Results tagged “cooking”

Dilemma! Who does one vote for in a Gwyneth Paltrow versus Real Housewife Bethenny Frankel deathmatch? The Daily News reports that Frankel, who is also a chef when she's not busy being a reality television puppet, doesn't want to see the Hollywood starlet-turned-lifestyle guru get her own cooking show; "I'd rather staple my eyelids shut than watch Gwyneth cook. [She] is afraid to [reveal] who she really is—she's so manhandled by publicists and managers. Her show would be way too boring to watch," she declared. As opposed to watching the Real Housewives of New York, which isn't boring or contrived and is just a delight for everyone watching. If you recall, Gwyneth recently roasted a chicken, which apparently put the fear into Frankel—there have been rumors that she left the Bravo show and is working on her own food series.

Last October, Almond, the unpretentious French bistro that's become a Bridgehampton hotspot, boldly expanded to Manhattan with an outpost in the Flatiron district. But even before the city's economy drifted into its current deep funk, chef/co-owner Jason Weiner faced a daunting task: finding a way to fill the massive East 22nd Street space that's been the ruin of many a restaurateur, including Rocco DiSpirito’s Rocco's, Jeffrey Chodorow’s Caviar & Bananas, and Borough Food & Drink.

These sweet and savory meatballs make good use of the fresh eucalyptus you can sometimes find at the local greenmarkets. The eucalyptus in this recipe must not be eaten—the toxic leaves can cause adverse health effects if consumed in large quantities—but as the skewer is right up against your nose when nibbling the kofte, the eucalyptus scent radically changes the way you experience the flavor of the kofte itself.

These truffles were inspired by Goat Lady Dairy, a Greensboro, NC farmer who makes chevre truffles using a blended ganache of about 60% chocolate to 40% chevre, with a bit of vanilla and salt.

Everyone loves romanesco, the green fractal cauliflower that has been appearing more prominently in stores and greenmarkets 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.

Like a tart tatine, this quince tart is made of flaky puff pastry, sweet, tender fruit, and caramel pulling it all together. This tart is safer, though, and more easily constructed.

Can't swing New York's top rated restaurant, Per Se, for Thanksgiving? Enjoy chef Thomas Keller's cuisine at a fraction of the cost with this selection from his cookbook, The French Laundry. Some of these meals can take hours of preparation and require obscure ingredients and advanced cooking techniques, but there are also plenty of simpler, shorter recipes here; you just need to know where to look.

Our fourth Thanksgiving recipe is for the main course—turkey wing confit— and it doesn’t require a lot of labor or time. But the real beauty of this recipe is twofold in that you don’t need a whole turkey, and that the ‘leftovers’ will last a lot longer than the typical post-holiday binge week. All you really need is a big pot of duck fat, salt, garlic, a few turkey wings, and a 200 degree oven.

Making fresh pasta at home is fast and easy, and with filled pasta like this, you can freeze it for later meals as well. This latest iteration of our pomegranate walnut sauce is by far the most delicious and intensely flavored. If you don't feel like rolling out pasta, try just braising the pork and serving it with this sauce and store bought pasta instead. Click through for the full recipe!

Besides the sickening amount of mass-produced prole candy available this time of year, there's also an abundance of higher grade Halloween eating and drinking options. And so it begins; the long, downward holiday flab spiral that reaches its nadir around the first week of January when you have to start leaving the top button of your pants undone. Oh well, no use fighting it; here are some consumption opportunities we've been able to scare up:
• Through the weekend, the 2008 Vendy award-winning Treats Truck will be featuring Halloween specials including Halloween sugar cookies and Candy Corn Crispy Squares. (Keep apprised of the truck's whereabouts.)
• According to their website, "the ghouls of the cheese world" will converge at Artisanal Cheese on Halloween night. Fromager Waldemar Albrecht and wine professional Candela Prol will conduct a tasting of cheeses and wines "from remote and obscure places on a night that will be hauntingly remembered." Sure it costs $85, but freaking out about your budget is part of the Halloween fun.
• Sushi Samba's Halloween specials take their cue from the outrageous, stylized contortions of Kabuki characters, hence their "Spooky Kabooki" party on Friday at their Park and 7th Street location, with a costume contest that will send the most inventively dressed diner (out of all locations) on a weekend vacation to Las Vegas. Runners-up walk with $100 gift certificates, and special menu items include the Dracula dessert: Coca cola gelee, vanilla bean ice cream, raspberry foam and finish with berry blood drops & pop rock explosions.

Instead of serving a raw salmon tartare, you can take a few days to cure your own salmon in your fridge at home. It adds a much greater depth of flavor and a more interesting texture.

     

Have you ever dreamed that you could have a multi-course lunch at the home of an amazing chef, hang out in his kitchen while he prepares it and pick up some cooking tips and recipes along the way? It’s possible. One way is to befriend (or maybe even date) a chef. Another is through By Invitation Only events, open to platinum American Express card members. Chef Cyril Renaud of Fleur de Sel opened up his Brooklyn kitchen to some Platinum AmEx cardholders, many of whom had used their reward points to attend the event. If you've been saving your reward points for a rainy day, now's a great time to use them.

Mark Bello wants to teach you how to make a perfect pizza at home. With fresh dough and carefully selected local and Italian ingredients, Bello makes delectable thin-crust pies using his standard home oven in Chinatown, or, through his catering and cooking class company, Pizza a Casa in your home oven as well. He spreads the pizza gospel throughout the city teaching classes at the likes of Murray's and Astor Center and at private events.

is an incredibly thorough and well-researched reference guide for home and professional cooks alike.

This simple vegetarian dish is exquisitely flavorful, with all the small touches coming together to make something marvelous. The sweet potatoes are, well, sweet. But in this dish they also become tart and spicy, and the yogurt raita is richly flavored with roasted rice powder and a final touch of freshly infused clove oil stirred in at the end. Full recipe after the jump!

Enjoy it folks -- blueberries are in peak season. Although technically they are in season from May to October, they've exploded recently. They're showing up in farmers' markets (here's a map of map of NYC Greenmarkets), CSA shares, and even the New York Times magazine's sunday recipes.

For a couple years now, a Chicago-based group called the Neighbors Project has been encouraging gentrifiers in cities across America to “connect with their diverse neighbors to improve the neighborhood for everyone.” The goal is to neutralize the “polarization” caused by widespread urban gentrification, and also offer advice for people who have had it with the corner bodega’s refusal to carry the New York Times and stock more produce beyond the usual “bananas that look like they're in pain.”

Gridskipper may have a round-up of where to find New York's best black and white cookies, but forget them, just make them yourself! They turn out to be very easy to throw together, and far, far tastier than any you can buy, even in Brooklyn. "Look to the cookie, Elaine!" Recipe after the jump.

Sour cherry trees in Brooklyn (and yes, there are a few) are just at their peak, and the greenmarkets are flooding with cherries now as well. Sweet bing cherries are better for eating fresh and plain, but sour cherries (also known as pie cherries) are more flavorful and better for baking.

Ochazuke is a Japanese dish comprised of rice and various toppings (often leftovers) served as a soup with green tea poured over it. It makes a wonderfully simple breakfast.

Since April, the Lower East Side Girls Club has been operating their La Tiendita (The Little Store) booth at the Essex Street Market. The Girls Club reaches out to economically disadvantaged girls and young women between the ages of 8 and 23, offering athletic, cultural, life-skills and career oriented programs.

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 without adapting it to make sure the acidity level is high enough to keep it safe.

It turns out that you can buy duck hearts at Ottomanelli's Meat Market (285 Bleecker Street) in 5 pound bags for something like $3-4 a pound. Just order a bag and in a few days you will have an abundance of duck hearts to play with! Thaw them just enough to separate them into ziplock bags with maybe 1/2 pound duck hearts in each, label the bags with the date and contents, and freeze whatever you don't cook immediately.

. He then went on to host Good Deal with Dave Lieberman, and now hosts two web-only shows, Dave Does and Eat This. He is also a private chef for individual and corporate clients. In this capacity he recently created a menu for the W hotel chain, "Cravings by Dave Lieberman," inspired by some of the existing and upcoming global W properties.

This cake is light and luscious, like a barely cooked chocolate mousse. It's best served with strawberries, which are coming in gorgeous from New Jersey to the Greenmarkets right about now. Full recipe after the jump.

There are rare times when New Yorkers are jealous of their suburban bretheren; a Memorial Day weekend marked by barbecues galore may be one of those times. But New Yorker's are a resourceful bunch -- the majority of us may not have yards, but there's always a way to find a grill.

These are dead simple, very tasty, and enjoyably audible – both the pop rocks and people's reaction to them.

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!

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.