fauren

Eric Ripert Loves His Toaster Oven

I know I'm prone to making declarations of love on this blog, but please allow me to put my Fan Girl hat on for just one second.

You know Eric Ripert? Yeah, he runs that restaurant... what's it called? Le Bernardin? It has, like, three Michelin stars or something. Well, he's got a new site called Avec Eric, devoted largely to dispelling the complexities of cooking and making it accessible to bums like you and me.

I got my first glimpse of Chef Ripert when he served as a guest judge on Top Chef and was immediately enamored. Is it inappropriate to insert the term "Silver Fox" here? Well, he is once again bringing his velvety French accent to the masses on this site, which, charmingly enough, features only recipes you can cook in your toaster oven. Between that and an introduction like this, sign me up:

Great cooking doesn’t have to be complicated. High-quality ingredients and simple methods are all you need. Mix in some good friends and great locations and you’ve got a truly transcendent experience...

I have many such adventures planned for us. Over the next few months, we’re going to visit new places, meet new people and cook foods—some new, some familiar–together. I know we’ll inspire and learn from each other as we go.

I’ll share recipes and techniques and tell you my stories. And I hope to hear from you too. Come along with me. We’ll have fun, I promise.

Summer Just Got Even More Awesome

It seems summer has already picked up in earnest, if you take my lack of updates as any indication. But there's so much good stuff happening food-wise right now that I just had to shun my responsibilities at work in favor of catching up on things here. You understand.

So I'd like to talk about how excited I am that local strawberries are in season. I'm SO EXCITED. This is something I await with just as much anticipation as tomatoes at the end of the summer, and the rewards are equally as sweet. Last year, my mom made some incredible strawberry ice cream with the tiny wild strawberries that grow near my parents' place in Massachusetts, and it was the fruitiest, freshest tasting strawberry ice cream I've ever had. Now that the season has come around again, I find myself daydreaming uncontrollably about the deliciousness.

(This pint of strawberries was waiting for me when I stopped by my folks' place on the way back to NYC from Martha's Vineyard last weekend. It survived for approximately 4 hours.)

Now, since wild strawberry season up in MA is barely three weeks long, I realized this spring that I could easily miss my window for mom's ice cream this year if I didn't plan my visits home right. That's when I decided I'd better develop a contingency plan:

That's right, gentlemen. I have the capability.

When it gets so hot in the city, it's impossible to motivate myself to make food that requires use of the stove or oven, but anything involving a frozen canister is something I can definitely get behind. Strawberry ice cream is first up, but if anyone out there has a favorite recipe or flavor combination, you know how to find me.