TIP OF THE DAY: Pair Saké With Cheese

Buy the cheese, open the saké. Photo courtesy CheeseNerds.com.   Recently, we were invited to a cheese and saké tasting at the French Cheese Board in New York City. Think you should sip saké only with Japanese food? Think again. While it doesn’t seem intuitive, the the traditional Japanese drink, brewed by fermenting rice, has…
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RECIPE: Mother’s Day Martini

Make a special Martini for Mom with this recipe from Grey Goose. It’s all in the garnish: microgreens and a caperberry instead of the usual olive or twist. Here, the conventional olive or lemon twist is replaced with with microgreens and a large, stemmed caper berry: arty and pretty. Use your favorite Martini recipe or…
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TIP OF THE DAY: The Easiest Cupcake Garnishes

Easy Mother’s Day cupcakes. Photo courtesy Sweet Street Desserts.   If you still haven’t settled on a dessert for Mother’s Day, here’s the easy way out. You can make cupcakes like these, from SweetStreetDesserts.com, simply by purchasing plain cupcakes and topping them with a large piece of candy. Instead of sprinkles, the idea is to…
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Spring Salad Recipe: Asparagus & Radishes & The History Of Radishes

It’s easy to put together a spring salad of asparagus and radishes. Most of us are familiar with the crimson radish, and maybe even black radish and white radish (the shredded daikon served with sashimi). If you’re lucky, you’ve enjoyed the beauty of a watermelon radish (photo # 3) or another specialty radish (photo #4—check…
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RECIPE: Oysters & Pearls

The great chef Thomas Keller, inventor of “Oysters and Pearls,” created a splendid first course with fresh-shucked oysters in a pearl tapioca sabayon, garnished with osetra caviar (today it’s domestic white sturgeon caviar, due to import restrictions). Here’s a video, here’s the recipe). Keller’s inspiration was a box on tapioca pearls he noticed on a…
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