One of the sleeper MVPs in my cookbook collection is Tom Colicchio’s cookbook for ‘wichcraft, his sandwich shop he launched way back in 2003. It grew as a small chain, but now only one location remains in the Garment District in New York. To be honest, even if it had gone defunct, I’d hang onto…
Category: top chef
Gail Simmons’s jerk shrimp from Bringing it Home, but make it lettuce cups.
The mark of a good cookbook to me is how much I use it, and I use Gail’s Bringing it Home a lot. I love how much it covers, from breakfast and brunch to fun party snacks and noodle dishes, and I also love how conversational the headnotes that precede each recipe. It’s easy to…
Sheldon Simeon’s lomi salmon from Cook Real Hawai’i.
Months ago now, I had the rather brilliant idea of going on a walk over to Whole Foods on a weekly basis in order to get fresh fish and vegetables in order to make ceviche. I thought that this would be a really fun way to eat more fish and get some good walking in,…
Tom Colicchio’s roasted tomato risotto from Think Like a Chef.
Even the most casual of Top Chef fans know that attempting to make risotto usually does not end well for the cheftestants, though there have been a few exceptions. Some notable ones I remember include: Season three premiere: Howie actually makes a successful risotto with uni, but forgets to plate the other required component (frog’s…
Padma Lakshmi’s sweet and sour shrimp with cherry tomatoes from Cherry Bombe: The Cookbook and her new show Taste the Nation, worth watching right now.
A very long time ago, back when we lived in New Haven, day trips to Manhattan were a pretty regular occurrence for us. One of these trips included good friends of ours and we spent the day visiting the MoMA, doing a little shopping at Barney’s New York, getting a drink at L’Orange Bleu…
Shirley Chung’s scallion pancakes with hazelnut pesto from Chinese Heritage Cooking.
Shirley Chung easily ranks among my favorite cheftestants on Top Chef, as her story on the two seasons she competed were so compelling. During the eleventh season in New Orleans, she came into her own creativity as a chef and not simply as a “shadow chef” who was good at recreating others’ dishes, and when…
Pantry cooking with Stephanie Izard: chilled sweet onion soup.
Probably the biggest score I made when doing a stocking-up grocery trip two Fridays ago was to get six pounds of frozen shrimp for the price of two, thanks to the Teet’s buy one, get two special. We polished off the first bag that Sunday, and then I decided to use another pound this week…
Images (not from) New York, Louisville edition.
Here’s a helpful travel tip for you: never fly to Louisville from Baltimore the day after the Preakness, because the flight will be full. We didn’t have much choice in the matter as Michael had a conference to attend and we wanted to get there a little early in order to have some fun, but…
Gail Simmons’ Bloody Mary Eggs from Bringing it Home.
Something I’m trying to do as we head into winter is to make brunch at home once or twice a month, in part to switch things up, but also as a way to cook in natural light when the sun sets at 5 PM every day. This doesn’t mean that we will always make something…
Roasted carrot and ginger soup, thoughts on Thanksgiving, and ways to pay it forward.
It’s hard to believe that Thanksgiving is this week; on one hand it feels like fall just started, but on the other this cold streak we’re having here in MD (plus the general trend of Christmas Creep) makes it feel like we’re already in December? It’s a little disconcerting, but I guess it’s time…
The Manhattan [food] Project 