This was all Laurie’s idea. I wish I could take credit for it, but I didn’t even know that Dreyer’s (aka Edy’s) peppermint ice cream existed. Laurie did, and she also intuited that it wouldn’t come into its own until topped with an immoderate amount of homemade hot fudge. I used the hot fudge recipe from […]
Americans have a strange relationship with pressure cookers. For one thing, there’s the fear factor. Just last night I was at the supermarket, and the cashier asked what I was planning to make with some beef, beer, leeks, and egg noodles. “Probably some stew in the pressure cooker,” I told her. A look of horror flashed […]
Bittersweet (2003) Alice Medrich 378 pages, $35 Most cookbooks don’t have a new idea anywhere between their covers. That’s not a criticism. Between now and the end of time, there will be six kajillion more Italian cookbooks published, few of which will have anything resembling a new recipe, but many of them will be quite good, because they’ll […]
Cooking by Hand (2003) Paul Bertolli 270 pages, $40 Bertolli is the former chef at Oliveto and Chez Panisse and currently the proprietor of Fra’Mani Handcrafted Salumi. Between that and the title, you won’t be surprised that Cooking By Hand is not a book about meals in minutes. It requires scouring farmer’s markets for specific ingredients for which […]
Probably there are few things kids like to hear less than that their parent is going to a meeting. Maybe we should say “playdate” instead of meeting. It seems I may have used the M-word too often. This morning, Iris was eating toast with jam. Even though she’s capable of eating bites off a big piece […]