What you’re looking at is the title card for the first-place judge’s choice chili of the latest Brooklyn Chili Takedown, made by first-time cook-off contestant Zeph Courtney. With a dark, earthy flavor and thick, rich sauce surrounding golf ball-sized hunks of beef, it’s as in-your-face as its name suggests. And below, exclusive to this blog – I think – is the winning recipe for it.
Here thee, it’s another alternative to mayonnaise in one of your favorite summertime side dishes. What have I got against mayonnaise, you might be wondering? Not a whole lot. I like the old may-o. It’s one of the mother sauces of French cuisine, so nobody can argue that it deserves respect. But this potato and fresh tomato salad has none of it. Yet it’s perplexingly rich and refreshing at the same time. Savory and sweet. Summery and wintery. Potatoey and … Read More
This Sunday marks the fourth installment of the sporadic but spectacular home cooking challenge known as the Chili Takedown. Here’s what the event’s honorable chairman had to say about chili, everyone’s favorite late-summer light meal.
Who remembers their introduction to coleslaw as a sodden, colorless, nearly congealed mess inside a pleated white paper cup? Now, who would like to forget that memory in its entirety? Me, too! Let’s hop aboard this pleasure plane and ride into a purple haze of forgetfulness, why don’t we? And, do something I’d never dreamed of recommending before about a week ago: don’t let your coleslaw sit long before serving it.
You know that summer is in full swing when there’s a barbecue to attend to every other day. But the best ones always seem to roll around just at the cusp of Labor Day. This time, New York Magazine is upping the ante with a waterfront BBQ of unprecedented heights: Announcing the first-ever Highbrow BBQ on August 23 — an afternoon extravaganza of charred, smoked and spice-rubbed goodness, plenty of beer, and live music by Islands. If the lure of … Read More
I’m serious — stop laughing. Cooking for myself is always about being good to myself. Never have I heard myself complain, ‘the service is really crappy’ when referring to my own dining room, because there, I’ll set the house rules. If I want my food prompt, I’ll make it prompt. If I want to carry out a languid, leisurely affair, I might uncork a bottle of wine, put on a record and Zen out to the task of slicing onions. … Read More
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.
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.
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 … Read More
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 … Read More