Week 39: Braised Lamb Shanks

Fans of the classic murder mystery know about Nero Wolfe and food. The fictional detective is as famous for his gourmandise as for his crime solving. The elaborate meals Wolfe consumes are featured in every book. As a devotee of both the detection and the dining, when I discovered, years ago, The Nero Wolfe Cookbook, [...]

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Week 38: Melanzanata

This week’s recipe was an attempt to reproduce a delicious eggplant dish I had in my recent trip to Greece. I couldn’t find an approximation in my only Greek cookbook, nor in others that I browsed in bookshops, nor even on the Internet. So I turned to my Italian cookbooks, since Italy does many good [...]

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Week 37: Kidney Beans in Red Wine

After beastly New York heat all summer long and more hot sunny days last week in Greece, I was almost pleased to come back to a chilly, rainy day this weekend. It got me, after months, thinking about cold-weather cooking. Browsing my cookbooks with the thought of a fancy soup recipe, my eye was caught [...]

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Week 36: Vacation Again

I’m away from my kitchen and cookbooks again this week, and this time it isn’t primarily a food-and-wine trip. Tom and I are in Greece, circumnavigating the Peloponnesian Peninsula aboard the MS Galileo. The focus of the trip, organized by Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, is Birds and History. That is, we’ll be disembarking to visit [...]

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Week 35: Tomatoes Stuffed with Potatoes and Peas; Chicken Curry

This whole menu started with my shocked realization that local tomato season is more than halfway over. In the face of that grim fact, I knew I must eat more tomatoes, more often, while the vines are still producing. Come mid-winter, I’ll regret every tomato opportunity missed. So I found an intriguing recipe for Stuffed Tomatoes [...]

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