I have fond memories of eating pancakes as a kid. As an adult, I’m terribly picky about them, and I don’t usually order pancakes off a breakfast menu if I can help it. But at the resort my family often goes to over Christmas, there are amazing, enticing pancakes, and I’m unable to resist them. These are unusual, ricotta pancakes cooked thin and dense, and served with passion fruit syrup and a pool of butter. Recently I woke up craving these particular pancakes. I didn’t have ricotta in the house,…

EVENT: “Welcome to Fun-Employment” Seminar
VENUE: Phoebe’s Apartment, Flatiron
PARTY SIZE: 2
TYPE: Working Weekday Lunch
MENU: “Eggs in Pipérade” Pizzas with Crispy Prosciutto; Deli Coffee (Mark)

Since quitting my job in August, it’s been a little bit difficult to find ways of creating structure in my daily life, especially when all I ever want to do at any given time is cook. But I’ve found that to maximize productivity, and to minimize my guilt for not being in a dark cubical like the rest of my…

the boys, back from temple

Many of us will be taking today, Yom Kippur, off from work to sit in temple, pray, and do everything in our power not to think about food. So we too have abstained from posting mouth-watering pictures and recipes because, well, that would just be cruel, and it would give us yet another negligence to atone for.

But it’s hard not to acknowledge the strange culinary challenge that this holiday presents. At the end of morning services, many…

DISH: Black Bean Cakes
EVENT: Caitlyn’s Birthday
MENU IDEAS:
Appetizer / Black Bean Cakes
Main Course / Carne Asada or Baja Fish Tacos or Chipotle Vegetarian Chili or Mexican Shepherd’s Pie
Salad / Spinach Salad with Corn, Avocado, and Cilantro Citrus Vinaigrette
Dessert / Cinnamon-Mocha Dulce de Leche Bites

We got a fabulous suggestion from a reader the other day to add in pairing suggestions for dishes that are not written about in the context of a meal or party. “As someone

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I like serving pudding as a dessert, since there is something so particularly low-fuss about it. Whereas most desserts feel quite heavy after a solid meal, with pudding you control the amount of richness by choosing your milk product: anything from skim milk to coconut milk to cream will work. Though I’m a chocoholic by nature, I really do prefer vanilla pudding, and the layer of chocolate in these is actually a ganache rather than a pudding. The reason for it, besides pleasing the chocolate-lovers at the same time as…

DISH: Asian Broth with Shredded Veggies and Noodles
TYPE: Nourishing, warming, etc.
MAIN INGREDIENTS: Veggies

I left the Northern Hemisphere a couple days before Labor Day this year. The weather had cooled a bit since the peak of summer, but it was still definitely warm out—salad and sandwich weather, if you will, not yet time for soup. I spent ten days in Mozambique visiting my dear friend Essie, in the Southern Hemisphere where the seasons are, of course, reversed, and they were coming out of winter. Though I’d brought a dorky…

EVENT: Best Beef Salad for Food52
TYPE: Thai Reminiscence
DISH: Spicy Thai Beef Salad with Mizuna

The summer going into my junior year of high school, I spent 6 weeks traveling around Thailand. Other Asian countries offered the same sort of immersion program I was on, so I really couldn’t tell you why I chose Thailand in particular. All I remember is that my dad didn’t want me to go, which turned my idea into an obsession.

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DISH: Grilled Eggplant Salad

MAIN INGREDIENT: Eggplant
OCCASION: Vacation Day Lunch

Sometimes, during the work day, backseat chef and sister, Jill, sends me links to recipes she’d like to see made. Sometimes they’re one hundred percent mouthwatering, and sometimes passing them up is as easy as a fruity pie. The latter is particularly true when she sends me gross, low-cal substitutions for greasy dishes from the Hungry Girl blog, since, unfortunately, I like my food full-fat.
Yet, as I said, often Jill is spot on. This recipe for Grilled Eggplant Salad

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I’ve been having a bit of a quinoa obsession lately. Due to her gluten intolerance and my father’s need to have at least something that resembled a carb at the table, my mother used to make it all the time while I was growing up. Not many people really talked about quinoa back in 1997, and it certainly didn’t appear on any restaurant menus that I knew of, so I lumped it in the category of Weird Health Foods My Mother Liked (along with green soup, carob chips, and Rice…

EVENT: Cooking For The Rents’ Friends, Live-in Catering to Earn My Keep
VENUE: Phoebe’s Parents’ Beach House, Martha’s Vineyard
PARTY SIZE: 6
TYPE: Casual Summertime Dinner Party
MENU: Corn Cakes with Lemon Chive Crème Fraiche; Moroccan Bouillabaisse; Cous Cous; Mixed Greens; Peach-Blueberry Pie

When I left my job at the beginning of August, I decided to delay reality a bit by joining my parents on Martha’s Vineyard for the remainder of summer. It had been a while since I took…