Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 127

Eric Wolitzky's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Tomorrow (as you'll see in the next post) I'm hoofing it to Baked in Red Hook so I can do a live-streaming interview with Eric Wolitzky, everyone's favorite contestant from the debut season of "Top Chef: Just Desserts." You probably didn't know this, but I met Eric years ago at my friend Jimmy's apartment. It was a holiday party and I remember Eric brought these divine chocolate truffles and I thought, "This guy's got talent!" Even though he was just eliminated, Eric's performance on "Just Desserts" was truly remarkable; he had fancy pants three-starred Michelin pastry chefs wowed with his "humble" (humble? hardly!) bakery treats. One such treat was this chocolate chip cookie.

Click here to read the rest of this Amateur Gourmet post »

Dinner on Ellis Island (Molly O'Neill's "One Big Table" Event)

In college (at Emory Univeristy in Atlanta), I took a class called "The Modernization of Judaism." The class was taught by a lesbian rabbi and, over the course of the semester, we studied the various divergent branches of the Jewish community (I attended an Orthodox Shabbat service, the women separate from the men) and learned how Reformed Jews (the Jews I was raised amongst) were a dying breed since they reproduced the least (Hasidic Jews have us significantly beat).

We also studied the two large waves of Jews that emigrated to America in both the 19th and 20th centuries. The first wave came mostly from Western Europe (predominantly from Germany); the second wave, a much larger wave, came from Eastern Europe as Russian Jews fled the pogroms. And if you were to study that second wave you'd see, splashing somewhere in the water, the ancestors whose crossing set cosmic forces in motion that led to the creation of this food blog. One of those ancestors was my mother's father's mother, Netty Rosenblum.

Click here to read the rest of this Amateur Gourmet post »

Challah Bread French Toast

This is a highly unnecessary post, especially if you've seen my post "Easy French Toast." That's my go-to French Toast recipe and the only difference between that recipe and this recipe is the bread. So why write this post at all? Because the difference between making French Toast with white sandwich bread (as I did in that old post) and making it with challah bread (as I do in this post) is like the difference between building a fort with pillows and blankets vs. building a fort with bricks, mortar and cannons. This French Toast blasts the other French Toast apart.

Click here to read the rest of this Amateur Gourmet post »

In Praise of the Two Fat Ladies

Mr. Game Show was a Hanukkah gift that my parents bought me one year in the 1980s. It looked like a regular board game (small tokens that you moved around a large, printed board) except there, in the middle, was a plastic figurine that talked. "Hello!" it announced in a Guy Smiley voice, "I'm Mr. Game Show! Who's ready to play a game?"

Mr. Game Show's Mr. Gameshow had slick-backed hair and big white teeth. He embodied everything that was false and mockable about that most loathsome TV type: the game show host. As time marched on, and we moved through the 80s to the 90s to today, the TV landscape has shifted enough that, even though there are still game show hosts (Pat Sajak and Alex Trebek haven't gone anywhere) there's a new contender for that most loathsome TV type: the food show host.

Click here to read the rest of this Amateur Gourmet post »

Making a Turkey of Myself

It's that time again...time for a new banner. For the record, I taste great with cranberry sauce and a side of mashed potatoes. Thanks, once again, to Lindy Groening for her brilliant work (note: the banner archive is fully updated, so check out all of Lindy's previous work. Do you have a favorite?) Thanks, also, to Raphael Brion who helped set it up this month. Gobble, gobble!

The Secret To Killer Pork Chops at Home

There's a psychological phenomenon--and I'm not a psychologist, so cut me some slack here--by which, even though we know what's good for us, we don't do the thing that's good for us. So, for example, let's say we're an aspiring journalist and there's a convention downstairs, in our building, for working journalists who are looking to hire interns. And let's say we want to be an intern--it's a crucial step in our professional trajectory--but, on TV, is a marathon showing of The Real Housewives of New York City and it's the episode where Jill Zarin shows up, uninvited, to the Caribbean. Even though all we have to do is turn off the TV, splash some water on our face and walk downstairs, we don't. That's a real phenomenon (perhaps it's called self-sabotage?) and I'd like to talk to you about it today in the context of pork chops.

Click here to read the rest of this Amateur Gourmet post »

What To Do With Jerusalem Artichokes

The Jews have an expression: "Next year in Jerusalem!" The idea is that next year, whatever we're doing or celebrating, we'll do it in Jerusalem, the place where all Jews should aspire to someday go. (I do aspire to go there some day, though I think Rome may be higher on my list, if only for the pasta.)

Why do I bring that up here? I needed some kind of intro to a post about Jerusalem artichokes and that seemed as good a way to start as any. This post actually has nothing to do with Jerusalem, the city in Israel; it has to do with those knobby little tubers that you may have seen recently at the farmer's market.

Click here to read the rest of this Amateur Gourmet post »

Roasted Apple & Pear Sauce

No one gets very excited when you say "apple sauce"--well no one except, maybe, people who just had their wisdom teeth out--but throw the word "pear" in there and the word "roasted" and you start to whet people's appetites. My appetite was certainly whet when I saw this recipe in The Barefoot Contessa's newest book, "How Easy Is That?" (When my friends Patty and Lauren saw the book title, they burst out laughing, because they recognized it as one of Ina's favorite things to say.) To make the sauce, all you need is what you see above in my attempt at a still life, plus some brown sugar and a little butter.

Click here to read the rest of this Amateur Gourmet post »

Anatomy of a Pork Chop Dinner (A Three Part Series)

9:24 PM, Friday, October 30th. The scene? My kitchen. In attendance? Myself and Craig. The event? The creation of one of the best plates of food I've ever made.

It started like this, see, I was at the farmer's market, taking pictures with my new camera when I spied these Jerusalem artichokes. Or was it at the butcher shop when I asked the butcher to cut me two thick-sliced pork chops? No, wasn't it on the couch reading The Barefoot Contessa's roasted apple sauce recipe in her new cookbook?

Look officer, maybe I'd do better to split this into separate posts and then link to those posts back here when I'm done. That way future generations can piece together this pork chop dinner using the links I provide. Take off my cuffs and let me get to work; time is of the essence.

My First SLR (& This Blog's First Fancy Food Pictures)

It only took six years of food blogging for me to figure out that the images on a food blog are as important as the writing. And so it was, last week, that I went with my cookbook photographer, Lizzie Leitzell (see her website here) to B&H so she could help me pick out my first SLR (or single-lens reflex camera).

Click here to read the rest of this Amateur Gourmet post »