double chocolate layer cake

[Note: In 2007, I made this for my MIL’s birthday. Who’d have thunk I’d make it again 10 years later for my son’s 8th birthday? In 2017, I streamlined the recipe a bit; it’s now almost one-bowl, but as good as ever. I also, because he asked so nicely, gave it a Harry Potter theme, details at the end.]

Last week, when it was 95 hateful, humid degrees outside and the 13-block walk home had entirely sucked what traces of motivation remained out of me, I had what I still consider The Best Dinner Idea Ever: chocolate cake with chocolate icing and watermelon.

Recipe

red bean chili

Last week someone said to me, “You know, my tastes are more Julia Child but my lifestyle is more 30 Minute Meals,” and I thought–really quite smugly, I’m embarrassed to say–“I’m so glad I have all this free time.”

Recipe

ratatouille’s ratatouille

Tell me I’m not alone in this: You saw Ratatouille, fell in love with Remy (though you still jumped a foot in the air when you saw a significantly less-charming rodent scamper across your path on the way home) and found yourself with a pressing craving, not for the heavy and too-often soggy traditional Provençal ratatouille, but that kaleidoscope of spiraled colors they served to the haughty and (spoiler!) soon-humbled restaurant critic.

Recipe

quick potato pierogi

Alright, although I don’t know who, someone has been holding out on me because potato pierogi are so easy to make, I feel that I should have been privy to this information earlier than Friday night.

Recipe

rosanne cash’s all-american potato salad

Is there anything bursting with more flag-draped-weathered-barn American nostalgia than potato salad? How about a recipe from Rosanne Cash, daughter of the late Johnny Cash? It really adds to the experience if you sing “Walk the Line” off-key in the kitchen while your husband grimaces in the next room as your chop your eggs and pickles. And it doesn’t get any better than bringing it in a big old bucket to a 4th of July barbecue.

Recipe

israeli salad + pita chips

[2018 Note: I’ve been making this salad my whole adult life. I share it here in 2007 and called it Israeli Salad but it could just as easily be called Arab Salad. Salads following essentially this same recipe — that is tomatoes, cucumbers, onion, lemon juice, and olive oil but no lettuce — have widespread popularity throughout the Middle East and particularly the Levant. I dreamed of going on a tomato-cucumber salad world tour in this recipe.]

First I talked about madeleines, and although they’re lovely (though mine were less so), they don’t exactly have a high originality quotient. Then I totally side-stepped my week of non-cooking by throwing some “new feature” at you, and now, well now I’m going to tell you that you can make a salad out of cucumbers, tomatoes and onions. And I know you’ve got to be thinking: you don’t say!

Announcements

all your questions are belong to us

I’m not going to lie: I have barely cooked in a week. I’ve been having too much fun being busy, catching up with friends, double-booking every evening, shuffling together some hopeful freelance projects, eating out in fantastic place after place after place, and oh, right, there’s the day job thing too! Fear not, this no-cooking spell will probably not last another 12 hours as not only am I itching for a home-cooked meal but I also want to start in on the goodies I have in mind for our nation’s birthday. In the meantime I thought today would be the perfect time to launch something Alex has been nudging me to add to this site for 11 months now: Q&A.

Recipe

classic madeleines

On Friday, someone asked me if there was a food I was eager to try. I answered that I’d never baked or even tried a single madeleine in my whole life. Four hours later, I had done both, so emboldened by the suspicious ease of marking items off my wish-list, I next mentioned that I had yet to get that puppy I’ve been asking for. No dice on that one yet.

Recipe

everyday yellow dal

I spent the summer in Israel when I was 15 years old, and while I know I did all of the expected stuff–day trips, stays at hostels and kibbutz, the big cities and the desert–one of the things that stands out most clearly in my memory is something sort of random–the way the Israeli kids dressed on hot days: black jeans and often long-sleeved shirts. I’d look at them, so covered, so dark, and want to scream. “Don’t you know how HOT it is here? I’m melting in my Tevas and tank top and you’re there wrapped as tight as you can in WINTER clothes.” Clearly this penchant for melodrama isn’t a recent phenomenon.

Recipe

strawberry chiffon shortcake

[Psst: There’s an updated, better-than-ever version of this on the site: Strawberry Chiffon Shortcake, Perfected.]

Though this should surprise precisely no one, when I was a kid my best friend and I went through a phase where we became obsessed with baking cakes. Though the cake creations ranged in flavor and size, they never lacked for two components: buttercream frosting by the bucket and Dunkin Hines “yellow” cake by the layer. (My mother politely requests that I point out that we did the baking at my friend’s house, and not mine, as my mother would never, ever permit the use of such things as baking mixes. She doesn’t kid.)