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The deadline is June 21st. The prize? I will come cook with you and we will video tape it. Watch this video for the details.… more »

You can freeze anything in an ice cube tray and then float it in a drink. Fruit is an excellent candidate, any kind, pureed and strained (optional – I don’t mind seeds) will make a lovely addition to a summer drink. Or herbal or regular tea. They can be added to water, sparkling water, any juice or fresh lemonade.    If you want to make it an adult beverage you even top it off with a little vodka, rum or… more »

After my morning cup (well, cups) of coffee all I want on a hot summer afternoon is iced coffee and what better way to ice it then with coffee ice cubes – double whammy!   or you can take it even further and throw the cubes into a blender with some milk and sugar and whiz it into your own version of that rather expensive frozen coffee drink found at many fancy coffee shops Only your version, your Frozen Cafe… more »

I’m sure it’s happened to you – you forgot to taste one more time and added more salt anyway and then realized that suddenly your stew/soup/sauce was so salty it was inedible.     For years I thought the answer was to add one of these three starchy foods:     That was the solution I suggested on my live call in show, “Cooking Live,” on the food network.       Then one day, a few years ago I… more »

There is absolutely nothing better in the summer than a ripe tomato. We have a garden in the back field of my parents old farmhouse and some years I can’t keep up with the crop: Even though this kind of harvest makes me feel slightly like Lucy trying to wrap all the candies on the conveyor belt I never get tired of eating dead ripe summer tomatoes. But before I eat them straight up or use them in almost any… more »

I take my life into my own hands by saying this. I’m sure all my chef instructors from my alma mater, the Culinary Institute of America, will want to shoot me at dawn. But here is what I have discovered from cooking dinner at home 5 or 6 nights a week for the last 25 years – mise en place (meaning, prepping and measuring all your ingredients before starting a recipe) is a waste of time, literally. Here is the… more »

I bet many of you, like me today, are picking up corn at the farm stand or farmer’s market, which is a good thing, because corn close to the source (as opposed to trucked miles from the farm) is fresher. But there is a problem with corn – the second you pick it, its natural sugars start to turn to starch. I bet you have bitten into “fresh” corn and thought to yourself, wow that tastes bland and un-corny, more… more »

This is not about my Napoleon complex. I really mean it -we little people work better with a bigger knife. Actually, mostly, big people chop more efficiently with a bigger knife too.  Why? Well, Here are two chef’s knives, side by side, an 8-inch and a 10-inch: The 10-inch knife is heavier. The heaviest part of any knife is where the blade meets the handle: that is where you should position your “victim,” aka the item you are going to… more »

I am not much of a baker but I certainly would not bother at all if I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico or McCall Idaho, that is unless I owned this book: It is written by one of my most trusted baking experts, Susan Purdy, who spent years testing the recipes. Here is a little quote from the dust jacket: “Do your cakes collapse, souffles slump, cookes crumble and fruit pies fail? For those living at high  altitude, baking… more »

Southerners always soak their chicken in buttermilk before dipping it in flour and deep frying it – that is what I learned on my live call in show on the food network. I thought it was a just a Southern thing, I didn’t realize it was a science thing. I knew that dairy was a tenderizer in baked goods, now I have learned it plays the same role for chicken.  Buttermilk is not just a tenderizer, it also adds a… more »

Love fish but wish it didn’t smell quite so fishy? And how about gamey venison or livery calves liver? How do you turn that assertive aroma and taste down a tiny notch? Soak that strong tasting ingredient in milk! I learned this years ago when I worked at a 3 star (NY Times awarded) restaurant  on 13th street, here in Manhattan called La Tulipe. We routinely soaked fish, shellfish including soft shell crabs and scallops, calves liver and venison tenderloin steaks… more »

Last Thursday I had a spectacular dish at INK in LA – Burrata with trout roe, garlic flowers, kataifi and much more Who says that cheese and fish don’t go together? But meanwhile, this trout roe reminded me how many new choices there are in the market in the fish egg department. And then over the weekend the New York Times Publishsed this article: A Roe By Any Other Name… more »

When I was grating my beets for a quick saute for The Husband I happened to taste a little bit of the shredded beets in the raw state shredded gold and red beet salad   and discovered that they had a very fresh, mild beet flavor with a lovely crunch.   Beets are the new cole slaw!!   Because I’d shredded two different colors I had a few styling choices . Either “arranged” in a pattern, or tossed.   All… more »

The Husband loves beets. Me, not so much. I think they taste like dirt. They take forever to cook – 45 minutes to boil or to steam, and if you steam them you have to keep adding water.  They take a whopping 1 1/2 hours to roast, which is the best way to cook them, but then the whole house smells like dirt. And, when you peel a cooked beet, your hands get stained purple. My hands are already dry,… more »

It is not only edible but also dense and tasty just like the artichoke heart. Last night I was preparing some monster artichokes for my son Sam’s birthday chez us, when I decided to get out the camera and film the process of trimming the stems. I actually learned this many years ago from Jacques Pepin, the great culinary technician and teacher, who I was lucky enough to work with at my last restaurant job. so, you simply cut off… more »