Banana Coconut Cornbread with Peach Compote

This recipe is like a southern housewife who just flew back from the Bahamas. There's nothing that smells of home, sweet home like a fresh-baked pan of cornbread, but who wants to forget the intoxicating aromas of the tropics so soon? Heck, a compromise. And to return to reality from that little hyperbole, this dish was indeed a compromise when it was planned for the menu at the BBQ last night, hosted by Finger on the Pulse.

Cooking Out in NY: BBQ at Hope Lounge tomorrow

Tomorrow is going to be a silly day. I've got a nine o'clock call time on my agenda tomorrow morning, when I'll start the day by making 300 servings of cornbread with one oven. I can't wait to not sleep.

Fried Green Eggplant with Peach Salsa

This weekend, I had the pleasure of running into not one but two different old roommates of mine, whom I haven't seen in ages and didn't even realize lived in the city in one case. I know these women intimately, but for some stupid reason have fallen out of touch with them over the years. Now, we didn't romp around in flour, or kill our abusive husbands with frying pans like the protagonists in Fried Green Tomatoes. But I was feeling nostalgic for those times all the same, and knew just the recipe I wanted to try out for the first time today. Except for one little ingredient switch.

It’s a Bodega Party in a Box! and chat with Kit Hodge, The Neighbors Project

Here's a project I'm truly proud to have my name attached to: The Neighbors Project. And the nifty new "Bodega Party in a Box" from the non-profit organization's Food & Liquor store initiative, which aims to put more fresh produce on the shelves of corner stores (aka bodegas). Inside the box, there's a cookbook filled with bodega-friendly recipes, tips and fun anecdotes from contributors (including the lovely Daisy Martinez, and yours truly) about their favorite bodegas, a silk-screened Baggu reusable shopping bag, a stack of party invitation cards and envelopes, and some flags to deck your pad with.

Fresh Fruit-Filled Ricotta Tarts

This recipe started with a lot of leftover bread. I didn't know what to do with it; it was stale, so I ground it into coarse breadcrumbs in the food processor. Okay, so now I have breadcrumbs, I thought. What to do? This was great fodder for, let's see, meatballs? Frying batter? Savory stuffing? Nothing that sounded too appealing during these hot weeks of July.

Salade Me-coise (and Trials & Retribution)

Trial: I get on my bike to run some errands, including a grocery store trip to get ingredients for a classic French salade nicoise. I have a craving for slick, smushed beads of brininess otherwise known as olives. It's almost ninety degrees outside. I get out of the store, unlock my bike, and get on it only to find that the back tire is sagged like an empty sail.

The Great Hot Dog Cook-Off: It was great

I was a proud glutton on Saturday. Not that co-hosting a Great Hot Dog Cook-Off isn't reason enough to celebrate (or pack on five extra pounds), but through it all, we made over $1500 for the Food Bank for NYC from ticket sales and cash donations at the event. Fourteen chef-contestants made trays full of fabulous, fantastical frankfurter creations. We made new friends, lots of them. And it was also a day when the majority of the ballot-voting audience made this fascinating discovery: Goat cheese and hot dogs go REALLY well together. Especially with mangoes.

Blueberry Heart Tarts (well, almost)

To put it in more discerning culinary terminology, these might actually be galettes, the rustic hand-shaped pastry with filling. But as Merriam-Webster defines it, a galette is a flat, round pastry with filling, and these are heart-shaped (ahem, almost). "Tart" usually implies a similar dessert that takes shape by way of a tart pan, and has a sticky, gooey or custardy filling beneath the fruit topping. Or either/or. These have neither. I'm a sucker for rhymes also, so I'll stick with tart for these.

If I Were Entering the Great Hot Dog Cook-Off Take 2: The Maki Dog

The Great Hot Dog Cook-Off is less than one week away, time for our chef-competitors to put on their thinking caps and channel their most dogged determination. Obviously, I've been putting myself in their shoes lately, and this is what I'd do if I were entering the Veggie Dog category next Saturday: layer a heap of sweet vinegar-laced sushi rice atop a sheet of nori, place a cold veggie link inside it with a squirt of wasabi mayo, and roll with it. The Maki Dog: summer's healthy, chilled, surprisingly tasty answer to dull dog boredom.

Black Bean Ravioli with Cojita and Fresh Oregano

It doesn't have quite the timeless ring of "black beans and rice," but here we are anyway: black bean ravioli. Where cheap comfort food and painstaking pasta-making collide. And like many good twists on classic dishes, this one was difficult and time-consuming to make, even with my disregard to the uniformity of the ravioli's shape and overall prettiness. But if you'll recall my last kitchen disaster with black beans, at least these homemade raviolis were edible. Actually, they were delicious, and that makes it all worthwhile (at least on special occasions).