Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 142

The Recipe Tweaker

This morning I tweaked a recipe and I wasn't even cooking. I was reading Twitter (as I do every morning after reading The New York Times, Google Reader, and checking Facebook) and I saw my friend Elise Tweet about her beet hummus. I clicked to the recipe (see here) and then I Tweeted to her: "Have you considered adding horseradish to your beet hummus? I wonder if that'd work?" She Tweeted back: "love the idea of adding horseradish to the beet hummus. yummmmmmm." That's what's known as a...

Brunch at The Breslin

The Breslin

April Bloomfield--the chef of The Spotted Pig, the late John Dory and now The Breslin--cooks bold food. That's what everyone loves about her; her food is never, ever boring. It's the metaphysical opposite of the boiled peas and carrots you remember from your middle school cafeteria. Her peas and carrots, if she ran a middle school cafeteria, would be browned and salted and spiced and acidified. Kids would be so energized by them they'd stop beating each...

Momofuku Milk Bar's Compost Cookie Recipe

My mom loves Regis Philbin. Growing up, she'd watch Regis & Kathie Lee religiously; she even once went to a shopping mall, somewhere on Long Island, to get Kathie Lee Gifford to sign a copy of her book. These days, she and my dad Tivo Regis and Kelly in the morning and watch it at night. I'm a View man myself (though Whoopie is no Rosie; I miss the compulsively watchable hysteria of Rosie vs. Elizabeth) but once I went to a taping of Regis & Kathie Lee, almost ten years ago, because my...

Ten Rules for Food Blogging

Inspired by this piece in the Guardian, in which several successful fiction writers (including Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood, and Jonathan Franzen) give their ten rules for writing fiction, here are my ten rules for food blogging. (I hope my other senior food blogging colleagues write their own ten rules too.)

1. Have a hook. That hook might be cooking your way through a cookbook, deriding disastrous cakes, or advising fellow workers on where to eat in midtown.

2. If you don't have a h...

Café Sabarsky, Company (Pizza) & Billy's Bakery

I don't have a fast answer to the question "what's your favorite restaurant?" (it's a tie, at this point, between Blue Hill Stone Barns & Prune) but I do have an immediate suggestion when someone is coming to New York for the first time and wants to know where to go: "Cafe Sabarasky," I almost always say. "It's one of my favorite places in the city."

Yesterday being my 31st birthday, I made sure that in between Craig's two big birthday surprises--a trip to MoMA for the Tim...

French Onion Soup

The idea of a secret ingredient is a funny one. I think it's based on a modern American notion of shortcuts; the idea that instead of working hard to be successful, you can win the lottery or appear on a reality show or read the Cliff's Notes and still pass your A.P. English exam (I did that actually: sorry, Hester Prynne). This American obsession with getting everywhere as quickly as possible, to FastPass your way to accomplishment, doesn't translate well to cooking. Which is why, I...

Magnolia Bakery's Banana Pudding

Let's say you have a loved one who doesn't cook (ahem) and Valentine's Day is just around the corner (ahem) and you're sick and tired of slaving over a hot stove, day in and day out, and wish that just once (ahem) they'd make you dessert.

Ok, my "ahems" are a bit unfair: that made it sound like I'm complaining about my own domestic situation. I'm not. I don't want Craig to make me dessert--I like making my own dessert, thank you very much--but you, yes YOU, may wish your loved one to...

Dinner Dish (2/10/10)

Last week I tried an experiment based on something I saw my friend Jeffery Self do a few days prior: I hosted a LIVE video Q&A on a site called ustream.tv. I called the show "Dinner Dish," announced it 5 minutes before I did it on Twitter, and about 14 people came (including my mom) and asked me questions about food and cooking in the chat room. I promised the next time I did it I'd give more warning so here it is: this afternoon, at 5 PM EST, click here and ask me anything you want to know a...

Omakase at Sushi Yasuda

Craig's birthday has always been an excellent excuse to splurge at a high-end restaurant, the kind of place I couldn't justify going to the rest of the year. Usually I pick a place that piques my curiosity, or a place I've been dying to try for a long time. Last year we visited Momofuku Ko, the year before--and it was quite a year--Per Se and, the year before that, Blue Hill.

This year, it finally occurred to me: all this time, I'd been choosing places I really wanted to go to without...

Made-Up Minestrone

My proudest culinary achievements aren't the ones where I followed a recipe really well or repeated a specific technique demonstrated by a chef, they're the ones where on a freezing cold night, instead of ordering a pizza or Thai food (side-note: we still haven't found good take-out in the West Village; anyone?) I whip up something delicious with what I have on hand.

Last week, I was excited to use a stock I'd made from a leftover Thomas Keller Ad Hoc chicken. What happened...