fresh pasta + basic tomato sauce

I have been enamored with the idea of thousand-layer lasagne since I first saw Heidi’s recipe for it on 101 Cookbooks. From “whisper-thin sheets” and “crunchy and caramelized” to her threat to “fight you for a corner piece,” I knew instantaneously this approach would be the answer to the deadweight-style baked pasta that has long kept me away. But, just like last weekend’s English muffins, it took Ruth Reichl’s whisper in my ear, er, email inbox, about “sheets so thin you could practically read the newspaper through them” to convince me not to wait any longer. I had to make it.

Recipe

leek and mushroom quiche

Come on, be honest. Is there anything better than a homemade quiche? I could eat it with a pile of baby greens for dinner every night of the week. Or lunch, brunch or a post-gym snack. Is there anything more versatile? Oddly enough, I didn’t have a proper quiche pan until yesterday, when a trip to my beloved Bowery Kitchen Supply put me face-to-face with one for ten bucks. (Alex’s favorite kitchen name, ever, is Fluted Removable-Bottom Tart Pan, followed by Reamer. What, you didn’t know I was married to a twelve-year-old?) I was actually there to get my knives sharpened (mwa-ha-ha, it sounds so sinister, right?) and to look at pasta-makers (this excitement for later, but yes, I can barely contain myself, too), and within 2.5 seconds, I knew we were having quiche for dinner.

Recipe

cream cheese marbled brownies

Last weekend, en route to the Professional Bull Riders Showdown at Madison Square Garden, and after some beers at what, without a doubt, must be the most sordid bar in Manhattan, Jocelyn’s roommate told me that even the sound of a baby crying could immediately bring on PMS-like symptoms for her. She’s that repelled by them. I laughed, because she’s damn funny, but then it hit me: earlier this month I held a friend’s 3-month old baby, marveled at his wrist-less arms and ankle-less legs (hidden beneath rolls, you see) and sniffed his tiny baby noggin and since then, I cannot stop eating chocolate. It’s getting worse and worse. What is usually just a two to three day bout of increased chocolate cravings every, oh, 28 days or so is incessant. Unending. Borderline obsessive, minus the borderline part.

Recipe

cauliflower and brussels salad

Oh boy, so we already know what a pest I can be, right? Well, yesterday I had the honor of running what should have been simple errands and yet each was more aggravating than the last, from the Verizon guy that seriously did not understand what to do with my $100 phone credit, the dress which simply did not exist and a line of ten people keeping me from just asking where it could be found and an Aveda employee, oh just don’t get me started because I have nothing nice to say about their eerie breed of worker ants on 5th Avenue. When I got home, frozen like a cranky popsicle, I eagerly dug into the bag of groceries Alex had picked up for our dinner only to find that the store had only white cauliflower left, and I’d wanted the purple, orange and green! I decided that the recipe was boring and I didn’t want to make it at all if it couldn’t be pretty, and oh my god, could I be more annoying?

Recipe

artichoke ravioli with tomatoes

It’s not exactly news that I am obsessed with artichokes. Heck, I even decorated this site so that it would never clash my favorite food. (Honey, the living room is next.) So, the fact that it took me almost ten days from the moment I first saw an artichoke ravioli recipe in January’s Gourmet to make is really only testament to the fact that I’ve spent more time this month swatting Resolutes off my elliptical trainer and lazily ordering dumplings for dinner in the New Year than involving myself in multi-hour recipes.

Recipe

pancakes, english muffins, and frisée salad

Catch-up time! Yet another glorious side-effect of having my nose buried in and my psyche over-identifying with Julia Child’s life in France is that I find myself questioning why so often, we opt for the simple over the fantastic. Why the bagel from Murray’s on a Saturday morning when we could be enjoying our lazy mornings with inordinately good homemade fare? Plus, I tend to wake up hours before my more sleep-skilled roommate, and isn’t cooking a more noble investment of my time than reading the internets and watch the food teevee? Well, we opt for the simple because, unlike Mrs. Child, we have day jobs and I spend my mornings loafing because er, I’m not exactly the most earnest individual, yet sure enough in the last couple weekends breakfast around here had been sublime.

Recipe

balthazar’s cream of mushroom soup

A couple months ago, I briefly mentioned making a wild mushroom soup from Gourmet magazine that was, you know, good, but also, eh. But shame on me, really, because last year we found the perfect, best-ever, fail-proof, tastiest recipe so why did I fall for the shiny new thing? Isn’t that the point of all this trial-and-error, anyway? I’m always trying to catalogue Recipes That Work, also called Recipes to Share you know, the ones that you try and you think “This is it. This is everything I have ever wanted from a [insert beloved grub here],” even if yes, I know, most people probably do not share my fanaticism about beloved grub. Lemon cake? Done. Banana bread? Found that too. Easy-peasy rustic loaf? Yup, and hooray for that. Chocolate cookies so good, it may bring tears to your eyes? That’s for tomorrow, because I am a tease, and also because I think about them again, I might eat five. Best-ever mushroom soup? I will never doubt you again.

Recipe

really simple homemade pizza

5 p.m. yesterday found me in the kitchen, chopping carrots into snack-sized sticks and trimming the ends off uncooked green beans so that we could have a snack. And then I laughed because what could be more of a New Years cliché but raw crudités and the promise of a healthier tomorrow. Yawn. Or, at least yawn to the traditional notions of health food; I actually made us pizza and an enormous salad for dinner.

Recipe

utterly true

The way I see it, you’ve got almost two days to make some resolutions and so I’d like to gently bug you about one thing: have you made the no-knead bread yet? I suspect that you haven’t. I suspect that despite swarming hoards of eager testers praising its armor-like crust and skyscraper heights of flavor, you are still thinking “Its yeast. It must be scary.” Well, I think that resolutions of eating less and this time you really mean it, reading books which really do bore you and to say more nice things about your people you don’t like is truly overrated, and not that you asked, but I think we should all instead choose to treat ourselves better, that we should seek out richer, brighter and more satiating experiences. I hope you have an excellent new year.