It’s hard to have enough tote bags, especially if you do as much grocery and food styling prop shopping as I do. I’ve been on the hunt for a cute tote bag designed for chefs and food writers, especially since picnic season is starting up. There are some of my favorites. Now to choose one…
Yesterday I wanted to bake a cake. Sure, it was a Monday, but since finding out over the weekend that my cookbook was now available for pre-order on Amazon (!!!), I wanted an excuse to celebrate. Or more accurately, I wanted an excuse to eat cake.
But not a cake with frosting or layers or anything that required more effort than a Monday evening calls for. Then I remembered a recipe for French-style yogurt cake in Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life that I had bookmarked a while back but hadn’t had time to try yet. It’s an old-fashioned dessert that home bakers used to make by measuring ingredients in a yogurt jar. (Dorie Greenspan has also said this was one of the few desserts that French women actually make at home, given that in France amazing pastry shops are pretty much everywhere.)
A delicious-sounding cake that didn’t take much effort? Sold.
It’s the start of iced tea season chez Diana. The past few days have been so muggy that in the afternoon I’ve been dying to take a nap instead of sitting at my computer editing photos or sending invoices to clients. Which is where the need for icy caffeinated drinks comes in.
During the summer I usually keep a liter of iced tea in the fridge. If I’m feeling lazy on tea-making day, I just steep and chill some black tea. If I need to satisfy my sweet tooth, I whip up some bracing Southern-style sweet tea. And if I happen to eye some very nice-looking berries at the market, which is what happened this time, I’ll make a fruity tea concoction.
I can thank my first job out of culinary school for introducing me to how wonderful strawberries and rhubarb can be together.
The job was at an catering company in Manhattan that specialized in large-scale events. I worked in the pastry department, which meant that we could spend an entire day creating hundreds of portions of the same desserts. At times, the head count for certain events could be as high as 1,500. If you have ever done 1,500 portions of the same cookies, cakes, or pies, you know how tedious this can be.
Even though the weather has been getting warmer lately, there are still days when I crave a nice bowl of lentil soup for lunch. Especially if it’s a lentil soup that conjures up the Mediterranean sun and the seaside.
This Greek lentil soup (Faki) comes from The Essential New York Times Cookbook, which has a recipe revised from one that reader and Greek cookbook author Vilma Liacouras had sent in to the paper in 1977. I don’t think I had ever tried lentil soup Greek-style before, but wow, am I hooked now. It may become my go-to lentil soup. In the beginning of the cooking process, it may seem like your ordinary tomato-lentil soup, but the magic comes towards the end. You toss in plenty of parsley, mint, and basil. Then you stir in a generous amount of good olive oil. And finally, you add some red wine vinegar; that extra bit of acidity really brings the lentils to a whole new level.
A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a carton of strawberries from the market, fully intent on using them for making sorbet. At home while unpacking groceries, I decided it wouldn’t hurt if I tasted a couple, you know, just to see if they were sweet and ripe enough. And then a couple more. Before I knew it, most of the carton was gone, and I was still standing in the kitchen with strawberry-stained hands and groceries still needing to be unpacked.
While working with my publisher on the jacket of my upcoming cookbook, I spent a lot of time browsing in bookstores for inspiration. There are many cookbooks that do well with a single closeup photo of a dish on the cover, but I wanted something that stood out graphically. I'm happy to report that we have finally settled on a clean yet fun design, which I can reveal soon. In the meantime, here are some cookbook covers that I've found inspiring.
1. The Meatball Shop Cookbook - My publisher (Random House/Ballantine) did this book as well, and I love the vintagey cover. The meat grinder illustration is from the Meatball Shop menu.
Ever since reading about Pok Pok in Portland several years ago, I had wanted to try their take on Thai street food. The Brooklyn location opened last night and I went with two other food-obsessed friends. Pok Pok NY is on Columbia St., in that vague area that some might call Red Hook and others call Cobble Hill. As we expected, people in the surrounding area showed up in full force, and the wait was over an hour, but wow, was the trip worth it!
