It’s my birthday today! I turn a whopping 32. To celebrate, my cousin flew in from France and we’re spending the day learning to knit with our Auntie …seriously. As if 32 didn’t sound old enough, an afternoon spent sipping tea and knitting scarves undoubtedly did me in! But I’m also being taken on a secret date night, late night tonight, with a gentleman caller who insists he’s up for the challenge of surprising me with an evening of foodie birthday fodder. Your guess is as good as mine. Tomorrow I’ll throw a Black & White Burger Shoppe Birthday Bash at my friend Heather’s speakeasy chic Wall Street loft above the Burger Shoppe Saloon. As wonderful as all of this is, a birthday is still a yearly beast, an annual aging reminder, and in this case, my cue to whip together as many black and white recipes as I can think up. Any ideas? As you can see, I’ve already got the hat (and dress)!

Time, with family, with friends, with Taleggio (who also shares a birthday this week!) is the best gift a birthday can buy. That said, The Daily News offered up a close second this morning when they published a story on me and The Dinner Belle in their The Closer column. This food life of mine just keeps getting tastier! The article is a short little ditty, but it’s a first for me and the national press. Read it here and Eat it Up!

Talk about a spring tease! The last few days in New York City felt like full-fledged spring, but my Buffalo bones (and NY1) tell me there’s more winter on the horizon. Apparently it’s gonna rain on my birthday, and March’s madness is likely to keep us guessing till we turn the corner on April, and usher in more rain. So in these fleeting weeks of winter it’s wise to hit up local farmers’ markets and celebrate the changing seasons with some last stitch frosted fare.

Come springtime and more temperate weather, I’ll be much more inclined to turn off the oven, leave my apartment, and spend a night out enjoying the warm breeze over a cold drink. Until that day is on my doorstep, however, I’m relishing these last few weeks of shameless hibernation. Spring’s harvest will liberate me from my self-imposed isolation, inducing impromptu spring flings featuring asparagus, fennel and peppery radishes, all of which seem to taste better with the most negligent amount of preparation. But while we wait for spring to bloom, I recommend taking advantage of the warmth that my more indulgent comfort-chic recipes have to offer. Specifically, I recommend staying in and getting smashed…

Enter my Bourbon Braised Truffle Smashed Potatoes! No ordinary side dish, these spuds exemplify my philosophy for comfort-chic cooking: hometown recipes with a haute cuisine twist. Baby red bliss and fingerling potatoes are kissed with truffle oil, crème fraiche, and bourbon braised mushroom caps before getting topped with dollops of truffle butter, and if you’ve got it to spare, truffle infused salt. Trust me, these taters steal the spotlight from any meal and are worthy of breaking your vow of solitude and inviting a guest to dinner to gush over your ode to the last of winter’s rooted wonders.

My Tribe was getting a little sick of my seclusion, particularly Celest. So last week I decided to show her (or more accurately, to feed her) my reasons for treasuring these final few chilly nights at home alone. Celest dragged her Meyer lemon self to my place, and I greeted her at the door with my signature hot toddy. Made from the same bottle of bourbon I poured into the pan to braise my mushrooms, the toddy is a veritable cure-all for most things that ail you, including the cold. Garnished with slices of clove-spiked lemon and a cinnamon sipping straw, Celest cradled her drink and nestled herself into my couch, awaiting the rest of our evening’s hibernation-inspired menu.

I handed her a plate of garlicky quail egg toasts to momentarily sate her growing appetite, and put the finishing touches on our steaks au poivre. As we dished up the truffle smash and tucked into my most comforting recipes around my coffee table, Celest, a little woozy from the bourbon and a touch firery from the spicy ‘nduja I slipped beneath her quail eggs, acquiesced that she understood my lingering nostalgia for the months when a great night requires nothing more than a great home-cooked meal. She added, “But you’re cheating! Truffles make everything better.” Indeed they do, which is why I chose a truffle of another variety to round out our dindin and treated her to my dark chocolate bourbon bonbons for dessert. All she could do was coo.

Bourbon Braised Truffle Smashed Potatoes (serves a crowd)

• 1 lb baby Red Bliss Potatoes

• 1 lb Fingerling or Butter Yellow Potatoes

• 1 tub Truffle Butter

• 1 tub Crème Friache

• Truffle Oil

• Truffle Salt

• 2 lb Mushroom Caps (sliced)

• 1 Shallot (diced)

• 1 shot Bourbon

• Salt & Pepper

Slice the potatoes into evenly sized 1 inch chunks; then boil them skin-on until tender (about 20 minutes). When boiling potatoes, I always put them in a pot first, and then fill that pot with water till the potatoes are completely covered. Be sure to heavily salt the water with several pinches of kosher salt, and then cover the pot and bring it to a boil over high heat.

While the potatoes boil, prep the mushrooms. Braising mushrooms is a simple preparation that I return to again and again for most of my mushroom creations. In this instance, I throw a tablespoon of truffle butter in a sauté pan and add 1 diced shallot. As the shallot turns golden and fragrant, throw in your mushrooms (any variety will work) and a splash of truffle oil to make sure every mushroom slice gets a hit of fat. Season with truffle salt and pepper, though kosher salt will do in a “pinch.” Pour a shot of bourbon into the pan over high heat and allow the alcohol to burn off (about 1 minute). If you’re stove gets hot enough, the mushrooms will flambé so be prepared for fire. Once the flames die down, cover the pot and lower the heat to medium-high. After the mushrooms have released all their juices (about 7 minutes) remove the cover and allow the excess liquid to reduce (about 2 minutes more), leaving but a few tablespoons of “mushroom gravy” in the pan. Set aside.

Once the potatoes are tender, drain them in a colander and transfer them to a Kitchen Aid mixer for smashing (if you don’t have a handy-dandy mixer, you can always use good old fashioned elbow grease and a time-honored potato masher). As you smash your potatoes, add the remaining truffle butter, 2 tablespoons of truffle oil and your tub of crème fraiche. Season the spuds with truffle salt and fold in the mushrooms and gravy, being sure to leave a little mushroom love aside to use as garnish for your pots.

As I was making my way to the Union Square Farmers’ Market a few days ago, I noticed something: my coat wasn’t fully zipped up, my scarf was loose around my neck, and though there was a breeze in the air, I wasn’t bracing myself every time the wind rattled. February, it seems, is only forgiving in that it passes quickly. Though I dare not say that we’re out of winter’s clutches just yet, on this particularly brisk-but-not-cold day, I was comforted by the thought that winter, though at times brutal, is not in fact a dead end. Spring is merely weeks away.

With this passing fancy in mind, I began to feel a kind of nostalgia wash over me. Looking at the strapping winter produce available at my surprisingly-not-frostbitten fingertips, I felt like I was saying goodbye to old friends. Pretty soon the stalls of kale, potatoes, cabbage, and root vegetables would be replaced with spring’s asparagus, ramps, ripe rhubarb and luscious leeks. As the seasons change in the Northeast so does what we eat (or at least it should!), and spring offers perhaps the most exciting seasonal harvest transformation. From earthen and heavy, to bright and blithe, spring’s bounty is always a welcome relief in the kitchen and on waistline, and yet, standing among winter’s hearty soldiers I heard myself take a wistful sigh, thinking about this season soon to be gone-by.

It was an uncompromising winter. Lots of snow, lots of catering in the snow, and lots of time for reflection. 2010 feels like a big year, and one that I’m hoping might offer the biggest challenges and accomplishments of my little life. Erin and I are looking to take over a lease for our very own kitchen space. A resident home for The Dinner Belle would mean big expansion plans for our future. We just booked an elaborate wedding feast for this fall, and already have a busy spring scheduled with Topshop’s 1^st birthday party on the horizon (come on down for birthday cake April 2-4!), a soiree to celebrate the opening of a new Laser Cosmetica spa, a book launch party at the historic Park Avenue Armory, and a college reunion bash we’re throwing for a group of gals down in the Financial District. And that’s just the first few weeks of April! But I’m getting ahead of myself…winter offered a respite to regroup, wrap our heads around expansion plans, and find time to get down on some serious frost-friendly fare.

Taking stock of the sturdy vegetables before me, I caught sight of the holy trinity of winter squash: butternut, acorn and spaghetti. These vegetables, loaded with complex carbohydrates and fiber, can make for filling side dishes or satisfying meals in and of themselves. As they are about to go the way of the melting snow, certain not to return until the far side of this year’s calendar, I found myself reminiscing about my favorite ways to eat squash…

The acorn squash’s dark green skin, replete with longitudinal lines and the occasional splash of yellow, hides a light orange flesh that is tender and slightly sweet. My favorite way to eat it is simply cut in half and roasted upside down in a water bath to soften its tender flesh. After about at hour in its bain-marie, I dump the water, turn the squash right side up and fill it with enough butter, salt and brown sugar to trick my taste buds into thinking it’s dessert.

My eye moved down the line of at the bustling market stall, only to be caught by rows of chubby butternut squash. This dark beige fruit (yes, squash is technically a fruit) is particularly versatile, its sweet flesh accommodating most types of cooking. There is nothing more satisfying, or decadent, though, than my bowl of my creamy butternut squash soup. Each slightly sweet, very velvety dish is garnished with quenelles of crème fraîche, a drizzle of fresh pressed olio nuovo olive oil, and crisp fried sage leaves glittering with sprinkles of alderwood smoked sea salt.

The final and perhaps most spectacular of the squash triumvirate is spaghetti squash. These innocent, pale yellow specimens are named for their texture: after being boiled, their meat resembles gleaming strands of eggy-yellow pasta. And if cutting carbs is what you’re after, spaghetti squash could easily replace its starchy namesake for those of you looking to scratch the gluten out of your diet. Just halve them, pop ‘em in a large pot of boiling water till al dente (about 10-12 minutes…just like pasta!) and set them to drip dry and cool before taking a fork to their flesh and pulling apart ribbons of squash. Up in Vermont over New Year’s, I treated my housemates to a room temperature salad made of strings of spaghetti squash tossed with barrel-aged feta cheese, toasted almonds and a pesto made of cerignola olives, scallions and meyer lemon. It was perhaps my favorite dish of the trip!

Recounting my squash memories, I couldn’t decide which one to choose for that evening’s dinner. Feeling as if I was being forced to pick a favorite between Taleggio and his future sibling, I decided not to decide and purchased all three varieties instead. Spring, after all, is right around the corner, and it was time to stock up on the dwindling winter harvest before it was all but squashed.

Pickles are to New Yorkers as kimchi is to Koreans. Sweet or sour, soft or crunchy, mild or garlicky, the city and the pickle are as entwined as pastrami and rye. The unsung hero of the Lower East Side, as quintessential as the New York slice, the Kosher dill was once a headliner of this immigrant city’s diet…the pickle was New York’s first street food sold from a pushcart.

So what happened? From its peak in popularity at the turn of the 20^th century, the pickle plummeted to what many would assume to be its natural state—the oft-neglected, watery and flaccid spear most commonly discarded with sandwich ends and unused mustard packets. Fallen from grace, with only a few of the formerly hundreds of pickle purveyors remaining in its old stomping grounds (Guss’ on Orchard and The Pickle Guys on Essex), the pickle seemed fated to go the way of jellied pimento salad. Michael Pollan said in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, “People began processing food to keep nature from taking it back: What is spoilage, after all, if not nature, operating through her proxy microorganisms, repossessing our hard-won lunch?” After thousands of years of learning to pickle cabbage, olives, lemons, okra, cucumbers, even pretty in pink eggs (like the ones pictured above), saving lunch from the destructive whims of Mother Nature, was our future nothing but Vlasic?

Enter the nouveau picklers. In the last decade or so, pickles were swept up in the wave of back-to-the-homestead mania that roared through American kitchens, both home and professional, and left a cornucopia of preserved foods in its wake. Just last month I preserved sour oranges by transforming them into scotch & sour citrus marmalade! And have you tried Sri Lankan eggplant pickles with black mustard seed and tamarind paste? Pickled green mango with fenugreek, turmeric and hot chilies? These are not your grandma’s bread and butter pickles, but the new condiments of the New York scene. The food-forward Big Apple presided over International New York Pickle Day, lectures have been given and books written about the Lower East Side’s fermented history, and David Chang began serving a lusted-after pickling of carrots and fennel at Momofuku. A few blocks over in Chinatown, New Yorkers started going crazy for the lightly pickled daikon in Vietnamese banh mí.

New local favorites Rick’s Picks, McClure’s and Wheelhouse Pickles all started up within the last six years, and all keep it fresh and handmade. Not only are they reinvigorating New York’s pickle culture, but they’re reinventing it with combinations like wasabi green beans and Asian-spiced pears. Pickles are also fixtures at several Greenmarkets throughout the city, at which I occasionally grab a jar of dills as a gift for a pregnant friend (surprise surprise, it ain’t just a myth!), but for a long time ignored, just like I ignore the sub-par baked goods sadly on display in most farmers’ markets. Having grown up mainly on sweet cocktail gherkins and ridged slices, I enjoyed an occasional spear with fish and chips but had never fully explored the complexity of the pickle. It wasn’t until a holiday party a few years back that I truly caught the pickling bug. After midnight that December, gorged on Christmas cookies and bourbon, my friend pulled a jar of homemade pickled ramps out of her refrigerator and said “Try this–from our garden!” And just like that, I was hooked.

Green tomatoes with curry, turnips with gin (!), simple dills with garlic… the city has turned into a veritable smorgasbord of pickle possibilities. In fact, this may be the best time ever to be pregnant in New York City. Whole Foods on the Bowery even sponsored a pickle and cheese tasting recently, featuring Bob McClure, and after reading up on my pairings, I snagged a jar of Rick’s Pick’s Phat Beets at the Brooklyn Flea last weekend and plated it up with arugula and Bûcheron. I would say it was a delicious salad, except that I quickly picked out and ate up my allotment of ginger and allspice-infused roots before I even sampled the rest. Next time, a beet Napolean. 

This past summer I jarred petite kirbies from the Greenmarket for friends, and watched them disappear on veggie burgers at a late summer cookout in Clinton Hill. Fresh and extra crunchy, refrigerator pickles have a comforting vinegary sweetness that I remember from childhood summers spent in Alleghany State Park, where a favorite neighboring restaurant served plates of pickled vegetables with every meal, followed by hot corn fritters with syrup. Refrigerator pickles, though, are a different breed than the kind of sour pickle perfected by Guss’ over the last 90 years, which are prepared entirely without vinegar and fermented solely with the help of naturally occurring, lactic-acid producing bacteria in a salt brine. Something best left to the experts, I think!

All of this isn’t to say that pickle mania has been confined to New York—the South has its own pickle tradition as well, and is deservedly famous for it. In fact, I’ll freely admit that the tastiest bread and butters I’ve ever had were at Jestine’s Kitchen, a true Low Country café in Charleston, South Carolina, where the pickles are sweet, the okra is fried, and the po’ boys are deliciously overstuffed. But southern pickles, including the newfangled Kool-Aid variety, are a whole ‘nother story.

After a particularly harsh happy hour on the Lower East Side last weekend, Erin and I trudged through the slush to Katz’s for pastrami. As I alternated bites of meat with a half-sour, washing it all down with a Cel-Ray, I wondered what it is that makes pickles so satisfying. I crave them most with fats and oils, when eating hamburgers and mayonnaise, but they’re so much more than just palate cleansers. Kimchi brightens a bowl of plain rice, chutney adds dimension to an Indian meal, the dill pickle brine served with the oysters at The Breslin is my new favorite shellfish accoutrement, and pickled vegetables, like those served at Mari Vanna in the Flatiron district, are a lip-smacking staple of Mediterranean, Eastern European and Russian cuisine. Everyone has their pickled favorite, and nearly anything can be pickled, from eggplant to watermelon rinds, crabapples to pears. In the days before Fritos snack packs and crispy potato product, barrel pickles were both a portable and satisfyingly salty snack.

I crunched happily on my dill and imagined Katz’s as it was back in ’09—that is, 1909— when the pickles were crisp, the pastrami was fatty and the salami hanging from the ceiling was actually for sale. I’m happy to know that places like Katz’s and Guss’ are still around, but equally happy for the new guys and gals who are expanding the definition of what New Yorkers think of when they think of a pickle. By mixing it up and adding new flavors to our fave condiment, the nouveau picklers are building a modern history of pickles in NYC. One involving way more spice.

Whenever my dad (a gregarious MexTexican) comes to visit, his favorite thing to do is ask every random person he meets what they think is the best slice of pizza in New York City. He asks everyone. Cabbies. Bartenders. Bodega owners. He’s often eating a slice while he asks the guy, who just sold it to him,

“Alright, where’s the best slice in the city really?”

My father is an enthusiastic viewer of Man Versus Food.

I love pizza expansively enough to know that the idea of a “best” slice is, itself, a false premise…

unless, of course, you want to get all historiographic about it and argue the superiority of the original, Neapolitan pies, which are found only in a couple of famous, gritty spots in that costal city. In that case, I’ll say that the pie(s) Kimberly and I shared at Da Michele with a couple of Neapolitan gentlemen a few years back were pretty mind-blowingly amazing. But in Italy, you lose all your objectivity since everything around you is so stimulating. Eating pizza in Naples, you can’t escape the sense that you are devouring the present and the past in each bite and it’s all so intoxicating.

…but really, the best slice is usually the one in your hand. So here’s my take (in no way comprehensive, just some field notes) on a few recent, delicious forays into everybody’s favorite food:

Roberta’s: In order to visit Sara (and to work on my hipster bona fides), I occasionally travel to Bushwick. Sadly, these visits do not often include memorable food experiences (hummus and pita at Sara’s, notwithstanding), but when the two of us visited Roberta’s a couple of months ago, I found a much-hyped Brooklyn joint that I thought really stood up to its good press. I fell instant and hard for our impossibly cool, foodie-for-real waitress who steered us toward the most interesting choices (braised tripe, roasted marrow bones) on the menu and coursed out a meal of abundant seasonal textures and flavors. Pizza was only one of the dishes we enjoyed, but we went for it, devouring a Crispy Glover pie (tomato, taleggio, garlic, guanciale, onion, breadcrumbs, pepperoncini oil). I’m a sucker for inventive topping combinations (if all the component parts are of high quality and somebody skilled is manning the oven). For this, Roberta’s is fantastic.

Luzzo’s: I just spent Valentines Day here with my beloved On and Off Again. The first thing you notice about this place when you squeeze yourself in the front door is that more than half the people in the joint are speaking Italian! If there’s anything that can put a good pizza joint over the top, it might just be a roiling linguistic soundtrack of Italy’s mother tongue. We went, as we always do, for the Pizza Tartufata, a glorious charred disc lightly shellacked with acidic tomato sauce, topped with a generous amount of sour/sweet buffalo mozzarella, leaves of fresh basil and all topped with drizzles (liquefied from a pate) of aromatic black truffle. It combines to make a great sensory experience: pleasantly oily, chewy, redolent, salty, smoky…a truly sexy pizza.

Motorino: Funny enough, considering my proclivity for rich indulgences, I don’t die for bacon. I like it. I think pork is often delicious as a component of a dish, but the flavor of bacon doesn’t light up my life the way it does for some. That said, I think that the Brussels sprout, smoked pancetta pizza, which Sam Sifton recently called, “…something from a magic act, a dog speaking BBC English ”and “…great and unsettling, far better than imagination would dictate” is a truly glorious pie. I adore the crisp texture of the Brussels sprout leaves that have been strewn about the bed of cheese (mozzarella and pecorino), garlic and pancetta, then fired so that the crust is pillowy but crackles at the outsides. The combination of flavors is mesmerizing and if the fresh mozzarella leaves the middle of the pie a little soggy, the al dente bits of salty bacon and earthy little leaves mute the effect, making the sum of the parts bizarrely good.

Otto: After Sara’s infamous exit from Mario’s joint, on the publication of some juicy details of her book in Page Six, I’ve frequented Otto a little less frequently. But I’m mad about the food here—always have been—and the griddle-cooked, thin crust pizza is a must order, even amongst an abundance of delicious menu choices. Not surprisingly, I like the most straightforward pie, the Margherita D.O.C. with creamy little pillows of buffalo mozzarella, plus tomato and basil. Everybody knows Mario outdoes himself turning simple Italian flavors and ingredients into magical food moments; the fact that he does this with pizza at Otto and the pie (in Downtown Manhattan!) only costs $11 is almost miraculous.

Lil’ Frankies: Sometimes Erin and I meet here on Tuesdays for an early dinner, before she heads to Piano’s for her man’s music show. We both love the Angelina: chewy, pillow-y crust topped with mozzarella, sliced cherry tomatoes & bright, spicy arugula. It’s like a salad atop a yummy, baked bread. For pizza, it’s pretty light, leaving the option to share some Zucca Al Forno (roasted butternut squash with parmigiano cheese) as a side. This is also the best late night, restaurant pizza in my neighborhood.

Two Boots: First, I must confess my devotion to Two Boots is derived, in part, from the fact that the owner, Phil, is a great guy and a huge booster for my favorite neighborhood organization, The Lower Eastside Girls Club. In fact, Two Boots sponsored the club’s Mardi Gras Benefit last week, at which Kimberly, Sara and I partied in masquerade for a good cause. I spent some time in the store on Bleecker Street, leading up to the event, helping to promote ticket sales, and the atmosphere there is so friendly! The walls are covered with colorful artwork and the pizza smells fantastic; no wonder there were so many families that came through. I’m a big fan of the New Orleans-meets-Italy concept behind the pies and other menu items. My favorite slice is the Tony Clifton: a thin, cornmeal crust topped with mozzarella, wild mushrooms, vidalia onions, and drizzles of sweet red pepper pesto.

Artichoke: The long lines haven’t abated, even though this place has been open for a couple of years now. The trickiest part of enjoying this pizza is that you have to take it somewhere; there is absolutely nowhere to enjoy it in the tiny storefront. And it’s almost impossible (for me) to eat it without a fork; it’s a monster. You will wait for this pizza, sometimes in the rain or in the cold, and a single slice will equate, calorically, to an entire Thanksgiving meal. But it is a singular pizza experience. The signature artichoke slice uses a crisp, buttery crust as a base for a sloppy, insanely creamy, spinach artichoke “dip,” baked until the acidic chokes burst beneath rich béchamel-style sauce, the integrity of which is held together by a slightly crunchy, baked cheese top. It’s unusual and epic.

Stromboli: This is a classic E. Village, open-all-night slice joint. It offers the perfect example of how spoiled New Yorkers are—that this kind of hole in the wall serves better pizza on its worst day than the best of what’s available in most other places, where Domino’s is the definition of pizza. The Margarita slice is my absolute go-to: tons of garlic, plump San Marzano-type tomatoes, wisps of basil and salty mozzarella on a thin crust. It’s my favorite slice in a neighborhood that offers lots of options, in a city that features too many terrible Ray’s to count. On the West side, in Kimberly’s neighborhood, Bleeker Street offers a similar, and also wonderful Margarita slice, which I happen to know is her go-to pizza grub-hub.

Photo Courtesy of Mixed Greens

With the wind whipping, temperature dropping and snow accumulating, I spent much of the last two weeks nesting in my cozy (and at times tropical) fifth floor walkup. By Wednesday, however, cabin fever started to set in, and I knew I needed to take a trip up to Chelsea Markets, specifically, to Dickson’s Farmstand Meats. That’s right: I had meat on the mind, specifically, bacon.

After I regained the feeling in my fingers and teased the snow out of my hair, I moseyed on over to the butcher counter to make my selection. I settled on a quart of Master Stock, made from beef, duck and pork bones, two pounds of cubed beef chuck shoulder, the perfect centerpiece for a winter’s stew, and one pound of choice-cut of thick, smoky bacon to act as the ultimate in decadence—the garnish for my meaty one-pot meal. Now here’s what you need to know about Dickson’s: not only is their bacon so utterly delicious I can’t help but eat it raw, their stock is the most flavorful, gelatinous goop on the market (which I dare say is better than my own!), and their beef is as tender and fresh as it comes, but what’s more, all of their meat is also locally sourced and humanely raised. What could be better than that?

As I left the sanctuary of Chelsea Markets bundled up to once again face the elements, I was momentarily distracted from the Buffalo-like weather and emboldened by the thought of the sweet, earthy bacon in my bag. Feeling particularly like dinosaur kale, I decided to head over to the Union Square Farmers’ Market to select vegetables to round out that night’s pork-tinged pot of meat. By the time I made it across town, the howling winds had sufficiently reminded me of the reasons for my recent stint as a homebody, and I stood, amazed, that there was even any produce there at all. I knew I needed particularly hardy vegetables, something extra fortifying and strong that would not only stand up to my bacon but to the trip back to my apartment as well. At that moment I spotted a stand of rutabagas. This often-neglected root vegetable (it’s a cross between a turnip and a cabbage) is loaded with potassium and vitamin C, making it a nutritional powerhouse that would be a much-needed health booster after my day of wandering around New York City in the dead of winter. Their purple and white mottled skin, covered with a protective wax coat, hides a smooth, creamy interior that can be boiled, roasted, pureed, or fried. In this case, I planned to sauté them in butter and thyme before adding them along with my other markets finds—potatoes, carrots, mushrooms and horseradish—to the pot that would be simmering atop my stove in a matter of minutes.

One last stop at the wine store for two bottles of Burgundy (one for the pot and one to get potted), and I was back home. Using Tyler Florence’s recipe for The Ultimate Beef Stew as my guide, I threw my own flourishes into the pot and settled into three hours of mouth-watering suspense as my apartment grew swollen with the smell of stew.

It was worth waiting for. Giving stew, soups and casseroles enough time to reduce, condense and solidify flavor is the trick to one-pot meals. Think low & slow! Just like BBQ, stew benefits from slow cooking over a low flame. It also benefits from crunchy bacon bits sprinkled over the top of your brown bowl of not-so-pretty but seducingly-soul-satisfying supper. But then again, what doesn’t?

Everything tastes better with bacon.

It’s time for lunch. Or rather, it’s time to reform the school lunch program in this country. On Fat Tuesday, it’s apropos to direct you to my favorite celebrity chef at his recent TED Prize winning speech, wherein he announces that in the 18 minutes it will take for him to deliver said speech, 4 Americans will die “through the food that they eat.” This is certain but avoidable death. And this a shameful body toll in a country as rich in science, resources and real food as our own. America’s children deserve better.

As a chef, eater, foodie, writer, thinker, friend, citizen, American, lover of children and lover of food, I urge you to take action today to use your voice, your vote, your time, to volunteer with Slow Food USA and help reverse this cycle of death and disease we’re teaching our children with every processed lunch we serve. If you’re in New York City, join me next Tuesday, February 23rd at Jimmy’s No. 43 for the Slow Food NYC Volunteer Training Program. It’ll take just one hour of your time, and you’ll be officially registered to attend Slow Food events as an advocate for food change. Or read the letter below from Slow Food USA and take but a moment to follow the links and send an urgently needed message to your state’s legislator to demand that he or she take up this Congressional call to pass the Child Nutrition Act. Do your part to put real food on the table and Eat it Up!

Dear friends,

More than 31 million children participate in the National School Lunch Program. Many consume as many as half their daily calories at school. Helping schools serve real food may be the most promising way to end child obesity - but it simply can’t happen unless Congress invests in healthier food and the Child Nutrition Act.

Will you send an email to your legislators to help schools serve real food?

As an organization, Slow Food gets involved in policy when we see big problems with America’s food system that can only be solved if citizens speak up. Teaching children to make good food choices will require hard work from parents, schools, non-profits, the private sector and government. But an enormously important step is to ensure that the National School Lunch Program isn’t undermining those efforts, and is instead serving kids the healthy food they need to grow up into able, productive adults.

On a conference call this week, USDA Secretary Vilsack said that the most important thing citizens can do to get healthier food into their local schools is to urge Congress to pass a strong Child Nutrition Act. This issue has broad public support, he said, but it isn’t appearing in the national media - so we need to make sure Congress gets the message.

That’s where you come in. Now that Michelle Obama is leading the charge, Congress will begin updating the Child Nutrition Act this month. If legislators hear support from citizens back home, they’ll have the opportunity to invest in healthier food, strengthen nutrition standards, and equip schools to buy local and cook meals from scratch.

Photo Courtesy of Slow Food NYC

So please take a minute to email your legislators today.

Thank you,
Gordon Jenkins
Advocacy Manager
Slow Food USA

Photo Courtesy of Getty Images

There’s snow on the ground, love in the air and wafts of garlic floating down the stairwell of my West Village apartment building. Perched on high in my New York nest, I’m infusing olive oil with garlic. My neighbors tell me they can smell me from the second floor of my fifth floor walk-up. I’ve heard that vanilla candles in the kitchen and apple pies in the oven help sell homes, but I don’t think there’s any scent more seductive than the bittersweet smell of caramelized garlic. The first step in many a recipe, sautéing garlic holds a sense memory of every unforgettable meal you’ve ever had and sets off sparks both on the plate and on the palette.

It worked on my new neighbors. I first met the couple who moved in next door when our Super was showing the vacated studio that shares a wall the length of both our apartments. It’s an intimate building, or as Craigslist would say, “cozy,” which is shorthand for small. I prefer the term tenement chic! Kip and James laughed when I used it to answer their question, “What’s it like living here?” I didn’t tell them about the break-in I had two summers ago or the ratatouille-types who threatened my pantry (and my sanity) until I adopted Taleggio, and it wouldn’t have mattered if I had. All they really wanted to know was what that whiff of garlic was coming from my kitchen. Now that was a question I could answer.

“Quail Egg Toasts,” I boasted. “What are you Martha Stewart?” Kip quipped. “Close,” I replied, then James added, “No man, she’s way hotter than Martha.” I liked them already.

The combination of garlic wafts and rent control convinced Kip & James to take the apartment, but not before I invited them in to taste-test my garlic & thyme toast points topped with fried quail eggs and spread with a thin layer of spicy salami paste called ‘nduja. An Italian invention imported from the California Coast, the first time I tried ‘nduja was at Boccalone in the San Francisco Ferry Building. Mac and I were on a tasting adventure out West, and ‘ndjua was the standout flavor sensation of the trip. This soft, spreadable sausage has been referred to as “flaming liquid salami” and “the spreadable Italian love child of pepperoni and French rillettes.” A few weeks ago, The Times called ‘nduja, “the perfect food trend: it combines nose-to-tail eating, pork, smoke and chili heat.” With the official Dining & Wine decree, it’s now flying off the shelves at Murray’s. I’ve seen it pop up on menus at dell’anima and A Voce, and used it on pizzas for the Cajun Super Bowl party I attended last Sunday. Everyone swoons over the stuff, but combine it with a cutesy-runny quail egg, high quality extra virgin olive oil and garlic bread, and it’s a surefire knockout.

I’ll serve it to the girls I’m having over this Sunday to celebrate/commiserate the dagger to the heart that is Valentine’s Day. To my mind, V-day is lame if you’re in love and cruel if you’re not (made only crueler if you venture out for price-fixe menus on the worst dining date of the year), so I’ll have plenty of sausage on hand to sedate any among us who feel the sting of cupid’s arrow. If that doesn’t work I’ll break out the chocolate, but this year, I’ll save my green goodies until after I’ve finished cooking.

Here’s to hoping we all find a spicy sausage to love! February might be too cold for tomatoes and taking the long way home, but it’s perfect for toast points and nesting among new neighbors and old friends.

Quail Egg Toasts (serves as many as you toast)

• 1 loaf Texas Toast

• 1 head Garlic (diced)

• 1 cup+ Extra Virgin Olive Oil

• 1 bunch Thyme

• 1 ‘Nduja Sausage

• Quail Eggs

• Fleur de Sel

• Salt & Pepper

Make the garlic oil in advance. I usually make big batches of this stuff and save it in the refrigerator for every opportunity I get to toast garlic bread, sauté vegetables or whip together a pasta sauce. It’s also a great base for a marinade or salad dressing, and will stay fresh for weeks at a time. You can add lemon zest, chili flakes, basil, any spice you choose, but keep in mind that adding perishable ingredients decreases the shelf life of the garlic oil.

Simply dice or press a head of garlic, pour a cup of olive oil into a heavy-bottomed frying pan on medium-low heat, and when the oil begins to get hot (about 2 minutes) add the garlic. Season the pan with a pinch or two of salt and pepper and a few springs of thyme leaves separated from their stalks. Watch the pan carefully, stirring occasionally, and as soon as the garlic is about to turn brown take it off the heat (about 2 minutes more). The hot oil will continue to caramelize the garlic minutes after it’s off the flame. If you burn the garlic, you have no choice but to start over. Transfer the garlic oil to a bowl to cool, and reserve the frying pan.

Cut slices of thick-cut Texas white-bread toast into triangles, brush them with a thin layer of garlic oil and pop them in a toaster oven or under a broiler until golden (about 5 minutes in my oven, but oven temperatures vary, so watch these carefully so as not to let them burn).

Pierce the ‘ndjua sausage with a knife, creating a slit from which you can spoon out the soft insides. Spread a thin layer of ‘ndjua on each toast point.

In the same heavy-bottomed pan now coated with a thin layer of garlic oil, fry the quail eggs over-easy over a low heat, and season them gently with kosher salt as they fry. These suckers are quick so watch them carefully, and when the edges of the egg whites start to brown, remove them from the pan and place atop each toast. Sprinkle with thyme leaves and fleur de sel, and finish with a drizzle of the best extra virgin olive oil you got. Happy nesting!

February is—for me—the most singular month of the year. It’s short, it’s unforgiving with its wicked weather and romantic overtures, and it’s spelled with one of the most baffling “r’s” in the English language. It’s bitterly cold, often snowing, and work is in shorter supply (at least for those of us whose idea of work is what other people call a party). With a little less cash, a little less sunlight and a little less warmth, I find myself a lot more inclined to stay in on February nights, maybe more than any other time of year. Mac used to find it maddening, but there is many a day, in February especially, when I don’t even leave my apartment. Why should I? I can work from home, eat from home, drink from home, and never have to change out of PJ’s. While I love my friends, I equally covet my downtime, passing an evening or two or three alone, practicing my well-honed version of R&R: Recipe development and developmental Reflection.

On one such night last week, I found myself perusing through old Market Reports, reflecting back to the sultry months of summer, when I first began posting them. I had just returned from my weekly jaunt up to Union Square, and a medley of root vegetables—turnips, potatoes and shallots, drizzled in olive oil and sea salt—were roasting away in the oven. The dreary sight of the Square with but a few farm stands surviving winter’s wrath, made me yearn for past posts about peaches and gooseberries; gooseberries! Tiny, frail little balls of sweetness so fragile that it’s hard to imagine New York was ever warm enough for them to grow. Flipping through the posts was like turning the pages of an old family album. From tomatoes to melons to figs to pumpkins, I watched the seasons turn, turn, turn and was reminded of Mother Nature’s motto, made famous by Pete Seeger, “A time to plant, a time to reap.”

It is with that in mind that I confess a dithering passion for winter produce and outdoor shopping excursions. I still visit the markets, but I’m less enthused about their offerings. I still support local farmers and spend my consumer dollars on plants and proteins that take the dinosaur kale’s approach to resilience, but I also find myself more attuned to my Aunt Susie’s recipe for surviving Buffalo winters. While others might preach, “Bundle up” or “Don’t forget a hat,” Susie’s expression resonates across kitchens and climates. She suggests, “Take it slow.”

From now until early April, I plan to slow down my market visits and beef up on veggies made from hardier stock: apples, pears, shell beans, cabbage, beets, carrots, onions, garlic, potatoes, parsnips, celery root, turnips, winter squash and shallots. These are the standard bunch of sturdy produce that can withstand cold storage and frosted afternoons in the open air, and these are the strapping stars of winter’s menus, suited to slow roasting, braising and one-pot meals. Farmers will be hawking little else till spring, so the food-forward among us have but little choice other than to seek out the joy in seasonal eating by squeaking out a meal that embraces the singular challenge that is February. If you get stuck, take it slow, find comfort in a quiet night at home and give stew a chance!

I’m a cat person. Taleggio and I bonded over shellfish and sleeping in on Sundays as soon as I brought him home from the shelter. As the consummate bedfellow in my life, we share secrets. He’s the only other set of eyes to witness the dirty dishes I leave in the sink or my midnight cravings for triple crème and chocolate, and only he gets to paw me in the shower. Adopting my Russian baby Blue was my first tangible step toward starting a family of my own creation. One day, when I have a home big enough for the three of us (or four if I can find him a Daddy), I hope to welcome into our lives his brother, Marmalade Smoosh. Smoosh will be a big, fat, fluffy, orange Persian who will join Gio in deserving the title, “my man.” Till then, I’ll have to settle for another type of marmalade, sans Smoosh…

In the darkest depths of winter, when I haven’t seen the sun in days, I sometimes have Raymond Chandler daydreams. In these dreams, ever-sunny Los Angeles (to which I have been magically transplanted) is populated exclusively by women in chic suits with boxy crocodile handbags, who wander aimlessly through gardens of bougainvillea while dashingly handsome men (who all look suspiciously like Don Draper, a.k.a. Humphrey Bogart) roll cigarettes and drink martinis in the shade. No one does any real work, and there’s nary a strip mall in sight—nor an In-And-Out burger, SUV or iPhone. In these dreams, when I reach through the window of my immaculately white California kitchen to break a fresh avocado off the branch, a warm breeze touched with the smell of winter’s citrus wafts in from my backyard grove, where Smoosh coos to be let in.

Short of putting on some high heels and Hoagy Carmichael while I roast root vegetables, reality suggests that there hasn’t been a lot of sunshine in my New York kitchen recently. But just as my West Coast fantasy was starting to fade, I got a surprise in the mail sent by an old friend in Phoenix—a brown box filled with Seville oranges and Meyer lemons. Now, Phoenix may not be vintage Hollywood, but for homegrown citrus, it hands down beats anything else I’ve tried. My friend grows his sour oranges as ornamentals in his backyard; the dark, glossy-leaved trees sprout and drop their bright fruit unbothered by any but birds. Maybe he meant for me to put the oranges in a nice bowl and leave it at that, let them brighten up my table with a ray of Arizona sunshine, but I have a feeling he knew I wouldn’t be able to leave them alone.

A (perhaps apocryphal) story of the beginnings of Keillor’s Dundee Marmalade served as inspiration—in 1700, the story goes, a grocer was offered the opportunity to buy pounds of Seville oranges at a severely discounted price, when a passing ship, hemmed in by a storm, needed to get rid of them quickly. Intensely sour and full of seeds, even by 18^th century tastes the oranges were far too bitter to sell. So the grocer’s wife (Mrs. Keillor) did what any smart woman of her day would have done; following the rule that the tartest of fruits—wild blueberries, rhubarb, green apples, raspberries—can make the best desserts, she turned them into a transcendent Seville orange marmalade. With a box of bitter citrus on my doorstep and a new set of canning tools in the cupboard (a thoughtful Christmas gift), I decided to follow her lead.

I’ve always been fascinated by the second life of food: pickles, preserves, even the conversion of leftover bits and bops into new, exciting dishes. Having the chance to break out my hot water canner mid-winter is a delicious treat, as well as pragmatic. How else can one safely bottle up a batch of distilled sunlight for the next few months? The process of washing and sterilizing, boiling, bottling, sealing and processing —so methodical and exact, yet so timeless—becomes meditative. Surely Mrs. Keillor arrived at a similar process 300 years ago, using her equivalent to my modern tongs, funnels, lid-lifters and Ball jars. After washing and lining up my tools on a clean cloth towel and sterilizing the jars in a hot water bath, I’m like a surgeon prepared for a major operation. Sleeves rolled up, apron on, ready to dig in!

The whole experience of canning is an aesthetic and sensory indulgence, one totally lost if you’ve never done more than open a jar of Smuckers. Strawberry jam on toast is decadent; a stockpot full of boiling strawberries, hot and thick and sweet, is immersive and divine. After squeezing and pitting the oranges (and one of the Meyer lemons, for a little extra zing), I carefully wrapped the pits in a cheesecloth pouch, sliced the rinds into thin strips, and added both to a pot of boiling water. Within minutes the air was heavy with orange oil. Making marmalade didn’t just bring the sunshine in; it saturated my entire apartment with a sweet, thick, spicy scent. After simmering for hours, pounds of white sugar were poured in, drowning and quickly dissolving in the glistening orange goo. Last but not least, a splash of Glenlivet (one in the pot and one on the rocks, with a sour orange twist)…because what goes better with oranges than scotch? It was all I could do to keep from taste-testing ladlefuls of marmalade as I waited for the full experience—cooled, set and on toast.

Long after I’d poured the marmalade into six clean pint jars, sealing and lowering them into boiling water for processing, the scent lingered—in curtains, in clothes and in my hair. It was the smell of lazy days and luxury, bitter rinds and (in my mind, anyway) the glamorous, seductive West. I poured myself a bit more single malt and plunked down in bed, still in my apron. A frisky Taleggio popped out from between the sheets. Squinting, I could almost see an avocado tree outside my window. And surely, those were footsteps coming up the stairs—Bogie? Smoosh?