Spice! Cake! And a Restaurant I Remember with Pure Pleasure

Not to mention, a very unusual way to assess a restaurant.

A couple of years ago Ligaya Mischan, a writer I admire enormously, posted an Instagram picture of the spices she was taking on vacation. They all came from Burlap & Barrel, and I immediately went to their website.

This can be a very dangerous thing to do. I ordered far too many spices — and continue to do so to this day. It’s a veritable cornucopia for cooks; in addition to intriguing spices that you really want (Urfa peppers, the new Jimmy Nardello pepper powder, black lime, sumac… I could go on and on), the site introduces you to the farmers who grow them and offers recipes as well.

They also collaborate with chefs. The late Floyd Cardoz (a talented chef and a lovely man), and his wife Barkha created a set of masalas that have markedly improved my Indian dishes. And Reem Assil’s Za’atar is so delicious that I find myself sprinkling it over almost everything. (If you haven’t tried her manoushe recipe, this savory flatbread will make everyone you know very happy.)

A slight variation on the usual series, but I just found this twenty-five year old fax from Marion Cunningham and thought I’d include it. I think I’d asked her for a recipe for a simple birthday cake for Michael — and she sent this.

From the specificity of the directions, I’m guessing Marion was working on Learning to Cook with Marion Cunningham, the book she wrote for novice cooks. She spent a couple of years doing research, putting up signs all over her neighborhood offering free lessons to anyone who wanted to learn.

“But I was the one who learned,” she told me. “I’d never understood that cooking has its own language, and it needs a translator. When I asked one student to toss the salad, he walked across the room and threw the leaves, one by one, into the salad bowl.”

The book did not do as well as many of Marion’s other books (The Breakfast Book is her classic), but I still think it’s an essential read for beginning cooks.

Click HERE for a printable recipe

When things got tough in 2008, Tom Colicchio decided to do something different with Craft’s private dining space. Every other Tuesday he and his senior chefs created intimate dinners for a small group of guests. The room only seated 32-36 people, and the open kitchen allowed diners to watch the chefs turn out one spectacular dish after another. Those meals were pure pleasure; I want to eat this one all over again.

So many people enjoyed yesterday’s foray into the world of type via a cookbook, I thought I might offer this look at type in menus. When my father was ill I took the menus of two restaurants I was reviewing to the hospital and asked him to look at the typography. “What do these menus reveal about the restaurants?” I asked.

As it turned out, quite a lot.