This simple vegetarian dish is exquisitely flavorful, with all the small touches coming together to make something marvelous. The sweet potatoes are, well, sweet. But in this dish they also become tart and spicy, and the yogurt raita is richly flavored with roasted rice powder and a final touch of freshly infused clove oil stirred in at the end. Full recipe after the jump!......

A security firm run by former New York City police detective Bo Dietl has been hired by KFC to move the fast food chain's secret "Original Recipe" of 11 herbs and spices, which has been not been moved from its safe in corporate headquarters for 68 years. The single sheet of notebook paper, yellowed by age, lays out the entire formula, and was written in pencil and signed by Colonel Harland Sanders in 1940. The......

Gridskipper may have a round-up of where to find New York's best black and white cookies, but forget them, just make them yourself! They turn out to be very easy to throw together, and far, far tastier than any you can buy, even in Brooklyn. "Look to the cookie, Elaine!" Recipe after the jump.......

These crostini make wonderful appetizers and snacks, a rich bright complex flavor for very little time and effort. If you don't want to cook in this heat (and who can blame you for fleeing the stove during the summer?), you can buy duck confit pre-made at any gourmet grocery and only spend a minute at the stove reheating it and sizzling the aromatics to put these crostini together. Fresh curry leaves are easy to......

The NY Times revisited the continuing saga of the the culinary lawsuit against Jessica Seinfeld and Jerry Seinfeld. Cookbook author Missy Chase Lapine has accused Mrs. Seinfeld of plagiarism, swiping ideas from her proposed cookbook about making recipes using pureed vegetables. Lapine's detailed proposal was rejected by HarperCollins, which released Seinfeld's seemingly similar cookbook six months after Lapine's was published. Her lawsuit also claims the iconic comedian defamed her, calling her a "wacko" and likening......

Homemade marshmallows are a cinch to make, and these lemon marshmallows will make your s'mores more interesting this year.......

Sour cherry trees in Brooklyn (and yes, there are a few) are just at their peak, and the greenmarkets are flooding with cherries now as well. Sweet bing cherries are better for eating fresh and plain, but sour cherries (also known as pie cherries) are more flavorful and better for baking. This coffee cake is best hot out of the oven, but stays moist and delicious for days if gently reheated just before serving.......

Ochazuke is a Japanese dish comprised of rice and various toppings (often leftovers) served as a soup with green tea poured over it. It makes a wonderfully simple breakfast. This recipe makes delectable use of sweetbreads, which are the thymus gland, not the brain; though they do look pretty brain-like. They are almost too rich on their own, absolutely luscious, and it helps to have something a bit sharper to cut them with. Here,......

Photo of Girls Club cook Valerie courtesy Girls Club. Since April, the Lower East Side Girls Club has been operating their La Tiendita (The Little Store) booth at the Essex Street Market. The Girls Club reaches out to economically disadvantaged girls and young women between the ages of 8 and 23, offering athletic, cultural, life-skills and career oriented programs. For the Essex Street Market, club members have been making a variety of healthy treats in......

This tomato jam is adapted from a recipe for a Moroccan chicken tagine. Sweet and savory, this jam is best served with hearty entrees. It is not suitable for home canning, so please don't use this recipe to preserve your gorgeous summer tomatoes without adapting it to make sure the acidity level is high enough to keep it safe. Speaking of safety concerns, don't let the salmonella outbreak scare you away - this is......

It turns out that you can buy duck hearts at Ottomanelli's Meat Market (285 Bleecker Street) in 5 pound bags for something like $3-4 a pound. Just order a bag and in a few days you will have an abundance of duck hearts to play with! Thaw them just enough to separate them into ziplock bags with maybe 1/2 pound duck hearts in each, label the bags with the date and contents, and freeze......

This cake is light and luscious, like a barely cooked chocolate mousse. It's best served with strawberries, which are coming in gorgeous from New Jersey to the Greenmarkets right about now. Full recipe after the jump.......

These are dead simple, very tasty, and enjoyably audible – both the pop rocks and people's reaction to them. Shell your fava beans. Remember, favas need to be removed from the pod, and then the skin has to be removed from each bean individually. It's a pain in the neck, but worth it once in a while. Make the seaweed pop rocks right before serving by combining a mix of finely ground kelp, dulce,......

Everyone knows that ramps and bacon go well together. Everyone who knows about ramps, that is – and if you don't, get down to the Union Square greenmarket or the Park Slope Food Co-op sometime in the next few weeks before they disappear for the year! Ramps are wild leeks, the incredibly pungent and delicious greens that appear for just a few weeks each spring. Even Wildman Steve Brill says that ramps are "simply......

If you're wandering what to do with the rhubarb that's starting to appear in stores lately, try pairing it with these shortbread cookies filled with nicoise olives. Alternating sips of rhubarb soup with crumbly, salty bites of olive cookies is a wonderful way to start a spring meal. Recipe after the jump.......

Restaurateurs Marc Meyer and Vicki Freeman took some time out of their hectic brunch schedule at Five Points to cook up some matzoh brei, a traditional Passover dish. They generally don't limit their matzoh brei eating to the Passover season. "We eat it all the time," says Vicki. At their house it is generally served plain, although Vicki admits to eating it with applesauce and sour cream when she gets it at Shopsin's. Marc......

Two chefs of popular seafood restaurants have settled a lawsuit out of court, denying foodies the chance to hear how restaurant plagiarism would be argued. The NY Times reports, "Both sides in the case agreed to keep the terms of the settlement confidential." Last summer, Pearl Oyster Bar chef and owner Rebecca Charles claimed that her former sous chef Ed McFarland took not only her recipes when he set up shop at Ed's Lobster Bar......

This recipe comes from Joanne Chen, author of The Taste of Sweet: Our Complicated Love Affair with Our Favorite Treats. In her new book, she goes on an exploration of sweets, bringing in historical anecdotes, scientific data, and refreshing honesty about her own sweet tooth along the way. For example, when given chocolate yogurt to eat in the dark and told that it was strawberry, 19 out of 32 subjects reported that it had......

Here is one last winter recipe before all the glorious spring and summer produce sweeps in. Chickpea-Stuffed Delicata Squash for the chickpeas 1 C (200 g) dried chickpeas 4 C water (or, better yet, mushroom broth) 1/2 C dried cranberries 1/2 C tawny port 2 large (4" diameter) delicata squash Salt, sugar, olive oil, and macademia nuts to taste Preheat your oven to 475 F. Mix the dried cranberries and port together in a bowl.......

This recipe is adapted from A Drizzle of Honey: The Life and Recipes of Spain's Secret Jews by David M. Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson, a cookbook full of recipes for foods cooked and eaten by Jews and conversos in the Iberian Peninsula during the time of the Inquisition. The recipes were mostly gleaned from testimony denouncing the Jews during the inquisition. Jews were often identified by cultural signs, such as their culinary customs, and......

The New York Times had an article on gelatin clarification last fall, The Essence of Nearly Anything, Drop by Limpid Drop by Harold McGee. The idea is that you can create a perfectly clear broth that tastes like anything – chocolate, ranch dressing, brown butter, whatever you like. All you need is enough fridge and freezer space to set up a gelatin clarification system. McGee explained the basic technique very well: Create your broth by......

These grits are spicy, boldly flavored, creamy, meaty from the pork stock, and just an all-around success. The idea of making it with kimchi broth was inspired by Aki and Alex of Ideas in Food, who cooked barley in kimchi broth for another tasty-looking dish. The kimchi grits pair well with stir-fried shredded brussel sprouts, which are crispy and meaty from bacon grease. And just to balance out that meaty pickle fun, the shrimp......

Go make kumquat marmalade while you still can -- their season runs through mid-winter and with spring right around the corner, time's a-wasting. Get 1.5 lbs kumquats and slice them up thinly, reserving the seeds. Tie the seeds in a cheesecloth bag. Put the kumquat slices and the bag of seeds together in a non-reactive pot with 4 cups water and cover it and let it sit for 24 hours. The next day, put the......

Jodi Applegate and Ron Corning, co-hosts of Fox's Good Day New York, both claim to be serious foodies, and it was a toss-up as to which one would have the chance to share their favorite recipe with Gothamist. But New York Magazine went through Ron Corning's daily diet last month, and Jodi Applegate wanted to unveil her favorite recipe for Tuna Surprise here today. Because both anchors have to get up early in the morning......

Many people have a strong preference when forced to choose between sweet and savory -- french toast or eggs, cupcakes or french fries, chocolate or cheese? These days, however, the line is getting blurred, with more pastry chefs entering the savory fray, like Sam Mason's Tailor and Pichet Ong's P*ong, both with menus that bring sweetness into entrees and a savory edge to desserts. A dash of coarse sea salt gives an added kick to......

When you order chocolate mousse in a restaurant, the result can sometimes be heavy and bland. This mousse recipe is light and buoyant because it is made without any dairy, but luscious because it emphasizes high quality chocolate. Dairy products tend to blunt the flavor of chocolate, so if you want to highlight an exceptionally fine chocolate, it is best to substitute water for cream when making your emulsion. Anyone who has worked with chocolate......

Here's one of our favorite munchies, a healthy(ish) and interesting snack to add to your game plan for Sunday. It's also quick and easy enough to whip up during the commercials. Just slice up some green(ish) mango - you can cut it into chunks if you don't feel like julienning it (we use our mandoline). Serve it with a quick dry dip made of: 5 tbsp granulated sugar 1 tsp salt 1/2 tsp cayenne......

This soup is of Georgian origin, where pairing red beans and walnuts appears to be some sort of national pastime. It's a rustic soup, lusciously creamy and actually good for you, too. (Unless you overload on the olive oil, that is. Since we don't specify quantities on that, it's entirely your call.) Red Bean and Walnut Soup (adapted from Please to the Table by Anya von Bremzen and John Welchman) 1 lb. dried red beans......

Crunchy, salty, spicy, and satisfying, these quick pickled cucumbers add a nice kick to most any meal. We reduced the oil content from Kuo's original recipe to make it a bit lighter and healthier, and rinsed off the excess salt after maceration in order to obtain a more balanced flavor, at least to our palate. Quick-Pickled Cucumbers with Chili Bean Sauce (adapted from The Key to Chinese Cooking by Irene Kuo) For the quick-pickling: 2......

For New Year's Eve this year, we served a multi-course meal, full of complex and labor-intensive dishes. What had our guests raving and demanding seconds and thirds, though? These simple little flans, which we threw together on a whim the day before. This basic flan recipe has only 5 ingredients, and takes just about no effort whatsoever. Add some cocoa nibs and infuse the cream before mixing everything together, though, and you have a......