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 [...]

Except for 10 more tickets, which can be purchased by super beneficiaries of the Food Bank for NYC for $30 (instead of $15)! Yep, we just sold the last of our 100 regular tickets today, and are offering these 10 extra spots to anyone who just NEEDS to come, despite forking over the extra allowance [...]

Those of you who missed the second annual Unfancy Food Show yesterday, I bemoan your losses. Begun as a locally-focused antithesis to the Fancy Food Show, this slovenly stepsister event took place in the backyard patio of Williamsburg’s East River Bar over six hours of scattered thunderstorm. And a good time was had by all.

I’m thinking it might be time to upgrade the ‘ol NEOINY hideaway with a Kitchenaid stand mixer, equipped with all the meat grinding attachment works. (I’m browsing them on Ebay right now.) The motivating factor is right above: luscious, freshly made, and deceptively simple sausages. Who knew that with the right tools, making sausage at [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Challah! The Risotto Challenge has been fought, and by “fought” I mean “feasted”! I hate to say, ‘You kind of had to be there’ about this event, but I seriously can’t even remember enough of it. All I know is that I had to replenish the plates and forks and one point, and we’d put [...]

Ladies and fellas: It is with dreadful anticipation that I kick off the twenty-four hour countdown to what I surely hope becomes the risotto event of the year. Big words, huh? But I am confident that our 18 contestants’ entries will dazzle the crowds; and that our astute judges’ decisions will be wise.

Behold: the work of two stir-crazy minds joined in the common goal of furthering research in the home-cooked field of arboriology–

Is more chocolate! Because thanks to all of you who voted and the esteemed chocolate experts who judged the top ten entries, I’ve won Culinate’s Death by Chocolate blogging contest, hence a weekend trip for two to Napa to attend Copia Center’s chocolate festival and a private tour of Charles Chocolates‘ factory. What?! I’m still [...]

Gee, I’m single. I don’t know the way it is with you, but Valentine’s Day traditionally falls on a romantically awkward time for me (except for the last two years). This year, it’s pretty bad. I’ll spare you the gory details, but I essentially returned from my girlfriend-bonding Moroccan vacation to a live-in who’d decided [...]

What could be a better fetch this holiday season than this fetching kitchen apron? At $10 a raffle ticket, no less? You got me there. Tomorrow, December 21st is the last day to try your luck at winning this and other prizes through Chez Pim’s Menu 4 Hope charity event. Check out Serious Eats’ list [...]

It’s all over, those of you — and there are many of you out there — who missed the third installment of the Manhattan Chili Takedown. Fifteen chilis, two judges, one unpredictable host, a swank club called The Plumm, a motley crew of both carnivorous and vegetarian chili-making characters, their friends, one small child, and [...]

If it’s the season for cuddling up with hot toddies and passing family reunions by in a drunken haze, then I’ve just sampled two very merry ways to embrace the holiday “spirit.” Local author and cocktail expert David Wondrich paid a visit to Lenell’s liquor store last Saturday, and I was not alone in imbibing. [...]

Prize UE17
When Serious Eats wrote me an email requesting my participation in Chez Pim’s honorable Menu for Hope 4 charity raffle, there was not a doubt in my mind that I was in. But there was some trepidation. As a holiday-themed fundraising event, Menu for Hope asks food bloggers from around the world to become [...]

Spicy Honey Aubergines! And that’s our official theme song for the finale of the Ugliest Gourmet blogging contest. Huzzah to The Blog That Ate Manhattan for creating what this blog’s readers have deemed the ugliest delicious food of the bunch. All told, the results were nail-bitingly close to a four-way tie, with three votes [...]

Judgment is upon us for The Ugliest Gourmet! Let’s have a big round of imaginary applause for everyone who bravely cooked, photographed and blogged about all the treats below. This home-cooking event was devised to prove that, despite the visual ostentation that professional cooks strive for, great food doesn’t always look so great. So for [...]

As I’ve probably admitted more than once on this blog, in times of need, I turn the corner of my block and walk into “my” neighborhood bodega. Here I can score milk, limes, boxes of pasta, snacks, and more often than I’d like, pints of ice cream. Plus, the friendly Korean couple who own it [...]

It’s almost here. In little over one week, this blog will become a virtual showcase of the most horrendous cooked creations ever known to have tasted good. Just imagine all the re-learning these cooks are doing for it – making a go of mashing things once again, chopping with reckless disregard for uniformity, focusing their [...]

Restaurant food is pretty. Home-cooked food, not so much. Oh yes, we try. We, of the conscientious, borderline obsessive home cooking set, have every intention of making a meal beautiful on both the inside and out. But unless you have plating and presentation skills of the likes of Matt Armendiraz, it ain’t nothin’ compared to [...]

This land is corn land: Curt Ellis (left) and Ian Cheney in Queens
It’s not a joke. More than 80 million acres of corn were planted in the US last year. Yet only 253,500 of them were sweet corn, for eating on the cob. Where does the rest of it go? Leave it to Aaron Woolf, [...]

Oh, to the joys of toys. And to learning something new every day.
Let me back up a moment. When I purchased an antique Chinese cookie mold in a curiosity store a month or so back, I thought that the thing itself was so beautiful and ornate that it would engender the most incredible spawn in [...]

What a week it’s been. Working and barely playing when it’s nice out for me always adds up to a slow way to count the weekdays. But luckily, a blissful way to end it came in the form of the second Foodie Book Club meeting at The Brooklyn Kitchen, where we tried to speak intelligently [...]

Calling all food gadgety guys and gals: This weekend, sharpen up those electric knives or butter up your confusing cake pan and make something for That Crazy Kitchen Gadget.
We’ll have a grand old time admiring the bounty of these gadgets when I post a round-up in early August. Details at the link above!

Announcing the first one-off food blogging event on Not Eating Out in New York: That Crazy Kitchen Gadget. Rules are simple:
1. Identify your crazy, obscure, mysterious, ineffective, obsolete or completely awesome kitchen gadget and remember to photograph it or at least describe it well in your post.
2. Cook a dish using the same crazy kitchen [...]

the tasting frenzy at Mo Pitkin’s left no chili standing
For those of you who weren’t sweating over styrofoam cups of chili at the Manhattan Chili Takedown 2007 yesterday, I was there; and I survive to tell you of the glory that went down.

Being the breadwinner, they say, isn’t always fun. I can think of one exception, however, where that’s pure pish posh: winning the No-Knead Bread-Off at The Brooklyn Kitchen. Alright, I tied for best bread in show, beating out three of the five different loaves made by locals who each took twists on the no-knead bread [...]

Vanessa, keeper of the wonderfully inventive veggie recipe vault Vanesscipes, gamely tagged me in blog tag: the Five Things You Didn’t Know About Me series. As if I didn’t already share too many stupid facts about myself on this site, allow me to dispel a number of things that you may or may not [...]

As a Christmas gift, I was given a one-night class at Camaje cooking classes. The course for the evening at the West Village French bistro that my benefactor chose to enroll me in was “A Taste of Thai.” This was the first cooking class I had taken since seventh grade home economics, and I couldn’t [...]

NYC foodies! What have you got to do this Friday after sleeping off your turkey stupor and shopping ’til you drop? Spicy garlic dill pickles, picklemartinis, kick ass music, and good ol’ bar drinking might be just the weekend wake-up call.
What’s more, the McClure’s Pickles cukes are all primed and prepped for the holiday season, [...]

On Sunday, the lampposts were decorated with green balloons along Orchard Street in the Lower East Side. Down a few narrow blocks to Guss’ corner deli, a neighborhood landmark pickle maker, and the garlicky brines of some dozen pickle makers’ tents filled the air of the dank, congested streets. It was a beautiful day in [...]