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Archive for 'cookbooks'

HIP POCKET RECIPE: SCALLOPED POTATOES

It’s officially Cozy Food season, and I just made one of my very favorite dishes in the genre—scalloped potatoes, or, if you’re in a more worldly frame of mind, gratin dauphinois. What I’m talking about is inexpensive and dead simple: thinly sliced potatoes saturated with creamy goodness and typically, if not traditionally, crowned by golden-brown cheese. It couldn’t be more […]

SCRATCH SUPPER: PASTA WITH SUMMER SQUASHES, WALNUTS, AND PESTO

Hey, I don’t have much time this week, but I have to share this crate of zucchini and crookneck yellow summer squash with you because it made me laugh. The zucchini are fat, glossy, and complacent—one might think they’re well aware of their come-hither appeal. The crooknecks, on the other hand, look like they want […]

RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS: CREAMLESS CREAMY CORN WITH FRESH CHIVES

“People have tried and they have tried, but sex is not better than sweet corn.”  —Garrison Keillor Sweet corn is one of America’s great icons of summer. Harvested when the ears are tightly jacketed in green leaves and the kernels are plump with milky-looking juice, it’s piled high at roadside farm stands, and odds are you’ll […]

STRAWBERRIES THREE WAYS

Nothing compares to the rich, profound flavor and fragrance of perfectly ripe strawberries. And since June’s full moon, which occurs tonight, is commonly called the Strawberry Moon, you can guess what’s been on the menu chez Lear. A couple of days ago, I greedily overbought at not one, but several farm stands, and a good […]

I BRAKE FOR LOCAL ASPARAGUS

It looks like spring, smells like spring, feels like spring. And now that local farm stands are proudly displaying the first asparagus of the season, it really is spring. I busted loose at Latham’s, run by a family that has farmed this part of the North Fork of Long Island for generations. All that separates the sturdy […]

SPRING FLING: PASTA PRIMAVERA

Given the hard winter and cold, snowy spring we’ve had in the Northeast, the growing season is weeks behind schedule. Heaven knows when we’ll see the first local asparagus and peas—let alone tender, slender green beans and (dare to dream!) sun-ripened tomatoes. In other words, a visit to the farmers market is more about foraging than shopping. […]

BONNIE’S BACK!

Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, a blog by Jeremiah Moss, is a must-read for a certain kind of New Yorker. The writing is fine and knowledgeable, and the losses and injustices chronicled there in this Age of the Greedy Landlord are the sort of thing one chews over at three o’clock in the morning, when righteous indignation or, on […]

CHICKEN MARBELLA: WELCOME TO THE CLUB

In 1978, the year I moved to New York, the Upper West Side was still gritty and rough around the edges. Except, that is, for The Silver Palate, a valiant little shop that had opened the previous year on Columbus Avenue, at 73rd Street. Its concept—elegant yet accessible take-home food for dinner parties, picnics for […]

ZUCCHINI: THE RAW & THE COOKED

Zucchini has quite the reputation. The plants are prolific as hell, and with the effortless pick-up of a sports car, their offspring zooms from the cute, almost-ready-to-pick stage to the size of a cricket bat (see above) in no time. Garrison Keillor, chronicler of the small, fictional town of Lake Wobegon on A Prairie Home Companion, has […]

TOMATOES, BASIL, PASTA

In a few weeks, I’ll get around to turning the season’s abundance into late-season tomato sauce and slow-roasted tomatoes, as well as pesto, but right now, I still want supper to taste like the garden. That’s why you’ll find scalloped tomatoes in my current culinary rotation, as well as the pasta below, a keeper from my days […]