I’m a big fan of the fish recipes in Chanterelle, Chef David Waltuck’s restaurant cookbook. They feature a wide range of flavor combinations and cooking techniques. This halibut with leeks and a saffron-cream sauce is an example of the many possibilities of fish cookery. The fish is shallow poached in fish stock with shallots, then [...]

This monkfish dish, from Charlie Trotter, is very characteristic of the New American cuisine. Although the dish is very light, many complex flavors are at work, and there is a great freshness and brightness to it. It’s a colorful dish, and has a lot of texture contrasts – smooth puree, crisp fish, and soft, sweated [...]

Sardines. They’re a mess to clean – little scales everywhere – and yield such a small amount per fish. But how flavorful they are, and cheap as well – $7/pound where I buy my fish, which is about 10 or 11 sardines. Sardines are also special to me because they’re the first fish I learned [...]

Here is a simple stir-fried beef dish with colorful strips of red and green peppers, a quick marinade, and a tasty sauce of Sichuanese sweet bean paste and soy sauce. Authentic Chinese cooking does not get much easier than this. There’s a little prep work involved – cutting the beef into thin strips that will [...]

I was looking for a couple recipes to try on my days off last week, and this rabbit dish from one of Charlie Trotter’s books caught my eye. It was the flavor combination that attracted my attention: mildly gamey rabbit, peppery, bitter arugula, sweet figs, and rich goat cheese. So I bought a frozen rabbit [...]

This recipe caught my eye as I was flipping through the Lever House Cookbook. I had a batch of mushroom jus in the freezer, which I originally made for a mushroom pasta sauce, and had it in mind to find other uses for the deliciously earthy liquid. This seared skate recipe uses the mushroom jus [...]