This recipe is adapted from A Drizzle of Honey: The Life and Recipes of Spain's Secret Jews by David M. Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson, a cookbook full of recipes for foods cooked and eaten by Jews and conversos in the Iberian Peninsula during the time of the Inquisition. The recipes were mostly gleaned from testimony denouncing the Jews during the inquisition. Jews were often identified by cultural signs, such as their culinary customs, and......

Many people have a strong preference when forced to choose between sweet and savory -- french toast or eggs, cupcakes or french fries, chocolate or cheese? These days, however, the line is getting blurred, with more pastry chefs entering the savory fray, like Sam Mason's Tailor and Pichet Ong's P*ong, both with menus that bring sweetness into entrees and a savory edge to desserts. A dash of coarse sea salt gives an added kick to......

These thin, crispy cookies are the perfect garnish for any creamy dessert and, fair warning, they're absolutely addictive on their own as well. Try them with chocolate mousse, perhaps, or shape them into tiny cones to dish small bites of ice cream as an hors d'oeuvre. Pumpkin Seed Tuiles 1 1/3 C pumpkin seeds 1/2 C + 2 tbsp sugar 1 tsp vanilla extract A pinch of cayenne 2 egg whites 2 tbsp butter 2......

Forget going out to a restaurant -- the way to woo your sweetheart (or potential sweetheart) is by cooking. Before the fear courses through your veins, don't think that "cooking a romantic meal" needs to be overwhelming or complicated. The simple act of cooking a meal for someone, no matter what the menu, is romantic and special in and of itself. Perhaps the most romantic meal possible is breakfast in bed, and it doesn't have......

We recently went to check out Amai Tea & Bake House, because we love tea and because we are big on supporting food bloggers in their endeavors (Amai is run by the blogger behind Lovescool). The tea was lovely, and we particularly enjoyed the little cookies they called "tea sweets". So when we got home, we were thrilled to find that the recipe for Amai's green tea sweets was available online. Instead of using matcha......

It’s rare when a book causes the sudden desire to collect large quantities of AP flour, unsalted butter and sugar, but that’s what Greg Patent’s A Baker’s Odyssey might do to you. Other traditional bake-books operate within the wholly confined orbit of strudel and streusels; A Baker’s Odyssey has strudels galore but is also about forgotten or esoteric American immigrant recipes, so it also covers kulich and chin chin cookies, shoofly pie and puran poori.......

Was your New Year's Eve a recipe for a hangover? Luckily there are a few recipes to cure what ails you, too. Last year we found some facts about hangovers, but learning isn't going to make that first headache of '08 go away. From the undoubtedly reputable site called RUPissed? come these hangover cures, and except for the Vegemite you can probably find most of these things in your apartment (or within a one block......

Attention Pacific Northwest: New Yorkers don't care about your cuisine. None of Jeffrey Chodorow's blogging, full page ads in the Times or other theatrics could save Wild Salmon from its imminent closure. After Eater circulated news of its potential doom, Chodorow issued a statement, published on Grub Street, "Regrettably, we will be closing Wild Salmon after the new year. We were excited about bringing the food and wine of the Pacific Northwest to New York,......

Alice Waters is considered by many to be a revolutionary. She opened Chez Panisse in 1971 and began awakening America to the benefits of local, sustainable agriculture by changing her menu according to what was available seasonally. She has taken this charge beyond her restaurant through her books as well as through her Edible Schoolyard program, which enables public school children to explore the connection between what they eat and where it comes from through......

MOVIE: BAM pays homage to the late Barbara Stanwyck tonight with a screening of Forbidden. The 1932 Frank Capra-directed film (which tells the tale of a librarian who has fallen for an unobtainable/married man) was supposedly influenced by his real-life affair with the leading lady. Critic and historian Elliott Stein will discuss the film after the 6:50 screening. 4:30, 6:50 and 915pm // BAM Rose Cinemas [30 Lafayette Ave., Fort Greene] // $11 Meanwhile, the......

Are you playing host this year and still trying to decide what to make for Thanksgiving? We've pulled together some of our old and new favorite recipes for traditional, and not so traditional, Thanksging fare. First, the turkey. We firmly believe that brining is best. This cider-brined and glazed turkey is a simple brining recipe -- you just need to make sure you've got a big enough vessel for the turkey and plenty of room......

What’s worth watching on food-TV this week? Martha Stewart’s all about Thanksgiving this week; she even has a hotline up T-Day emergencies (email thanksgivinghotline@marthastewart.com). Her mashed potatoes tip? Use buttermilk instead of heavy cream or cream cheese—“Delicious,” she says. On Monday, she’s making sides and teaching people about heritage birds and how to find the perfect turkey. On Wednesday, she’ll be answering people’s last minute holiday questions—sent in via the hotline--throughout the show (Monday-Wednesday, Friday,......

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week? This Wednesday on Kitchen Nightmares (9pm on Fox), Ramsay does his thing on Finn McCool’s in West Hampton. Are we the only ones who wonder if his advice actually does any good? Most places that he revisits after his makeover revert—at least in part—to their prior ways. But if you own a restaurant you want Ramsified, now’s your chance. Download an application to be featured on the......

The folks over at the all delicious, all the time site Serious Eats rounded up and presented a bumper crop of recipes from the newly released Mark Bittman cookbook last week, the 996-page How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food. The latest in Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” series, this giant book is exactly what those omnibus, fried-shallot-and-butternut-squash glossy vegetarian porn books strategically posed on chain bookstore discount tables purport to......

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week? Next Sunday is the finale of The Next Iron Chef (9pm on the Food Network). Michael Ruhlman has a comment from Chef Chris Cosentino on his blog about the airplane episode—he was clearly getting crowded by cameras, but for him the crowding was to the degree that he couldn’t work, and he wanted to clarify that fact “now that 1/2 the country thinks i am an asshole.”......

We’ve been cooking a lot with bacon lately, so we’re delighted with The Bacon Cookbook by James Villas. Villas calls bacon “the greatest and most beloved food on earth,” and while we’re not sure we’d go that far, there are moments when we have to agree there’s nothing better. A few things we learned about bacon: - It’s one of the oldest meats in history; the Chinese were preserving and salting pork bellies around 1500......

We've all got our go-to recipe bibles. You know -- the book you go to when you're looking for basics, like how to hard-boil an egg; simple, traditional recipes, like beef stew, chicken fricasee, or corn muffins; or some yet untried way to zip up a tired ingredient. In Italy, it's The Silver Spoon, in America, it's the Joy of Cooking (or, one might argue, How to Cook Everything). In Spain, it's 1080 Recetas de......

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week? We’re in the thick of it now on The Next Iron Chef (Sundays at 9pm on the Food Network). The Amateur Gourmet says “Finally, it gets juicy!” and puts his money on Symon or Besh. He also points out that these chefs—with national reputations—have much more to lose than your average reality food show competitor. “It’s not really a laughing matter when your business hinges on your......

This is autumn in its purest form, by which we probably mean its most candy-like form. Forget maple sugar drizzled on snow and all those other mental images we all picked up from Little House on the Prairie - this brittle is the real deal. Offering to friends and officemates has been a blast, because people have a hard time identifying the ingredients. Chocolate? Nuts? No one knows. The brittle was delicious on its own,......

We are lucky enough to be on our way to Italy for a week's vacation, assuming we make it through the rest of week at work. A few weeks back, we were sent a copy of Faith Willinger's Adventures of an Italian Food Lover, a whirlwind guide through the culinary delights of Italy. Willinger has spent 30 years traveling through and living in Italy, settling in Tuscany, a gastronome's playground. The book guides you to......

A confession. In general, we’re not big Food Network Fans. We do make an exception for Iron Chef (it always sucks us in), and we love it’s latest incarnation. Last week on the premiere of The Next Iron Chef (9pm on the Food Network, Chef Traci Des Jardins got the ax, brought down by her salmon roe dessert (ick). Read the Amateur Gourmet's unique and often hilarious take on things on his blog on the......

What’s worth watching on food-relatedTV this week? Tonight on No Reservations--in another repeat--(10pm on the Travel Channel), Bourdain goes to Brazil. ">Martha Stewart has Chef Tom Colicchio on Tuesday making Cornish game hens. The show airs Tuesday through Friday this week at 1pm (NBC). Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares is on Wednesday at 9pm (Fox). This week, Ramsay makes over Seascape in Islip, NY. The LA Times calls the show “noisy and dissident.” All the TV......

Anthony Bourdain has repeatedly professed his undying affection for Fergus Henderson’s roasted marrow bones with parsley salad, and even considers the British chef to be his “favorite food person.” For eaters who willingly choose seared squab hearts over heart-healthy turkey burgers, Henderson’s offal-heavy cookbook The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating is considered a classic. It contains recipes such as Blood Cake with Fried Eggs, Tripe Gratin, and Crispy Pig’s Tail. Stuff like that. This......

Beard on Food: The Best Recipes and Kitchen Wisdom from the Dean of American Cooking was first published in 1974. This collection of Beard's favorite newspaper columns has been reissued to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the James Beard Foundation, the culinary haven and educational institution created in his honor. The short columns are a pleasure to read, combining culinary education and history with easygoing recipes, travel stories and are brimming with his love......

What’s worth watching on food-TV this week? Tonight on No Reservations (10pm on the Travel Channel), Bourdain goes to South Carolina. He’s also got an upcoming holiday special that features Queens of the Stone Age (wearing Christmas sweaters from QVC, no less). We can’t wait for that one. Read about it in ">Rolling Stone. On Top Chef, Episode 12 airs Wednesday at 10pm (Bravo). The guest judges are Sirio Maccioni and Andre Soltner. Grub Street......

This week on food-TV, we've got: Tonight on No Reservations (10pm on the Travel Channel), Bourdain goes to Buenos Aires and Patagonia, Argentina. On Top Chef, Episode 11 airs Wednesday at 10pm (Bravo). Chef Jimmy Canora is the guest judge. Frank Bruni blogs about the show in the Times, calls Howie “the season’s best villain, the toque you’d love to choke.” And Bourdain is guest judging again this week as well; says that this episode......

What’s worth watching, food-wise, on TV this week? Tonight on No Reservations (10pm on the Travel Channel), Bourdain goes to Hong Kong. His show is followed by Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, who goes to Alaska to eat jellied moose nose and reindeer pizza, among other things. On Top Chef, Episode 10 airs Wednesday at 10pm (Bravo). There are seven remaining contestants, and this week Michael Schwartz is the guest judge. And PBS continues their......

What’s worth watching, food-wise, on TV this week? Be warned: it’s the dog days of summer, so there’s not much new on the air… Tonight on No Reservations (10pm on the Travel Channel), Bourdain goes to Cleveland, Ohio, where Michael Ruhlman shows him around town. Serious Eats recaps last week’s ep (visit to French Polynesia), shares the recipe for poisson cru. Top Chef is a repeat this week. It’s the “All-Star” episode where top competitors......

Octopus Garden is a specialty seafood market located along the far reaches of Avenue U in Bensonhurst. Operated by Vincent and Pina Cutrone, the unassuming corner storefront long been known to chefs like Eric Ripert of Le Bernadin as the go-to place for fresh octopus and sepia. The nine year-old Brooklyn fish market specializes in, but is not limited to, all things cephalopod, a class that includes squid, octopus, and cuttlefish. The octopuses Cutrone......

I'm a fairly new employee in my office and I have no idea what to get for my coworkers. Any suggestions? One of the joys of the season is the tricky situation of who do you give gifts to without looking like a suck-up, and still avoiding not leaving other people out? Offices can make it more complicated with so many people (or so few) sharing close quarters. We have found that often, group gifts......