A day at the beach with my kids is one of the least relaxing activities I can think of.
My family is loud.
Volume can vary a ton when you’re cooking, depending on how you measure. Do you carefully spoon the flour into a measuring cup, or do you scoop with the cup? Are you using chunky Morton kosher salt, or finer Diamond Crystal? There can be a 40 percent difference in volume depending on the brand.
Standalone bakeries that produce everything in-house are hard to find – let alone ones that produce results as consistently good as Almondine.
Kombucha is a great just-walked-in-the-door, sweet-tart wine replacement.
I love bread and would happily eat it for every meal of the day.
Normally, making polenta means having a convenient excuse to use all the butter, milk, and Parmesan in my fridge. Using miso and water instead builds tons of flavor but keeps the texture light.
Hodo Soy’s firm tofu is certainly stir-fry-able, but my favorite thing to do is shred it using the large holes of a box grater and use it in vegan sloppy joes.
Meatloaf has never quite risen above its name. It offers comfort and predictability, but rarely fireworks.
When I cook Thanksgiving in the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen, every tool I need is within arm’s reach, groceries are delivered, and colleagues know better than to talk to me when I have that look on my face.
The deliciousness of a bowl of pasta isn’t proportional to the time it takes to make it: A three-hour ragu doesn’t necessarily taste 15 times better than a 10-minute butter-and-Parm weeknight affair.
My first foray into meatless burgers was BA’s Best Veggie Burger, a no-holds-barred, maximalist veggie burger in the style of Superiority Burger. A year later I followed that up with a black-bean tofu burger designed to stand up to the high heat of the grill. So what was there left to say? Plenty.
When it comes to breakfast, baked goods are my weakness (besides coffee): toast, croissants, heck, even a scone on the weekend. There is one bakery item, though, that you will never see in my life, and that’s a muffin.
My dad had a wildly embarrassing habit for a while, that luckily only came out when he was traveling abroad. When trying to decide what restaurant to eat in, he would boldly stride in to the kitchen of every possible contender and have a look around.
Vancouver is a coffee-lover’s paradise, capable of impressing even the most hyper-caffeinated and jaded New Yorkers, such as myself. The coffee is fantastic, whether I happened to be craving a world-class espresso served with monastic intensity or a single-origin pour-over at a vibrant all-day cafe.
O-Med doesn’t make vinegars that you would ever consider cleaning with. They’re lush, like burying your nose in a platter of lavender and peaches, with the concentrated, fruity essence of a good glass of wine.
I live on a lonely culinary island, built on (very thin) bedrock consisting of things I know, or believe, my family will eat. It is a small island. Fortunately, nachos are on that island with me, and nothing gets my family fired up like nachos for lunch.
Invest in decent cookware. One $80 skillet is better than a $100 13-piece set that has nine things you don’t need.
The deliciousness of a bowl of pasta isn’t proportional to the time it takes to make it: A three-hour ragu doesn’t necessarily taste 15 times better than a 10-minute butter-and-Parm weeknight affair.
Volume can vary a ton when you’re cooking, depending on how you measure. Do you carefully spoon the flour into a measuring cup, or do you scoop with the cup? Are you using chunky Morton kosher salt, or finer Diamond Crystal? There can be a 40 percent difference in volume depending on the brand.
Pretty much anything pureed needs a big flavor assist to be delicious; just think about how much butter, cream, and salt it takes to make mashed potatoes truly amazing.
Everyone has foods that take them on mental journeys.
The story of my life could be told in a series of waffle snapshots. I spent childhood weekends watching the lid of our Munsey waffle maker rise and fall as it chugged through a single square waffle at a time.
I have half a cutlery shop’s worth of spoons in my pocket at all times designated for tasting.
My favorite Hodo Soy product is the firm tofu, a dense cryovac-ed block that isn’t packed in water like most store-bought tofu and, therefore, doesn’t need to be pressed before using (what a revelation!). It’s nutty and mild with a firm – never spongy – consistency.
When I was a kid, brown rice felt like punishment. Like the ever-increasing amount of whole wheat flour that would appear in my mom’s pancakes and waffles, brown rice with dinner felt like we had done something really wrong.
When it comes to store-bought sauces, it takes a lot to impress me.
I would never try to make ketchup from scratch. Or Dijon mustard, for that matter. These condiments, and plenty of others, are hard to improve upon and even harder to reproduce in a home kitchen.
Have you ever walked into a store and wanted to leave your old life behind and become the person you would be if your life was full of the things in that store? I hadn’t until I walked into At Land in Dobbs Ferry, New York.
My first foray into meatless burgers was BA’s Best Veggie Burger, a no-holds-barred, maximalist veggie burger in the style of Superiority Burger. A year later I followed that up with a black-bean tofu burger designed to stand up to the high heat of the grill. So what was there left to say? Plenty.
I would rather have 1/4 of a cookie for four days than a big cookie on day one followed by three days with nothing – this has been documented by my colleagues.
Snapper is pretty forgiving for a white fish. The skin crisps up beautifully, which holds it together.
Virtually every pair of athletic shoes comes with wafer-thin, virtually non-existent insoles that have very little heel or arch support. This is where Superfeet Black Premium Insoles come in. With ergonomic support for heels and arches, they feel molded to my feet in ways that continue to astound me.
Invest in decent cookware. One $80 skillet is better than a $100 13-piece set that has nine things you don’t need.
When it comes to breakfast, baked goods are my weakness (besides coffee): toast, croissants, heck, even a scone on the weekend. There is one bakery item, though, that you will never see in my life, and that’s a muffin.
Simply put, Hestan NanoBond cookware is the most durable stainless cookware that I have ever seen.
When my grandmother passed away in 2014, she left behind some recipes, but nobody stepped forward to follow in her footsteps and become pop-up cookie factories whenever the need arose.
Creating a healthier alternative to barbecue sauce isn’t easy. The extreme range of flavors, from piercing vinegar to salty to sweet to barely perceptible umami, isn’t easy to recreate.
Surprisingly, fish works great for sheet pan dinners because it cooks quickly through direct pan contact.
I break out in hives whenever I hear the word disrupt applied to cooking.
Stir-fried spring vegetables over miso polenta is the meal equivalent of wanting it so badly to be spring yet recognizing it is 40 degrees outside with a brisk headwind no matter which way you are facing.
I’ve found that grilled chicken is one of the fastest, easiest ways of getting protein on my family’s plate, but it needs a massively flavorful sauce to finish it during the final minutes of cooking.
Vancouver is a coffee-lover’s paradise, capable of impressing even the most hyper-caffeinated and jaded New Yorkers, such as myself. The coffee is fantastic, whether I happened to be craving a world-class espresso served with monastic intensity or a single-origin pour-over at a vibrant all-day cafe.
In some circles there’s a conception that milk chocolate is the Merlot of the chocolate world.
I am not someone who ever feels bad about eating a big bowl of pasta for dinner.
Creating a healthier alternative to barbecue sauce isn’t easy. The extreme range of flavors, from piercing vinegar to salty to sweet to barely perceptible umami, isn’t easy to recreate.
Once you get your hands on some nduja, chances are you will find all kinds of ways to use it.
I was Bookings Production Manager at Vogue, a fancy way of saying that I helped produce photo shoots and booked hair, makeup, and modeling talent.
Pages: 1 2
