Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 139

My Favorite Cooking App

Cooking Apps are all the rage these days. If you don't own an iPhone or a computer (how are you reading this??!) you're probably wondering: "What's a cooking app?" Basically, it's an application that you can download that aids you in your cooking. So there's Michael Ruhlman's wonderful Ratio app which calculates precisely how much butter and sugar you need if you have X amount of flour in order to make a batch of cookies. That's really cool. And then there's Mark Bittman's "How To Cook...

The Coco Winner

There were some incredible entries this weekend in the Coco Cookbook Contest. The most impressive, technically, was this mushroom stuffed quail with risotto by Joe; the funniest was "Become a Master Chef in 5 Easy Steps" by Cristin (she burned her feet like I did in this old post). There was also a masterful Southern dinner, a great post about roasted marrow bones & parsley salad (did you know Anthony Bourdain picked that for his last meal?), a gorgeous honey-braised côtes de boeuf with...

Salted Caramel Sauce

For those of you daunted by the rainbow cookie recipe, fear not: here's a one-pot dessert sauce that, with a tub of good vanilla ice cream (I like Häagen-Dazs), will transform your entire weekend. It's salty, it's sticky, it's sweet and it takes just a few minutes.

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

Rainbow Cookies

Neighborliness isn't a word you hear much in New York City. Sure, we've met our neighbor neighbors a few times (the man right next door asked me to stop playing show tunes on the piano at 3 AM; can you believe the nerve?) but I'd never call our relationship with our neighbors neighborly. No, I haven't experienced much neighborliness in N.Y.C. until, last week, when a food writer named Deobrah DiClementi, partner of Rebecca Charles (chef/owner of Pearl Oyster Bar) responded to a mention I...

Bombay Chicken Curry

I've always been a very truthful food blogger and so I'm going to tell you the truth about the video you see above. Part One of the truth is this: the Bombay Chicken Curry that Chef Floyd Cardoz (chef at the celebrated New York City restaurant Tabla) made for us in the first half of this video was the best chicken curry I've ever had in my life. Part Two of the truth concerns the chicken curry that I make in the second half of the video. Despite my assurances that it tastes delicious and t...

The Soda Tax

The commercial that you see above really irked me the first time that I saw it. In it, a woman grouses about a bill to tax soda in New York State (a similar bill is being proposed in ten other states, including California and Washington), making the point that she can barely make ends meet (though, as my friend Mark Blankenship points out in his post about it, the woman has an "enormous kitchen") and urging Governor Paterson to focus on "out-of-control spending in Albany" rather than how m...

Cafe Gitane at The Jane Hotel

If you want to know the best thing about Cafe Gitane in The Jane Hotel, you're looking at it. It's an utterly charming space; big, bright, airy. There's even an alligator on the wall.

When Craig's Uncle Chris, Aunt Liz and Cousin Katie came through New York a few weeks ago, they wanted to take us out to brunch. At the time, I had a copy of New York Magazine's Best of New York in my hand and under the category of "Best Brunch" they chose Cafe Gitane for "an ambience that feels airlifted...

White Lasagna

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When I get invited to dinner parties, these days, I pretty much make it a policy not to take pictures. This takes the pressure off the host or hostess, who may be nervous that their food blogging friend is scrutinizing every bite, preparing to skewer them for all the world to see on his food blog the next morning. Mostly, though it takes the pressure off me: by not taking pictures, there's no expectation that I'm going to blog about it. So if you're wondering why the sweet potato souffle...

Win Coco by Phaidon

One of the most beautiful books to come into my possession in recent months has been the Coco book by Phaidon (see here). The book features ten master chefs (including Mario Batali, Ferran Adria, and Fergus Henderson) who write essays about their ten favorite chefs (100 chefs total); there are gorgeous pictures, recipes and a singular design (our art savvy friend who works at the Guggenheim couldn't stop raving when she saw this book). And now the book can be yours! To win it, cook a dish...

Frosty Banana Berry Smoothie

College is for experimenting, right? We know all about your gay make-out session and that time you tried to smoke catnip. When I was in college, I'd experiment with smoothies. I'd go to Smoothie King, right there in Emory Village (because I went to Emory, see) and order a Caribbean Way which was 5 squirts of this and 4 squirts of that and, if I wanted, a shot of protein powder. Then came Jamba Juice with a few more squirts of this and that and some other strange powders and I was hooked...