The weekend began with cassoulet—with the soaking of the beans, chopped onion sizzling in butter, pork layers of guanciale, a toscano sausage, country bacon cooking under duck confit in the oven. My good friend Solana was in Brooklyn for a few days between her travels from Puerto Rico and to Berlin, so I made a [...]

My wonderful friend Winnie asked me yesterday what my favorite kitchen items are—here’s what fill my kitchen cabinets, and I should say I have pared down in the last two moves: A sauté pan, a saucier pan, and a big pot. These are my only pots and pans, all three are stainless steel. They have [...]

When I was younger, I tried to argue for wearing true white in the winter (not allowed in our house) using the whiteness of winter vegetables—like potatoes, parsnips, and cauliflower—as evidence of seasonal appropriateness. Losing that argument, I continue to wear ivory during colder months, but I’m very happy to find those winter vegetables aren’t [...]

Another of my resolutions (or intentions, as my friend Amanda, who you will meet below, frames them) is to spend more time with my friends in New York, and to let them school me in food here. My friend Dean describes himself as a lover of tacos, and his Bushwick neighborhood is full of options–I [...]

I’ve blogged before about eating mussels when it’s snowy and cold (and wanting to debeard certain friends and acquaintances); for lunch today, I chopped chervil and simmered a generous pound of cleaned mussels with half a cup of Bordeaux Blanc (a Sauvignon/Semillon), 2 chopped shallots, 2 chopped garlic cloves for five minutes before stirring in [...]