If I were entering the Great Hot Dog Cook-Off Take I: The Baked Brie Dog

Oh yes, you heard it correctly. The Baked Brie Dog, which was born, baked, and eaten at a Memorial Day barbecue this weekend, will not be seen at the Great Hot Dog Cook-Off this July. But it only marks the beginning of the hot dog greatness that the event will doubtless inspire. Who said hot dog competitions were only about stuffing your face 'til you threw up into plastic cups? We, slightly north of Coney Island, have much more respect for our dogs than that.

Asparagus, Portobello and Watercress Salad with Sesame Vinaigrette

Go East, young asparagus whore. That's my motto for this salad, only the fourth or fifth dish this spring of what we should call the Asparagus Chronicles. I threw a dinner party last night, and this was one of the test salads I ultimately rejected for the night's first course. That salad will probably end up in The Book, and the other unused salad was essentially the same as this one, only with olive oil and lemon juice instead of sesame oil and vinegar (it was also quite good). But this take appealed to my fiendish taste for cold sesame noodles, which always makes me think of summer. The nostalgia is of course complicated ten times over by multiple textures and flavors here -- from the meaty portobello and its viscous gray juices, to the crunchy hollow stems of the watercress. The asparagus tips take on a completely different character than their juicy stalks, and who can resist the little burst of a toasted sesame seed between their teeth?

Grilled Squid Skewers

Squiwers? Skewidders? Sigh -- this dish is not the most beautiful-sounding word combination in the English language, and I guess it's just going to stay that way. As for its appearance, it's up to you how beautiful they look. If you ask me, that succulent tangle of tentacles, cooked to just a slight crisp at the curlicue tippy tips, kind of makes me swoon.

Penne and Asparagus Salad with Pecans

This is either a very boring fact or a semi-interesting cooking tip, and if you grew up eating lots of Chinese food like me, you probably already know it even if it's never been said aloud, but foods that share a similar shape and size go together. They just do. So if you're cutting up chicken to go with green beans, you do long, thin strips. If you have something like fava beans and you're cooking it with firm tofu, you'll want to pare the tofu block down to small cubes. It's not an ultimatum or anything beyond a little conventional wisdom, because things tend to cook more closely in speed if similarly sized. And your mouthfeel sensors will thank you, for giving it greater harmony.

Not Drinking Out in New York: Classic 3-Ingredient Cocktails

When I began this blog a year and a half ago, I made it pretty clear from the get-go that while I shunned restaurant, take-out and sidewalk stand food, I'd never attempt to shun drinking in bars. That was beyond my comprehension. It still is, but as time goes on, you learn some new things. And one thing I learned recently is that drinking in -- in someone's kitchen, with a few friends and as little as three ingredients -- can be just as intoxicatingly fun as going out. Mind-blowing, right? But the actual science of it is easy. I've long been intimidated by the term "home bar." This conjured images of tilted shelves, sticky cabinets and floors over-crowded with dusty, half-empty bottles of alcohol of every imaginable stripe. But you don't have to be a rampant collector of booze to throw together a few good cocktails. Most cocktails are merely varitions of one magic equation: 2 parts alcohol, 1 part sour, 1 part sweet. Or so I am told by Tobias Rower, who tends the bar at Gramercy Tavern and was kind enough to treat some friends and I to a cocktail tutorial recently.

Mint Chocolate Chip Happy Cone Cupcakes

As a friend text messaged me earlier on the night of the 2nd Annual Cupcake Bake-off held by the Brooklyn Kitchen, some milk would be really good to bring along and serve with the cupcakes, instead of drinking pint after pint after beer after eating cupcake after cupcake (after cupcake). Well, a night later I'm finally taking up that advice with the leftover cupcake scraps stashed in Tupperware in my fridge, and damn. Is this ever the best combination.

Simple Tomato and Basil Pizza

Today marked the first two of hopefully many bike laps of Prospect Park I'll ride this year. I fear the flab. I really do. It also marked an occasion for some gentler, fresher, milder and lighter fare that I'll hopefully see much more of this year. Thin-crust pizza that more resembles a salad with breadsticks? Yes, please. Even if it involves few more than three ingredients and a seriously scant amount of cheese, I'm still calling it a pizza now and for all. 'Tis the season.

Spicy Okra and Asparagus Maki Rolls

Darn unstoppable cravings. I’ve been hungrier for more things than ever this past month or so, and I don’t know why. I’m fairly certain there’s no chance I’m pregnant unless an alien abducted me during sleep. I’ve been cooking away at a happy clip for about a year and a half now, not worrying too much about troublesome conversions of restaurant to home-cooked foods. Not missing too many of the ones that I hadn’t yet tried to make. And then I get a mouthwatering taste of meaty, jujube-red raw tuna wrapped in chewy nori lodged in my sensory memory. And I stop. Disheartened.

The Brooklyn Kitchen Cooks Madhur Jaffrey

This has been one of the weeks where I wish I could just put time on hold and say, Wait -- I know it's Sunday, but I still haven't posted my tahiri recipe from last Wednesday's foodie book club at The Brooklyn Kitchen, nor the seafood skewers from the barbecue after that, nor that little side project from a trip upstate today, the dishes are still piled high in the sink -- can we just digest a moment?? I've been terribly behind. Then, a miracle happened. Before I could blog a belated post about all the great dishes that were shared at Foodie Book Club in honor of Madhur Jaffrey's Climing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India, another blogger swooped in and did a fine job of it himself. With the help of Midtown Lunch's Zach, here's The Brooklyn Kitchen's round-up of the recipes and good times at the potluck book club meeting.