Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 136

How To Make Cheesecake

In honor of Rue McClanahan's passing, here's the last of my Food2 vids (directed by Joshua Hume) in which Matt Lewis of Baked teaches us how to make a Golden Girls-worthy cheesecake.

BBQ Banner

Clear your cache and load up the site to see Lindy Groening's latest banner. Thanks to her and thanks to Justin Dickinson, once again, for making it happen.

Spatchcocked Chicken

Have you spatchcocked your chicken lately?

For a long time, I've roasted my chickens the traditional way--sometimes trussing, sometimes not; sometimes stuffing with Meyer lemons, sometimes sprinkling with fennel seeds & cayenne pepper--but almost always keeping it whole. Then I read J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's article on Serious Eats: "How (Not) To Roast a Chicken." In his amusing and scientific way, Kenji explains why roasting chicken the traditional way (the way I normally roast) leaves you...

Women with Food on Their Faces in Recent Movies

I noticed a curious phenomenon yesterday at the movies. I was seeing "Sex and the City 2" (which I expected to hate and actually enjoyed) when a trailer for the new Drew Barrymore romantic comedy "Going the Distance" came on screen. And in this mildly amusing trailer, Drew Barrymore gets BBQ sauce all over her face (screenshot above) and Justin Long kisses it off. Ok, fair enough.

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Newsletter #8

I try to punish those of you who don't subscribe to my newsletter (sign-up here) but this week's is just too good not to share: dinners at The Mark & Franny's and brunches at The Cowgirl Hall of Fame & Dovetail. Here it is... now do you feel guilty? It's ok, I forgive you.

Shrimp & Mussels

Protein has been the subject of much debate around our dinner table lately. "You know," said Craig when I served him pasta for the umpeenth time the other night, "if you're trying to get in shape" (see newsletter) "you should probably serve more protein and less carbs."

It's a fair point, but here's the deal: unlike most cooks who came of age in a pre-Pollan era, I don't feel comfortable buying that mass-market plastic-wrapped factory-farmed meat you see in the grocery store. I don't...

My First Soft-Boiled Egg

Two Sundays ago, after a morning of bird-watching with our ornithologist friend Morgan Tingley, I ate my first soft-boiled egg. We were at Cafe Sabarsky, one of my favorite places in New York, and Morgan recommended the Wiener Frühstück for breakfast: a continental breakfast of orangensaft, ein weiches ei, weißbrot, butter, marmelade & honig von staud. Translation: coffee, orange juice, brioche toast, country bread, butter, jam, honey from Staud and, our subject today, a soft-boiled egg.

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Bananas Foster Bread

As a kid, I was a sucker for platitudes. Especially this one, which I heard at EPCOT: "If you can dream it, you can do it!"

Things don't change that much, I suppose: this weekend I had a dream and I decided that I could do it. The dream was Bananas Foster Bread. I wanted the concentrated banana flavor of Bannas Foster integrated into a bread. I didn't really know how to do this, but I used my intuition. I started by making Bananas Foster and then separated the bananas from the sauce...

On Taking Pictures of Your Food

For the past six years, I've taken a picture of almost everything I've eaten.

Yesterday, for example, I took a picture of my lunch. I was at The New French with my friend Diana and I had an interesting salmon salad with escarole and a Muscadet vinaigrette: I took a picture with my cell phone. The night before I'd made a spatchcocked chicken and of course I took pictures. Lunch that day was a humdrum hummus at Hummus Place, but you get the drift: I take pictures of what I eat.

What does t...

Greek Salad

It's true that travel is an important component of any burgeoning chef's education, but sometimes you go somewhere and the lessons don't stick. For example, I spent ten days last summer in Spain--most of that time in Barcelona--and though we ate some truly extraordinary food, I can't really say that it changed the way I cook. Yes, I use smoked paprika a bit more freely in my food and I'm very intrigued by the possibilities of pairing chickpeas with seafood, but beyond that? I'm still the...