It’s a dull gray and thoroughly depressing afternoon in New York City, and just looking at this photo, which I snapped before breakfast on Christmas morning, cheers me up. I’m not suggesting that one should attempt to banish depression with booze, but a little booze, a little vitamin C, and maybe a little Blossom Dearie might be worth looking into. Continue reading …

The Kir Royale might be the most romantic drink ever (she writes after drinking one). There are few things more joyous than champagne, and champagne tinged garnet with blackcurrant liquer has la vie en rose written all over it. It’s named after the once-mayor of Dijon, but don’t worry about it. Pour 1 part crème de cassis into a flute, top up gently with 5 parts champagne, fall in love.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Food often gets me thinking about literature, or history, and vice versa. This happened one afternoon recently as I trotted happily back to my office with a slice of sunny citrus-spiked loaf cake from the staff café at the Met Museum. I found myself humming the nursery song “Oranges and Lemons” and wondering what it was all about. Continue reading …

There are lots of great places to sip a cup of posh hot chocolate in New York City, such as the sleek Chocolate Bar, the jewel-box-like Mariebelle, or one of Jacques Torres’ wonderlands, to name just a few. But to this chocolatarian, City Bakery and its velvety elixir reign supreme.

This year City Bakery celebrates its 17th annual hot chocolate festival for the entire month of February, and features more than twenty flavors in rotation. A few–like vanilla bean (2/10), cinnamon (2/25), and malted milk (2/26)–easily sound like hot chocolate marriages made in heaven, and they are. But my favorites tend to be owner/genius Maury Rubin’s quirkier, more adventurous concoctions. On opening night, I sampled a cup of ginger (very good) and drank much of my companion’s banana peel (brilliant) while he wasn’t looking. And I’ll be returning for a few flavors I’ve never tried before: passion fruit cream (2/11), Arabian Nights (I don’t know what it means, but I hope it’s spicy; 2/12), and bourbon (2/27). Bourbon + chocolate = Thank you, Mr. Rubin.

Check out the full calendar of flavors.

If you can’t get to the festival, you can always make your own.

Update (2/14): City Bakery has changed its calendar of flavors a bit since I wrote this post. Rascals. I swear I didn’t make up the passion fruit cream.

This afternoon, I prowled the food section of my local bookstore looking for a laugh. More specifically, I had in mind those books that creep from the miscellaneous cooking shelf to show up on seasonal display tables every Valentine’s Day. I mean the sexy cookbooks.

I do this every year, mostly because I love to make fun of them. They have absurd titles like Fork Me, Spoon Me: The Sensual Cookbook, [take a deep breath] Booty Food: A Date By Date, Nibble by Nibble, Course by Course Guide to Cultivating Love and Passion Through Food, and InterCourses: An Aphrodisiac Cookbook, which is apparently such a classic in the field that it was given a 10th anniversary edition in 2007. And the covers, oh the covers. The Seduction Cookbook: Culinary Creations For Lovers by Diane Brown depicts a spoonful of honey being drizzled onto a disturbingly sculpted abdomen of ambiguous gender. But the aforementioned Fork Me, Spoon Me takes the prize in the cover art category: a nude woman (is that the author, Amy Reiley, Master of Gastronomy herself?) sits on the floor before an open fridge, making come-hither eyes at the viewer while nibbling a strawberry. With one leg provocatively raised, she is like a foodie Danaë, waiting to be ravished by Zeus in the form of a golden rain of bubbly. Continue reading …