Join Slow Food’s Time For Lunch Campaign and Eat In

So, you're wondering what to do this Labor Day. Bumming around town? Hitting the beach? Picnicking in the park? Wherever the venue, I've got the perfect activity for it. It's a sleepy day for businesses anyway, so why not do as Slow Food USA is urging and Eat-In? That's right, it's a national call of not eating out... everywhere!

Creamy Tomato-Braised Lentils with Broccoli Rabe

They say money can't buy you friends, but I'll be darned if food can't. Who can resist a juicy beefsteak tomato, or a handful of yellow sungolds? It's like an offering of sunshine. Much more personal, in my opinion, than a grimy gray bill.

Chilled Eggplant Soup

Some of you guys are gonna say off the bat, I don't like eggplant. And hey, that's okay. They're squishy, mushy, weird and hard to pinpoint the taste of. But I'll bet if I gave you this soup and didn't tell you what was in it (roasted eggplant), you'd slurp it to no satisfaction's end. It's smooth, creamy, cold and intensely flavorful. And sometimes, a little mystery only helps the effect.

Psst... Hapa Kitchen is having a luau next Friday. Stay in town! Get down! See more details here!

Pancetta, Egg and Fried Sage Pizza (at Pizza a Casa with Mark Bello)

What's more wakeup-worthy than bacon and eggs? How about Italian pancetta, yolky free-range eggs, and fried sage atop a homemade crust? Followed by six other tantalizingly-topped slices of the good stuff, all freshly baked by yourself with some expert guidance? Actually, I'd say that's a good recipe for an afternoon nap. Whichever the case, these pizzas were all delicious, and the occasion that spurred them (and that nap) is chef Mark Bello's Pizza a Casa class.

The Combo That Could

win the Souperdouper Soup Kitchen Sandwich Special, that is! It was a sweltering hot Saturday like most of the scorchers this week, but we saved a hearty appetite for the twelve different sandwiches, soups or combos of both at this benefit cook-off. And soon, we hope even hungrier people from the neighborhood will get to enjoy the best of the bunch, too.

Heirloom Tomato Salad with Dukkah

We've officially reached the "too hot to cook" threshold in NYC. Or for frequent home cooks, too hot to eat anything that isn't cooked, and then chilled. Does cold food automatically equate a salad? I don't know. If you have hot string beans, blanched and drizzled with olive oil, you don't call it a salad. But if it's the same thing cold, it's a green bean salad. I fear this argument has no consequence, but to prove some state of heat-stricken delirium.

Serious Eats (and I) Fall for Small Farms

It's been a tough year for everyone, and small businesses -- farms, especially -- are no exception. That's why it's so exciting to see more consumers and the media rallying behind them. Today, Serious Eats posted a wonderful video about farmers at NYC's Greenmarkets, and how they've contributed to our food system. It's centered around a trip the Serious Eats team took to Mountain Sweet Berry Farm, and followed them as they packed up their harvest and trucked it into Union Square one Saturday. It was a long day for the Serious Eaters, who drove up to Roscoe, NY that morning to begin shooting. But perhaps a shade emblematic of the everyday toil these farmers go through. As Ed Levine exclaimed in the video, "The risks that they take every day!"

Steamed Artichokes with Lime Butter, Nectarines and Shallots

Serendipity only occurs every so often. But often, it occurs thanks to like-minded food-obsessed friends. With one, we nibbled on fried artichoke hearts over lunch while talking about how daunting most home cooks found cooking the florets, with their spiky petals that needed to be trimmed and trimmed, and her parents' industrious habit of steaming them whole, leaving the legwork to the diners who would slather them in butter before eating. I resolved to find the perfect way to mediate this arduous task to readers. Then, upon meeting another friend for dinner that night, he promptly thrust me a bag filled with a recent Greenmarket find: artichokes. Unaware of my mission.

Enter the Soup Kitchen Sandwich Special

flyer by Patrick Moberg It's a charity cook-off of an entirely new breed! This soup and sandwich-off, which will take place in two Saturdays in the backyard beergarden of t.b.d., is not just an opportunity for amateur cooks to serve the best combo special the city has seen. It's a chance for them to roll up their sleeves in community service afterward (at a date to be determined by the winner), and serve the winning dish to the needy at the Greenpoint Soup Kitchen. It's souper.

Potato Risotto

I am neither Irish nor Italian. But I can think of few things more satisfying alone than potatoes, and stock-simmered arborio rice. And together? Holy matrimony. "Satisfy" is not the word.