This is not soul food.
Soul food is rich in both history and calories, a rib-sticking fusion of African cooking techniques and southern ingredients. It’s a cuisine born of poverty and necessity that’s perhaps as symbolic as it is delicious, the sort of thing that inspires popular historians and high-low chefs and understandably possessive custodians.
This is, you know, Shake ‘N Bake. Without the shake. Continue reading
The Sunday before last—which I spent on weekend edit duty, which meant a full day immersed in this atrocity—I posted the above photo on Instagram with this caption: “The world is bad, so I made a pie.”
My old boss responded with a perfectly chosen Onion article, first published on September 26, 2001: “Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake.” Continue reading
You know how last week’s recipe was all about making icky vegetables palatable by smothering them with cheese? Well, let’s call this week’s dish a variation on that theme— as you may or may not be able to tell from the glistening, buttery glop in the photo above. Continue reading
Like most of us, I grew up believing that pretty much all cruciferous vegetables—broccoli, cauliflower, and especially brussels sprouts, the patron saint of Stock Yucks—were disgusting. The only—and I mean only—exception I ever made was for Panera’s broccoli cheddar soup, which was basically a bowl of melted cheese studded with teensy weensy green flecks (you know, the broccoli).
These days, of course, I am a very sophisticated lady. I no longer subsist primarily on Frappucinnos and Fruit by the Foot. I understand that a hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with cheese soup is not a healthy meal. And I don’t only consume vegetables for the good of my organs—I actually enjoy eating them. I promise! I swear! Don’t revoke my “grown-up” license, please! Continue reading
Let’s stay on the breakfast tip, shall we? Continue reading
[This week’s post is brought to you by Leslie Mann in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.]
What do you do when you’ve got a week off between jobs, a battered old cookbook that holds three separate recipes for French toast, a schedule that’s completely sapped your ability to sleep in, and a type-A personality that makes you slightly nuts because, again, you’ve got a week off between jobs?
You make French toast, my friends. You make it aaaallll the different ways. Continue reading
When I was a freshman in high school, my advisor told a joke he probably shouldn’t have to a select group of students. The joke, he claimed, was a foolproof way to determine whether or not a person is Jewish. If it makes you laugh, you are; if you don’t get it, you’re not.
I just looked up the punchline — and if you’re in the mood for a TL;DR version, this one’s a lot shorter. But as I remember it, the gag goes a little something like this: Continue reading
I would not be the food snob I am today without the influence of these two great ladies: my mother and Nonnie, pictured here looking impossibly glamorous at my Uncle Bobby’s groovy ’70s bar mitzvah. (He had a three-tiered cake shaped like a Jewish star. It was breathtaking.)
Nonnie taught my mom — who, in turn, taught me — always to prize homemade over store-bought, fresh over processed. Not that either of their food was fussy; both have/had a knack for finding the elegance in simplicity, the kind of dishes that Tom Colicchio always praises most highly on Top Chef. (“It’s just simple ingredients, cooked well.” Shit, if that’s all it takes, why aren’t I the Top Chef?) Continue reading
This, my friends, is how you end Passover with a bang.
I didn’t grow up on monkey bread. In fact, I hadn’t even heard of it until the first time I read Nonnie’s cookbook cover to cover. According to my mom, it was one of Nonnie’s specialties, a party trick she’d break out for special occasions — and one of the recipes Mom only made herself once or twice, since it allegedly never turned out to be as good as her own mother’s.
So: What the hell is monkey bread? The answer depends on who you ask. Continue reading
I dare you to name a Passover dessert that isn’t terrible. Cakes made with matzo meal? They’re inevitably dry and powdery. Macaroons from a canister? Grossly sticky and sickeningly sweet. Those disgusting jellied candy fruit slices? Get the hell away from me and never return.
Faced with options like these, you might as well stick to the sad bowl of grapes and sliced cantaloupe lurking at the end of your seder’s buffet.
There is, of course, a solution to the terrible Passover dessert conundrum. Continue reading
And Such Small Portions! 