Kitchen Antics

Gonads on toast.

Will — Sun, 20 May 2012 23:50:09 +0000

The Wife is in the kitchen poking around in the refrigerator. She comes across a small Tupperware container containing a handful of what looked like small beige slugs. Or possibly the turds of very sick cat. Holding the container as if it were an unpinned grenade, she comes out of the kitchen with an [...]

Cockroach Of The Sea.

Will — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:44:04 +0000

In common with Fox News, Justin Bieber and those funny little tassels which some men like to wear on their loafers, lobster is one of those things whose popularity I’ve always struggled to understand. I’ve tried, I really have. But lobsters – like Bieber – possess such an abundance of things to loath: [...]

Caesar Salad: the taste of loneliness.

Will — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 01:53:25 +0000

As I become increasingly old and boring, my idea of a successful evening is braising a lamb shank and discussing with my son the relative merits of his favourite dinosaurs. But there was a time not too long ago when I was young and thrusting, and worked in a job which had me [...]

Arrivederci Nonna.

Will — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 02:56:35 +0000

A few weeks ago my grandmother, who was born in 1918, was admitted to hospital in London having become ill and died not long after. Known to us as Nonna, she was an Italian Jew who endured and survived the calamitous antisemitism, racial legislation and bereavement of World War II. Her [...]

In defense of the Happy Meal.

Will — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:28:35 +0000

It’s noon on a Saturday, and the wife is at pilates. I am alone with my tormentor, and it is lunch time.

I take a slow breath, mutter a short prayer, and resume my pleading. I hear a wheedling desperation in my own voice and find it contemptible. My tormentor evidently [...]

Fish Soup, and why the French are annoying.

Will — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 03:43:51 +0000

“Manhattan. Sometimes from beyond the skyscrapers, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia in the middle of the night, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island.” - Albert Camus.

Reading these lines last week put me in a maritime frame of [...]

Baking turns me into Woody Allen.

Will — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:28:22 +0000

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If there’s one rule of home cooking I believe in, it is this: screw the fancy stuff. Shred your Thomas Keller & Heston Blumenthal books. Focus instead on a mastering handful of unfussy dishes which you practice again and again and again until you are very [...]

Tuber Magnatum: worth selling a kidney for?

Will — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 21:22:36 +0000

I do not plan to ever run for public office, so I’m willing to confess that during a much younger, more foolish time in my life I tried on one occasion a particular mood-altering illegal substance which is not uncommon among 25 year-old ne’er-do-wells (like I was) living in New York’s East Village.

[...]

Off-piste Italian.

Will — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 03:38:40 +0000

On my subway ride to work, there’s one conductor who says, “This is Times Square, Center of the Universe. You have connections to the N, R, A, C, E, F, D, and Q trains…”

Center of the Universe or not, as I’ve mentioned before Manhattan at its best [...]

The silliest meal of my life (followed by a good mushroom recipe)

Will — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 04:18:22 +0000

Today’s post comes in two parts. First, a not-very-glowing review of what is arguably New York’s hippest restaurant. Second a recipe. So if you don’t feel like reading the rant, and simply want a simple mushroom recipe, skip to the bottom.

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In Bonfire of the Vanities, [...]