It seems like every other weekend, Brooklyn is home to some kind of homestyle cooking competition, with a constant rotation of cupcake-offs, chili massacres, a big jerk-off, and probably some vegan tofu spread-a-thons somewhere. Prizes at these things are typically anything from homely trophies to a few cans of PBR, but the just-announced, upcoming inaugural Risotto Challenge is something special indeed: The prizes are going to be very nice. More on that below. On April......

Bon Appétit , in an attempt to appeal to a broader, younger, and theoretically "hipper" audience, has recently revamped its logo. Taunting came in full force, via Grub Street, who concluded, "[t]he truth is that Bon Appétit will never be any hipper or friskier than it is, because no magazine about upscale entertaining can ever speak to people that don’t have big houses and plenty of time on their hands." Adam Roberts, the Amateur Gourmet,......

- Is New York going to go the way of LA with posted letter grades for restaurant health inspections? - If you are getting your Seder meal planning underway, feel free to ping the experts over the NY Times with any questions you may have. Click here to email them a question or send it direct to diningqa [at] gmail.com. Funny how the Times even knows Gmail has great spam protection. - Sometimes not eating......

One of the greatest gifts in life is that of being given a nice, cooked meal. An arguably better gift (and downright city survival skill) is the ability to cook for oneself. Last August, armed with a handful of basic kitchen tools, some moxie and a typepad account, writer Cathy Erway began to document her endeavor of not eating out in New York, which is, not coincidentally, the name of her blog. Erway has......

As the weather gets cooler, we find ourselves inexplicably drawn to daydreams of cooking up large batches of soups, stews, and chilis and baking warm loaves of bread (baguettes, cornbread, banana bread -- whatever, really). It's that time of year when nesting begins in earnest for many of us. This weekend, we made a dinner that we felt perfectly captured the transition from summer to fall: a butternut squash and sage risotto topped with seared......