Write on the blackboard 1,000 times: Food Gifts Do No Save You Money. Drill it into your head and give up this crazy notion. Labor + ingredients + packaging + delivery all come with a dollar value. My mom and I discovered this false economy the year she decided to sponsor a Save-the-Children child instead of giving people Christmas gifts. She made them a little something, including her famous Cheese, Onion, and Tomato Pies. Don’t bake this pie as a gift; give a copy of The Vegetarian Epicure (Random House) from whence the recipe comes as a gift, perhaps with a pound of cheese to put in it.
Did being immersed in all things potato influence the pie I made for Pie Party Potluck LIVE! 2015? Find out in my recap of the event where I made a Whole 30 compliant Carnitas Pie for Paul. It had a potato crust layered with pork carnitas, caramelized onions, roasted carrots, roasted radishes, garlicky roasted tomatoes, and eggs.
Dinner for two at the River Cafe will run you over $300 without drinks. For the same money or less, you could feed up to 19 friends by hosting a barbecue in Brooklyn Bridge Park with the same multi-million dollar view. How To Host A BBQ in Brooklyn Bridge Park has tips and a checklist for you to plan, execute and enjoy a successful and stress-free barbecue in the park.
“Pssst… Your tart was the best thing on the table.” Normally, I wouldn’t be bragging someone whispered this to me about the Roasted Asparagus, Mushroom, Bacon and Cheese Tart I made for a New York Women’s Culinary Alliance potluck last week. But the person to who said it was the former owner of one of the finest bakeries in New York City. Plus, I’d almost threw the tart in the composter early that day.
I wish the story behind the recipe for this Lazy Cheesy Turkey Shepherd’s Pie was something interesting and compelling. Wouldn’t it be cool if it were a recipe that I never got from my estranged grandma, but was found by my mother in her old high school yearbook that she hadn’t looked at for 50 years? Only that wouldn’t have happened because she never got her yearbook since she graduated early in January instead of June. You’d think she still would have received one…
What if Lazy Cheesy Turkey Shepherd’s Pie were a recipe from a compilation cookbook by the Junior League of Copake Lake, where we summered as kids near The Berkshires? It does sound like a recipe that would show up in one of those kinds of cookbooks from the 70’s. Sadly, Copake Lake was a bungalow colony for blue collar workers from the city. It was probably not fancy enough for a bowling league, much less the junior league.
An eyeglass store is not the first place you’d think you’d find cooking inspiration. At the Warby Parker stores, you can buy books from small presses, in addition to eyeglasses, but I didn’t notice any cookbooks. This recipe for Sriracha Honey Lime Glaze for my Cooked The Sh*t Wings was inspired by an event at the store on Washington Street. It was for a book that 826NYC and Edible Schoolyard helped produce, filled with stories by New York school kids called “Chicken Makes the Ice Cream Taste Better”.
I’m a chunky soup girl so this healthy, easy-to-make, inexpensive, delicious, vegan soup made with dal—a puree of split yellow peas as the base, but loaded with chunks of vegetables is the perfect winter warmer.
No batter, no dredging, no added nothing. Just chicken, salt and pepper and slow, long heat (aka cook the sh*t out of them) make these chicken wings crunchy and crispy. You can eat them plain but we never do. Put something sticky, add something crunchy and go to town!
Imagine if people could get smoked duck breasts instead of hamburgers at a fast-food joint. That’s the world I want to live in. You know that old saying: “Give a man a smoked duck breast that’s vacuum-sealed and will live in the refrigerator for months, and he will always have a delicious meal up his sleeve.”
What if you had your way with the classic Cobb salad? As Frank Sinatra sang, “I did it my way.”
This is a Cobb salad that met up with a Niçoise salad that rejected its own fishiness. Not that I hate fish, but I thought if I add tuna and anchovies to this salad, on top of all the other things I already added, things would have definitely been a little fishy. ba-dum-bum-CHING
