Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 122
February 17, 2011
Brunch at Red Rooster & Craig's Birthday Dinner at Soto
Some new restaurants deserve their buzz, others not so much.
Marcus Samuelsson's Red Rooster in Harlem deserves its buzz. It's not really about the food, though the food is very good; it's about the concept, the location, the community-mindedness of the enterprise.
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February 10, 2011
How Did I Lose 15 Pounds Writing a Cookbook?
Last week I thought I was dying.
No really: it was Craig's birthday and I took him out to Soto where we ordered the tasting menu (this is after taking him to a taping of The Daily Show.) The food started to come--a tiny amuse bouche, then a bowl of miso soup--and after the soup, I felt utterly fully. Like I couldn't have been fuller and there were ten more courses on their way. I asked the waitress if we could cancel my tasting menu and if I could just pay for the two courses I already ate and she said "No; the chef's already preparing your whole meal."
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February 8, 2011
Dorie Greenspan's Mustard Bottle Vinaigrette
When food icons have food blogs, you need to read them.
That's certainly true of Dorie Greenspan's blog. Her posts, like Dorie herself, are wise, witty and warm. And they're full of good advice--like where to get pastries in Paris or how to whip up begger's linguine--but the advice that's stuck with the most was her advice, last April, to use the last remnants of mustard in the jar to make a vinaigrette.
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February 7, 2011
A Sour Cherry Coffee Cake In Winter
Most food blog posts are meant to inspire, but this one is meant to mock.
Yes I am mocking you! When sour cherry season rolled around last June, did I, like you, stuff myself silly, popping every last sour cherry into my mouth until I had none left? No, sir, I did not. Like a smart little squirrel, I pitted my sour cherries and then popped them on to a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Look, I even took a picture....
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February 4, 2011
A Chinese New Year Banner
February 1, 2011
Stewed Borlotti Beans with Polenta
My favorite way to cook, the cooking that makes me happiest, is the kind of cooking you do on the fly: no planning, no prepping. You just see what you have already on hand and you make dinner. And often that dinner is way better than the dinner you spend a week prepping for, shopping for and methodically executing. I have a theory about this. The theory involves cravings: the food that you crave in a specific moment directly correlates to something that your body wants. So, when you're making dinner on the fly, if you add an extra pinch of red chile flakes? That's because your body's craving some heat. And that's why the dinner you make on the fly is often so satisfying.
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January 31, 2011
The Best Biscuits in Atlanta
Is there such a thing as biscuit terroir?
In wine, as in coffee, we can talk about the soil and growing conditions of the grapes or beans and how that affects the end product. But with biscuits, there are so many variables--the butter, the flour, the baking powder and the buttermilk--you can't explicitly tie the biscuits to a place. For all you know that baking powder came from Newark, New Jersey.
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January 28, 2011
Toast Your Oatmeal
It's such a simple idea, the kind of idea that makes you wonder why you didn't think of it before.
I got the idea from Kim Boyce's marvelous baking book, "Good To The Grain" (the winner of Food52's Piglet tournament of cookbooks.) From the title of this post, I think you've sussed it out; the idea is to toast your oatmeal before you cook it.
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January 24, 2011
Mississippi Mud Pie (From The Sky)
It's a bird! It's a plane! No it's me, The Amateur Gourmet, blogging to you live from Delta flight 2243, en route to Atlanta, Georgia.
Yes, this is an absolute first for me, my first blog post written from a plane. And I choose, as my subject matter, a dessert that I made back in December, before it got wicked cold out. And it's a cold dessert so you might be thinking: why would we eat something from the freezer when it's 0 degrees on the thermometer? Patience, people, I have my reasons.
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January 20, 2011
The Return of CHEESE FOR DINNER (with Heidi's Oat Soda Bread)
You may remember May 12, 2009 as the day in history when I served cheese for dinner. I wrote a post about it called Cheese For Dinner and 47 of you left comments because you were so shocked and disturbed by the idea. Cheese for dinner? How can you eat cheese for dinner?
Actually, most of you had the opposite reaction. "I love cheese for dinner!" one of you wrote. So, last week, traipsing through Murray's Cheese on my way back to the apartment I decided to revisit the concept. I picked up two kinds of cheese, a box of salad greens and a pear from the bodega close by and prepared myself for the return, the return of CHEESE FOR DINNER.
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