After my first trip to Little Havana, I Ubered back over to South Beach as the weather had improved significantly by the early afternoon and I wanted to take a stroll down Ocean Drive and take in the hist ts smack dab in the middle of it all, and because it was so nice that…
Category: aperitivo
Recreating El Compadre cocktails from José Andrés’s Bar Centro in Miami Beach.
A funny thing happened when I started reviewing all of the food and drinks I enjoyed during our early April trip to Miami: I realized that it would be way easier to recreate the cocktails we enjoyed versus most of the food. We ate very, very well when we were down there, but so much…
The Les Halles steak tartare, and a nod to Mac’s Club Deuce in Miami Beach.
As of this writing, my parents have successfully landed in Paris. They’re doing one of those Viking River cruises that will take them up to Normandy and then back again to the City of Lights, and in the weeks leading up to the trip I helped them in researching options of things to do and…
Making gazpacho in February, or: what to do when fresh tomatoes are not at their best.
For years now, my go-to gazpacho recipe has been an adaptation of one from José Andrés, and it’s a really solid recipe. (I just don’t go through with all of the toppings that he puts on top of his, because usually I don’t have time for that.) It’s one of my default summertime dishes, something…
Sautéed squid with pepper sauce as inspired by Eric Ripert and Le Bernadin.
Back in 2017 when I was in the midst of cooking through my cookbook shelves, one of the more intimidating titles I took on was the Le Bernadin cookbook. Of the two books by Ripert I have, this one is by far the fanciest; Avec Eric is a little more down-to-earth because it goes beyond…
La cuina de Catalunya: La Alcoba Azul and their pa amb allioli.
For all of the planning that I did for our trip via my various maps of fun, I didn’t try to limit myself to only the places that were on the list. And I’m glad I didn’t, because otherwise I would have missed out on a really great find that was so good, we ended…
A txiquiteo in San Sebastian: montadito of chorizo and quail egg from The Basque Book.
[Ed. – To my friends in the US, please vote today if you haven’t already.] The sheer number of Spanish and Catalan cookbooks in my collection is proof enough that one of the things I love to do most after visiting a place I love is to try to recreate as many of the dishes that…
A txiquiteo in San Sebastian: shrimp and pancetta pinxtos with modern allioli.
It should come as no surprise that I was determined to embrace Basque cooking even before we had left San Sebastian; I found one of the few open-on-Sunday bookstores and purchased myself a copy of Los Mejores Pintxos de Donostia along with another book devoted to tartines that was too visually appealing to pass up,…
Barcelona’s Bar Marsella and their gin, fig, and honey cocktail, which I have named La Fi de L’Estu.
Bar Marsella first came on my radar four years ago when I was doing research for our last vacation to Barcelona; specifically, I wanted to spend a day doing a walking tour of the city finding various filming locations from Vicky Cristina Barcelona because it’s one of my favorite movies, despite its director being highly…
Beet-cured salmon from Gail Simmons’ Bringing It Home.
My love of Top Chef has gotten to the point that I have a section of my main bookshelf dedicated to some of my favorite judges* and cheftestants from the show—though I will admit that Tom Colicchio’s books live up in my New York section, because most of these books came out way after his…
