red velvet cake

There are so many things I don’t get about red velvet cake: One, that despite all claims of acid plus baking soda reactions to the contrary, that a color created by food dye is considered so exciting. It could just as easily be blue, and oh, it has been. The second thing I don’t get is that it is considered chocolate cake, when a good lot of the better-known recipes hover around one or two tablespoons of cocoa (and never over a half-cup), a barely distinguishable flavor distributed over a three-layer stack. The last thing I don’t get about red velvet cake is, if at least according to my husband, the frosting is the very best part, why that same vaunted cream cheese frosting couldn’t just be put on another cake, one with a distinguishable flavor and absence of egregious amounts of food dye.

Recipe

chocolate babka

If you’ve ever tried to recreate something you loved when you were growing up in your own kitchen, you know how difficult it can to match your taste memory to the reality of ingredients and step-by-step directions. Sometimes, even when you get the flavor right, it doesn’t feel right, but you hold out for those rare times that everything falls into place.

Recipe

grandmothers of sils’ apple-yogurt cake

I used to be a fennel/anise/black licorice-hater, too. I say “too” because I know that it’s impossible to bring the flavor up without at least someone in the room saying “ew.” Like beets in anything or nuts in cookies, its presence is a deal breaker for a surprising number of people.

Recipe

tortilla de patatas

Ever since we had dinner at Tia Pol for the first time six months ago, I have been bitten by the tapas bug, and with little warning this wee hallway of a restaurant on 10th Avenue replaced Tabla as my favorite in all of New York City.

I didn’t know that there were any higher small-plate callings than the Floyd Cardoz’s boondhi raita, that is until I tried Alex Raij’s garbanzos fritos, and though it makes me sad to have evolved beyond my Bread Bar obsession, I feel strongly enough about these chickpeas that if you haven’t had them yet, you should close your browser, turn off your computer, get on a plane if you must, wait patiently through the forty minutes it will take just to sit at the bar because these babies will leave your up-to-then favorite bar snack in the dust so quickly, its tasty little head will spin. Be prepared for a fast and fierce addiction.

Recipe

an elaborate ruse

“Do you know what the special is at Klee tonight?” I said as I walked in the door from work on Tuesday.
“What?”
“Egg noodles with hazelnut pesto, sprinkled with crushed pretzels.”
“Are you saying that you want to go to Klee for dinner?”
“No. I’m just saying that there is a special that sounds really good. Doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“We haven’t been there in months and months.”
“Debbie, are you saying you want to go?”
“Alex, I didn’t say that. I was just, you know, noting that if we wanted to eat that, we’d have to do so tonight. They won’t have that special again for a whole week!”
“I thought you wanted to make the carrot thing tonight.”

Recipe

lemon layer cake

I know people are prone to wild disagreements over Food Network personality Paula Deen. Sure, some gush that she is a “hot-damn pistol” and exactly like their “favorite aunt, who doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her” even at the expense of their readership and others think she’s just hated on because she’s a successful woman, most people cast a far less sympathetic glance in her direction, if not for her Big Pork connections, then for her Fried Butter Balls, seen as her obvious attempt to “kill us all.”

Recipe

hoisin barbecue sauce

If there are any structural flaws to the standard backyard barbecue event (or as we do it in NYC, the standard rooftop barbecue event) it is that plates, forks and standing don’t go well together, especially if you are carrying a beer, or say, a Pimm’s cup, and let’s be honest–when am I not?

Recipe

pizza, updated

Are you in town this weekend while all the good people of the US and A have jetted to some, any edge of the country? Do you not feel bad because it is so gorgeous out, you have to pinch yourself to believe it is so, and now that the city has emptied out you have it the playground all to yourself for once?

Recipe

spicy soba noodles with shiitakes

Alex has been narrowing his eyes at my ever-growing periodicals stack lately, and I don’t blame him. How did someone whose life so fully revolves around the Web end up with so many subscriptions to print magazines? Hint: I am only paying for one of them. Hint: Most of them are available ink-free on the Web.

Recipe

white bean roasted red pepper dip

Today is Alex and my second anniversary.

Some longtime readers might remember that Alex and I met through our blogs–yes, we both used to whine publicly about our laughably bad dating lives and, yes, are really glad that phase has passed. Some newer readers might demand to know why they haven’t been privy to this information and the truth is, though Alex and I have been together for almost three years, I still haven’t found a non-awkward way to say “We met on the internet.” What usually happens is that I try to reduce my own discomfort with the way it must sound by, well, making it sound much worse: “In a chat room!” I’ll add, and then “About kittehs!” and then “No, wait! About polyandry!” Once big mouth strikes again, I can’t shut her up and I talk myself into a deeper and deeper hole: “Just kidding! We met on JDate!” “I mean, through friends!” “Uh, at summer camp!” Without fail, just as my blathering really hits rock-bottom–“Actually, he was stalking me. Isn’t that cute?”–it hits me that the truth, well, it might actually be better than the alternative.