Archive for September, 2008

« Previous Entries

Eggplant from heaven

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Do you believe in fate, mes amis? How else can I explain the marvelous confluence of forces — dare I call it synergy? — that led to this delicious Indian baingan bharta.  With my chili-loving friend Arthur coming over for dinner, I knew I had to bring the spice. After some quick googling (I typed in [...]

Tuscan beans (better the second day)

Monday, September 29th, 2008

Apologies for last week’s brief hiatus. Another project sucked away all our cooking time… but it’s over now (we think). If this all sounds a bit cloak-and-dagger, it’s just because we’re superstitious. We will reveal more about this project-of-mystery soon!  Before the busyness took over, we prepared “white beans, Tuscan style” from Mark Bittman’s How [...]

Dining Out and About (London): Books for Cooks

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

We’re just back from a weekend jaunt to London, and though it was a very brief visit (made even shorter by the Eurostar problems), I still managed to squeeze in a visit to my favorite bookstore in the world, Books for Cooks.  As you might guess from the name, this tiny shop is devoted to cookbooks!(!!!) [...]

Zucchini pancakes, two ways

Friday, September 19th, 2008

Squash, courgette, zucchini, call it what you will, but the vegetable is threatening to take over the world! Or, at least the market (and certainly the garden). It’s everywhere, it’s cheap… and it’s one of the main ingredients of Mark Bittman’s “vegetable pancakes” from his book How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, a recipe that we [...]

A Moveable (exorbitant) feast

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

If you’ve read Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, you know all about his hand-to-mouth days as a young writer in 1920s Paris. Oh, those romantic days, when the fireplaces weren’t simply ornamental, when fisherman worked the Seine, when a young man — Hem — could spend his days poor, happy, and writing in cafés, and his [...]

Five items: Ratatouille

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

With summer eeking to a close, much warm-weather produce has already disappeared (for example, peaches, which were available by the crate one week and shockingly gone the next!). But the market is still full of eggplants, peppers and tomatoes — all the veg you need to make one or two last batches of ratatouille.  First [...]

Dining Out and About (Paris): Maria Luisa, pizzeria napoletana

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

  I love French food as much as the next person (maybe more), but sometimes I hanker for a little diversity — after all, I am American and our national cuisine is… every cuisine. Of the many foods I crave (among them: sushi, enchiladas, cheeseburgers, fried rice, and falafel), excellent pizza can be the most [...]

Dry-pan eggplant — egg-cellent!

Monday, September 15th, 2008

With eggplant season drawing to a close, and in the spirit of continuing my review of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, I decided to try Mark Bittman’s recipe for “dry-pan eggplant.” This recipe is also on the book’s list of “20 essential vegetarian dishes” and it well deserves its spot — it is fantastic!

Essential Stir-fry

Friday, September 12th, 2008

Bonjour mes amis! We’re back again with another edition of Cooking the Books; this time we tried the “stir-fried vegetables” from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman. After a lifetime of eating Chinese food, not to mention four solid years of living in Beijing, stir-fry is no stranger to me. But, this recipe was included [...]

Dining Out and About: Chez Omar

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Chez Omar is a gem, but it is not a hidden one. Nor is it particularly Parisian: Almost every other voice you hear has an American accent; many others are Japanese. Heck, the host (propriétaire? Omar?) even speaks Japanese! But, with its classic bistro appearance (complete with smoke-stained walls, mirrored columns and red pleather booths), [...]

« Previous Entries