French cooking tends to involve much too much work for me to consider trying anything classically French at home. But recently I decided to set aside my preference for the simple and spend a day at … [more]

Three ways to turn me off a cocktail include looking like fruit juice, tasting very bitter and filled with Campari. To its credit, the negroni overcomes my petty obstacles and delivers one of the … [more]

I don’t like traditional breakfast food. The genre’s limitations — eggs, flour, milk, syrup — bore me. I don’t understand why you have to wait until lunch to start … [more]

My wife wooed me with this soup. But what with the soup’s ridiculous richness, I suppose she could have also been trying to kill me. I’ve always thought of crabs as something you eat at a … [more]

I’ve been to New Orleans twice in my life, both of those during the brutally humid month of July. The first visit, back when I was 15, was to a Southern Baptist Convention and left me with … [more]

Pointing out that tiki-type drinks have the potential to be more dangerous than other kinds of drinks doesn’t really add anything new to the world’s collective knowledge, but I … [more]

I always thought that my mother plucked this dip from a 1980s suburban ladies’ home magazine, but she recently told me I had no idea what I was talking about. “Hey, my cucumber recipe … [more]

Another gem from the Amis book “On Drink,” this one takes its name from the title of his tale of an undeservedly fortunate university lecturer. As in all of Amis’ recipes, he … [more]

This is a variation on any number of lemon and ginger beer-based summer drinks, but it’s become my absolute favorite warm-weather cocktail. For this I blame my friend David. He first made it … [more]

This salad has one of the highest ease-to-satisfaction ratios of anything I’ve ever prepared. Critics may point to all the chopping that’s involved. To them I simply say: Cut larger … [more]