What a good girl am I. Yes, that is a plum pun. Plum funny, isn’t it? I’ve been itching to make this plum torte from the Essential New York Times Cookbook since last October, when I saw Amanda Hesser whip it up in no time flat on the Today Show. Actually, it was that recipe…
Project NYT: Spiced pumpkin oatmeal
I’ve never been to summer camp, but I’ve seen enough mid- to late ’90s movies staring Lindsay Lohan and the Olsen twins to know how it works. You row canoes, learn to fence and mingle with fancy folks from across the pond. Then after a long day of reconnecting with your long lost twin and…
Project NYT: Garden minestrone
There are some recipes that will confuse you from the very beginning. They’ll ask you to cook something on low when medium seems more logical. They’ll call for slicing and not dicing, when you know in your gut that the vegetables will never lose their crunch in a 20-minute cook time. They’ll give you strict…
Project NYT: Parmesan crackers, no boxes allowed
In the short while since I started this blog, the words made from scratch have taken on such new meaning to me. It’s no longer just about following a recipe or venturing beyond the boxed cake mix. Rather, it’s about taking even the simplest of foods and reducing them to their bare bones ingredients: the…
Project NYT: Spice krinkles
I’ve spent most of my adult life as a bake-by-photos kind of girl. No, I don’t mean that I ignore textual instructions and base my cooking exclusively on what I see (though that could be a mighty fun and/or terrible idea), but when it comes to wooing my culinary curiosity with winning recipes, delicious photos…
Project NYT: Nostalgia and the 67-year-old brownie
My quest for the perfect homemade brownie continued last night, and I dare say I might have found a winner. Hidden nearly 700 pages deep, in the “Cookies and Candy” section of my NYT Cookbook, there lies an incredibly simple, back-to-basics type of recipe that sounded like just the kind of the thing I was…