Cooking seasonally doesn’t just mean winter, spring, summer, fall. It also means looking out your window and getting inspired. If you live in L.A. and you’ve been looking out the window lately, you may have noticed a little rain falling from the sky. Actually, a lot of rain. God knows, L.A. needs it, and I love the rain, so this isn’t me complaining. This is me explaining why today, for lunch, I decided to make red lentil soup with harissa. The French Call it Mirepoix To make this soup, you’ll have to chop up some carrots, onions, and celery (aka: mirepoix or soffrito, depending on your alleg ..read more

Cooking clichés are cliché for a reason: they usually contain some wisdom. Take this one: “The simplest things to make are often the hardest.” I had this lesson hammered home to me in Japan, where just a tiny wedge of sweet potato was somehow the most incredible sweet potato of my life. Or in Kyoto where we ate a whole carrot that was battered and fried-tempura style, arriving at the table like a work of art. The American version of that, I believe, is pie. Simple to behold, challenging to make. And perhaps the most simple and challenging of all is the lemon meringue pie. Weigh Your Pie Down ..read more

When celebrated food writer David Lebovitz is coming to dinner, you have a lot of planning to do. Do you make something fancy? Something casual? Something French? American? After lots of cookbook perusing and soul-searching, I remembered a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe I saw in The Guardian for Swiss Chard lasagna with Gruyère and hazelnuts. And I thought: “Now that’s something David won’t be expecting!” Start with the Sauce As with most lasagna recipes, you start with a tomato sauce. This one has garlic that you toast until brown, tomato paste which I toasted along with the garlic (even though tha ..read more

When it comes to granola, we’re all living in denial. The word evokes such feelings of healthfulness, it’s actually become an adjective to describe somebody who’s wholesome. “They’re a little too granola,” you might say about that guitar-playing, “aw-shucks” guy in your reading group. But the truth is that granola is PACKED with sugar. I read on the interwebs that 1/2 cup can contain up to 20 grams of sugar. Which is why I was so excited to find a recipe for naturally-sweetened granola in Marco Canora’s wonderful book, A Good Food Day. Always Trust a Skinny Chef There are a lot of “healthy” c ..read more

When Craig told me our friend Lucci was coming for dinner on Monday night, I said “great!” I figured I could throw something together, it being a Monday and all. But when Monday rolled around I was at a loss. Do I make something complex, like a stew? Do I make a simple and satisfying soup, like a ribollita? And then it came to me in a flash: Crispy Parmesan Chicken with Escarole Salad. Aka: the fanciest-looking, easiest dinner in the world. It’s All About That Breast I’m normally not a fan of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but as my sister-in-law once taught me they have their moments! E ..read more

When the Oscars rolled around this year, I went through all of my dessert cookbooks looking for the most elegant dessert. And then I remembered: people like to drink wine during the Oscars. And when they’re done with their pizza, and eating dessert, what dessert still goes well with wine? Something salty. Which is why I had the idea to make these Salted Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies. The Less Natural the PB, the Better Normally, when you cook (or bake) you want to use all natural ingredients. Not so when you make peanut butter cookies! The more commercial the peanut butter, the better. You’re g ..read more

Some desserts just elicit an “ooh” or an “ahh” when you bring them to the table. This citrus upside-down cake is one of them! I’ve made this cake (which comes to us from Melissa Clark) several times for dinner parties over the past few years. Every time I bring it out people stop their conversation to marvel at the grid of reds and oranges and yellows from the variety of citrus that I use. To put it in layman’s terms, it’s a showstopper! (Do laymen use the word “showstopper”?) And it’s actually a cinch to make. It’s All About the Citrus As you might guess with a citrus upside-down cake, it’s ..read more

Now that the secret’s out (the secret being that we’re moving back to NY after twelve years in L.A.), it’s time to talk about what I’ll miss the most about California. Will it be the beaches? It won’t be the beaches. Will it be the glamorous movie premieres? It won’t be the glamorous movie premieres. No, the thing that I’ll miss the most about L.A. is very simple: it’s the produce. Every trip to our farmer’s market is like a trip to an edible jewelry store: the bright orange persimmons in December, the juicy blood red oranges in January, and the huge array of chilies and tomatoes and summer sq ..read more

When Craig and I first started dating back in 2006, my friend Patty asked what sign he was and when he said Aquarius she weighed that against the fact that I was an Aquarius and concluded: “It’ll never work. Two Aquariuses? I don’t see it.” Seventeen years later, we’re still two Aquariuses battling it out. And February is of course our favorite month because we both get to celebrate our birthdays. For my birthday this year, we went to Antico Nuovo and ate pasta and ice cream and had a grand old time. For Craig’s birthday this year, we went out to Kato and ate an extravagant tasting menu of exq ..read more

When you cook a recipe with lots of ingredients, you expect a big impact. So it would follow that cooking a recipe with just a few ingredients would be less impactful; that it would be simple in the way mashed potatoes are simple: straightforward, satisfying, but not complex. And then someone sends you a recipe for noodles with mushrooms, chiles, and lime and you think to yourself, “okay that seems pretty basic,” but then you make it and you marvel at the way every ingredient sings. Not just flavor-wise, but texture-wise. From the crunchy, salty, roasted peanuts you add at the end, to the refr ..read more