What’s a birthday dinner without birthday cake?

There has to be cake. And after polling Craig on his preferred dinner option (the aforementioned birthday lasagna), I queried him about cake. His response: “Yellow cake with chocolate frosting, please.” That’s when a hyperlink appeared in my brain sending me to this cake recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

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

For Craig’s birthday this year, I didn’t take him to a fancy dinner as I’ve done in years past (see here, here and here). This year his birthday had two components: (1) a dinner at home with his favorite foods; and (2) a weekend trip to Palm Springs. You’ll hear about Palm Springs later this week, but this post concerns that dinner at home. When I asked what he wanted for his entree, Craig, a little like Garfield, had one word in his speech balloon: “Lasagna.”

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

If you cook the same thing over and over and over again, eventually you get really good at it.

That’s what happened with me and chicken: I’m really good at cooking it. And though there are many who find chicken boring, that’s usually because chicken, when stripped of its skin and bones, is, indeed, very boring. So the first rule is: never cook chicken without the skin or bones. The second rule is: be generous with salt. I’ve quoted this often, because I never forgot it; when Mario Batali had his old Food Network show he showered a raw chicken with salt and said: “No one ever says ‘this chicken’s too salty.’” He’s right–and that salt makes a huge difference.

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

Confession: Before Saturday, I’d never been to a food truck.

Predicted reaction: WHAT?! OH MY GOD!? YOU’RE A FOOD WRITER AND YOU’VE NEVER BEEN TO A FOOD TRUCK OH MY GOD I’M TOTALLY NOT GOING TO READ YOU ANYMORE AND I’M BURNING MY COMPUTER RIGHT NOW TO RID IT OF YOUR EMBARRASSING HUMILIATING ATTEMPT AT BEING A DECENT HUMAN BEING.

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

Little by little, bit by bit, L.A. is chipping away at me. First: I joined a gym. Then I started cooking quinoa. Most recently, I met my friend Isaac (pictured above) in Silverlake for coffee; only Intelligentsia was so packed, we agreed to a change of venue and journeyed down the street to a juice bar. Isaac ordered the green concoction that you see him holding and I bought myself a coconut water.

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

Andrew Carmellini, in his new book American Flavor, shares a biscuit recipe that he calls “the world’s best biscuits.” This is a bold claim, even for a chef as revered as Carmellini, but in his defense, when he started serving biscuits (and fried chicken) at his pre-The Dutch Italian restaurant, Locanda Verde, the critics gushed. In fact, while working on a different book proposal, I called Carmellini to have him coach me through biscuit-making on the phone. The man knew his stuff.

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

[Photo credit: Gothamist]

We just saw a hilarious skewering of the food world at L.A.’s U.C.B. (Upright Citizens Brigade) called “Pig: A Restaurant.” Actress Lauren Adams tackles everyone from Gael Greene to David Chang in this play written by Leila Cohan-Miccio and directed by Caitlin Bitzegio. Based on real world food experiences (Leila ran the blog Grub Street and Lauren worked at Balthazar and D.B. Bistro Moderne), the show imagines a Brooklyn restaurant called Pig: A Restaurant where the hostess answers the phone “This is Pig: A Restaurant, I’m Aurora: A Hostess.” Like most hip restaurants nowadays, every dish there is made with pork (to the chagrin of the owner’s dead husband’s kosher-keeping parents) and the signature drink is a Brooklyn (“which is the same as a Manhattan, except you drink it in Brooklyn.”) The show flies along at a clip and for anyone with passing knowledge of the food world (at the opening night party, Thomas Keller is turned away because he’s “not on the list”) you’re bound to appreciate the knowing, wicked humor of these very talented restaurant industry vets. And if you’re in L.A. you’re in luck: there’s another show on February 2nd at 7 PM. (There are also more shows in New York on 2/6 and 2/20). Go see it; you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll crave pork belly.

Two things are making me more of a restaurant adventurer here in L.A. than I was in New York: (1) nicer weather and (2) a car. In New York, on the bitterest, most miserable days of January, I would stick to a very specific loop that involved lunch at Hummus Place, coffee at Joe, and a slushy trek home. Here in L.A., it’s just a matter of unlocking my car door, rolling down the windows, cranking up the Original Cast Recording of “Next To Normal” and hitting the road.

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

The meat section at my local Gelson’s is pretty spectacular: if you name a cut of meat, they probably have it. And on Friday night I was craving lamb and, studying the lamb options there, I saw a giant leg of lamb for $70 and a rack of lamb for $40. Those prices would seem to make lamb prohibitively expensive, yet there was another lamb option there for a measly $10.

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