Mustard cream is one of my favorite sauces for salmon. I absolutely love the flavor of mustard, its pungency and the way it adds a bite to the cream. And any time you have mustard and cream, you have to add wine and shallots. They all just work together so nicely over the mildness of [...]

What do to with the tagine I bought at Sur La Table that’s been sitting in my cabinet for way too long? Make the eponymous dish of course. What I love most about tagines is that you can easily get creative making them. For example, I hate raisins, and though a lot of tagine recipes [...]

In my vain attempt to get Miss Toddler S to eat a wider variety of vegetables, I’ve opted to make quick pasta dishes like this one, which includes escarole and white beans—one of my favored combinations. Though the rotini topped with the most grated parmesan trumped, for the most part, the vegetables, she’ll have plenty [...]

If you’re entertaining and looking for a hearty dish, I highly recommend beef rib roast, a veritable classic. Not only is it a dish suited for winter, it’s also impressive and a definite dinner party favorite, especially with tangy, creamy horseradish sauce. While I love going to my favorite butcher shop in the West Village, [...]

She twirls around, flitting from makeup counter to handbag displays, all the while garnering an entourage. “Oh look at those shoes!,” the women say. “She’s a beauty.” The makeup women take her photo and offer her samples of makeup and creams she clearly does not need, and my toddler walks around with them on her [...]

I love the combination of ricotta and honey so this recipe instantly appealed to me. In his gorgeous and charming cookbook, Sweet Myrtle & Bitter Honey: The Mediterranean Flavors of Sardinia, Efisio Farris uses ingredients from his native Sardinia. Not able to jet off to Italy any time soon (how I wish), I went to [...]

I’ve always loved the idea of cooking with tea, and what better way to begin than using this beverage to baste a roasting chicken. I have a whole cabinet of tea but decided on using one with some spice, just to experiment. When I was in Harvard Square in Cambridge a few weeks ago, I [...]

On a walk through the West Village today I got the essential ingredients I needed to make beef stew. First stop: Ottomanelli & Sons Meat Market.

This butcher shop on Bleecker Street is one of those family-owned businesses that I hope won’t fade into the past because I enjoy that old-school feeling of asking the [...]

This is what can happen when you have a toddler. You can scoop out a portion of homemade mac and cheese for her so it can cool. Then you can run to the living room for two seconds to do one of the other millions of things you were doing, like maybe watering a plant [...]

I have a secret desire to live in Paris (well maybe it’s not such a secret) so it’s no surprise that one of my favorite cookbooks is Parisian Home Cooking.
The author, Michael Roberts, spent years in Paris shopping and cooking with friends and discovered the French way to cook, which is buying whatever looks best [...]