Saturday, March 31, 2001
Hazelnut Noodle Dessert
Last night, I tested two recipes from Kay Shaw Nelson’s All Along The Rhine: Recipes, Wine and Lore from Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein and Holland. I made the Baked Sweet Noodles from Liechtenstein and Meatballs in Caper Sauce from Germany. Unfortunately, neither worked the way they should have, as I suspected from reading them. [more]
Friday, March 30, 2001
High-Tech Gefilte Fish with Fresh Horseradish
My grandmother’s gefilte fish was the envy and despair of our neighbors. Nobody made it better, and Elsie Binder Sonkin, who was never one to lie about her age or to hold back cooking advice, freely shared her recipe knowing that it isn’t the formula but the cook who makes the difference. [more]
Thursday, March 29, 2001
Wine Buy: Yarden Gewurztraminer from Israel
Yarden Gewürztraminer 1999, about $12.99 for a 500 ml bottle, is from Galilee, in the Golan Heights of Israel. It is kosher and kosher for Passover, the eight-day commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt that begins next Saturday night. But, to use once again that overused Levy’s rye bread advertising slogan, “You don’t have to be Jewish” to appreciate this wine’s very high quality and enormous appeal. [more]
Wednesday, March 28, 2001
Biba Caggiano's Bow Ties with Prosciutto Sauce
Biba Caggiano is one of the most delightful and best informed guests that I ever have on my radio program. No, I take that back. Biba is one of the most delightful and best informed people in the whole food world. To me, she is an Italian food goddess and I never have enough time with her when she visits New York from her home base in Sacramento, California, where she lives and owns a restaurant, Biba’s. You may also know her from her television programs on Lifetime and the Discovery Channel. [more]
Friday, March 23, 2001
Cosmopolitan Cocktail
This is for my brother-in-law, Milton Alexander, who isn’t much of a drinker but who does order a cocktail when he goes out. He used to be stuck on Margaritas, but he has lately succumbed to fashion and the good flavor of a Cosmopolitan. [more]
Wednesday, March 21, 2001
Wine Buy: Madiran
Madiran is one of those legendary big red wines of southwest France. It comes from the Hautes-Pyrénées, just south of Gascony, on the Spanish border, and it is big in bouquet, big in color, big in flavor, and very big in tannin. [more]
Monday, March 19, 2001
Passover and Easter Recipes
I may think I have an easy web-site to navigate. But, a couple of weeks ago, I realized how hard it is for some people to find what they are looking for when I was making a personal appearance at Bloomingdale's in Short Hills, New Jersey. A listener came by to scold me that I had not, as I said I would, put Suzanne Hamlin's macaroni and cheese recipe in The Maven's Diary. I knew I had. I knew it was there. Yet he insisted that I had not, and he walked off in a huff. [more]
Saturday, March 17, 2001
Cruise from Venice to Istanbul
I have been getting quite a few inquiries about the Radisson Diamond cruise from Venice to Istanbul. [more]
Thursday, March 15, 2001
Jury Duty Eats
I was on jury duty this week, for the first time in Brooklyn. Unfortunately (or fortunately for my waistline), there is no Chinatown near the courthouse, a lunch ritual for many who serve in Manhattan. Still, to amuse the food obsessed, there’s the Borough Hall Greenmarket on Tuesdays, and on Saturdays too, by the way). [more]
Monday, March 12, 2001
Zarela's Dinner Party
Read to the “tune” of Suzy, the society columnist.
In case you haven’t heard, Zarela Martinez, the ravishing Mexican restaurateur and cookbook author, gives smashing parties, big and small, at her adorable East Side townhouse, one of the few remaining wood-frame buildings left in Manhattan. Last night (Sunday), to celebrate her mother Aida’s birthday, she invited some of the city’s food luminaries to feast on dishes from her upcoming book and PBS television show, both on the foods of Veracruz.. How old was the birthday girl, Aida Gabilondo? You know, ordinarily, I would never tell, but the great lady, a former rancher, is so proud that, at 83, her cookbook, Mexican Family Cooking, has just been re-published and was recently the number one cookbook recommendation on Amazon. You should read those rave customer reviews! [more]
Friday, March 9, 2001
Portobello Salsa, Roasted Portobello Mushrooms
Amy Farges reminded me yesterday on Food Talk that she called me 13 years ago, while I was the food editor of the New York Daily News, wanting to know if we would do a story on her, her husband Thiery, and their new wild mushroom business, Aux Delices des Bois. She said I told her we’d have to wait a bit, that wild mushrooms were not on the general public’s radar yet. We could do something when the mushrooms were more available. [more]
Wednesday, March 7, 2001
Wine Buy: Altos Malbec
Altos Las Hormigas Malbec 2000, $10.99 (or less), imported by Michael Skurnik, Syosset, Long Island. [more]
Tuesday, March 6, 2001
18-Hour Pork Roast: Another Hamlin Find
My friend Suzanne Hamlin tells me that this recipe and ones like it “are going around.” She found this particular version, which she put in the book she edited with Fran McCullough, The Best American Recipes of 2000, in Suzanne Somer’s diet book Get Skinny on Fabulous Food. [more]
Suzanne Hamlin's Macaroni and Cheese
This could be the mother of macaroni and cheese recipes. Suzanne Hamlin, who I called “Brenda Starr Food Reporter” when I was the food editor of the New York Daily News and she and I used to work, as we liked to joke, “tush to tush,” came up with it in 1979. Suzanne and I are still good friends and when I had a hankering for this particular version of mac and cheese, and I couldn’t find it in my files, I called her to get it. Both of us live under the rule that you can never have too many mac and cheese recipes, and Suzanne had moved on to others and had lost track of the recipe, too. [more]
