries! This came about because we found raspberries for sale at the greenmarket for half the price we're used to, so......

When you get to the Greenmarket and there is a bunch of basil the size of a small shrub, offered for the meager price of one dollar, staring at you there is only one thing to do. Buy it, head home and make some pesto. If you have a food processor or a blender, your best bet is to whip up as much as you can handle. It is easily frozen, allowing you to taste......

Our wok has been yearning for seasonal vegetables, those colorful, tasty treats soon to go out of season and disappear until next spring. So when some pattypan squash and garlic scapes conveniently appeared in our kitchen, we knew just what to do with them. We love the layered timing of stir-frying, the fast terror of it. We like to tell people that if they're not afraid when stir-frying, they probably have the heat down too......

This started out as an attempt at making Fesenjan, an intense Afghani and Persian concoction of chicken in a thick pomegranate walnut sauce. We 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 (Chinese rice wine) later, this really became a creation of its own. Maybe someday we'll master the art of cooking Fesenjan, but......

Recipe for a Cuban Molotov cocktail: Michael Moore, Harvey Weinstein, a documentary about U.S. healthcare and a federal investigation. No need to mix, because it'll stir into a frenzy on its own. Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and his distributor, Harvey Weinstein, appeared at a press conference yesterday to question why the government is investigating Moore's trip to Cuba for his upcoming film, Sicko. The film, which premiered at Cannes and is scheduled to open......

Frank essentially calls Robert out on his Il Brigante review from a couple of weeks back. Looks like he is getting his pizza jones ramped up, expect a flurry of pizza output in the next few months. In a sad bit of news, Teresa's the the Polish stalwart on lower on First Avenue has ended its 22 year run in the East Village. They remain in business at a Brooklyn Heights location. In a sadder......

More stone fruit abound this week at most farmers markets in the NYC metro area. Over at the Union Square Greenmarket, Locust Grove Farm had a wide variety of plums available with even more slated to come to market this week. While driving back from a Sunday farm visit, our friend Kate talked the car through her favorite plum recipe when the conversation came up. Simple, satisfying and always successful - here it is......

Now that the spring has given way to summer, grass is getting long everywhere - much to the chagrin of teenagers whose parents want to know if they have mowed the lawn yet. What this means for the eaters here in NYC is that chickens born in early spring are just getting up to their market weight (3 ½ - 4 ½ pounds) while feasting on flavor-enhancing grass. People can talk at length about......

Although around for a few weeks now, Green Garlic really hit it’s stride last week with lengthy, flowing green tops and a slightly more mature bulb with its flavor well on the way to what one expects from papery, white garlic found at most food stores. The youth and freshness of Green Garlic allows for raw and cooked deployment in a wide variety of dishes, vinaigrettes and sauces. For cooked dishes use it in......