Archive for April 2011

Check out our other 5 Best Cocktails

I had a dirty little secret in high school: I was a horse person.

In the burbs, this was standard. Perhaps even a status symbol. But in the city, being a rider was on the same social plane as being a drama nerd, which I happened to be too. Given these two factors, sometime around junior year, my friend Essie told me that it was a miracle that I was cool.

I am hard pressed to think of what possibly negated both horse and theater in my pedigree to make me acceptable company …

Thank you for participating in the spring Le Creuset giveaway! We chose a winner randomly from the list of commenters. And the winner is…Anna Rose! Here’s what Anna had to say:

Squash and zucchini–can’t get enough of either when they’re fresh! And, I can’t wait for summer tomatoes!

We can’t wait for the produce either, and we’ll have many a recipe on the way to satisfy those cravings!

From our kitchen, albeit small, to yours,

Cara and Phoebe, THE QUARTER-LIFE COOKS…

To my mind, Molly O’Neill is a genius. She’s the author of The New York Cookbook and One Big Table, and the former food columnist for the New York Times Magazine–not to mention a horde of other amazing food credits. Her books are more than cookbooks; they’re real research projects, ones that span years and cities and now a whole country. I can spend hours engrossed in the books, reading not just recipes but also whole stories, histories, almanacs.

Best of all, Molly O’Neill is writing a blurb for our book.

That’s just one reason that we’re featuring …

Chances are we’ve got it all wrong, but for us Northerners, Derby Day means an afternoon of wearing spring clothes and drinking mint juleps. Oh, and betting on horses. In honor of the mint and the real arrival of springtime, I invented this tart. The filling sits in a shallow shortbread crust, more like a French pastry than a deep-dish Southern pie. It’s really made of white chocolate, mint, and cream, but it tastes like a mixture of marshmallow and heaven. To bring spring into the mix, I top it all off with some gently cooked blackberries, for which you …

Perhaps you can tell, but we’ve been looking forward to summer since, well, the beginning of March. To increase our patience, we’ve taken to incorporating sundried tomatoes, fresh herbs, and frozen corn at every chance we get.

Whipping out the grill is another tried and true way to make summer come early. As any devotee of tailgating will tell you,  you can stand around a grill long before (or after) the weather is warm. If you’re in the city, find a friend with roof access and a Weber, or get up early and grab a grill and a bench …