This year I watched the entire James Beard Foundation Awards ceremony from the ridiculously crowded and cramped press room, located in the bowels of Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall in Manhattan. We all watched the video monitors as the awards unfolded, and when our personal favorites won, started yelling at the screen, the way longtime offtrack betting habitues yell when a race is on.
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1. Measure Carefully Any sugar cookie recipe is a delicate proportional balance of fat, sugar and flour, so be sure to measure your ingredients carefully in order to get the desired finished texture (crisp, chewy, delicate, melting, etc). 2. Mind Your Butter! A key step in making sugar cookies is the creaming of butter and sugar. If the butter is too soft, your cookies will be greasy, and if it is too cold, they'll seem like lead weights. It is important to start with evenly softened butter, and the only way to do this properly is to take it out of the refrigerator and, uh, wait. Always soften butter in a temperate environment until it yields gently to pressure;...
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My friends and I set out for our day in Abruzzo on a rainy, foggy, downright chilly morning in Rome. It was a straight shot out on the autostrada, and within 40 minutes we had hit the Abruzzese border, bidding Lazio farewell in order to immerse ourselves in the foods, sights, and countryside of a region that is blissfully off the well-beaten tourist track. In no time we reached Sulmona, a pretty little city known as the birthplace of the Roman poet Ovid and the home of the candies known as confetti. The rain had stopped and bits of sky were starting to peek out of the low-hanging clouds. I was told that the entire city would be filled...
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Last week, I polished off what was left of the Christmas torrone that was left in the candy dish on my desk. I was parsing it out slowly, weekly, hoping to stretch out the nutty-sweet pleasure until Easter candy would arrive. Alas, the last few pieces went down my throat during a painful round of convulsive sobbing over the exchange rate. Since that situation shows no sign of easing any time soon, it was time to head out for some reinforcements today. Torrone is made all over Italy, and nearly every region puts its own particular slant on it, embellishing the nougat candy with local ingredients and flavors. Some versions are firm and chewy, others soft and creamy, studded...
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One of the things that I love about life in New York City is the crazy convergence of diverse cultures taking place in nearly every neighborhood. However, Rome doesn't have the same level of multi-culti vibe going on in its modern food scene, and finding truly exciting, authentic, well-prepared ethnic food can be a challenge.
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Editor's note: We're excited to introduce the following author to you today—though you may already be familiar with her work. Gina DePalma is the pastry chef at Mario Batali restaurant Babbo and the author of Dolce Italiano. She's now in Rome, doing research for a new cookbook, and will be posting weekly here on Serious Eats as her journey there unfolds. Outside of Forno Marco Roscioli. I engage in a specific eating ritual immediately upon my arrival in Rome; it is a personal affirmation to my heart and stomach that I am really, truly here. Other Roma regulars may want to run to the nearest bar for a perfectly pulled espresso, sit down to a steaming plate of spaghetti alla...
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Conventional wisdom in the food world is that desserts in Italian restaurants are an afterthought. All I can say is that the people spouting that conventional wisdom have never had Gina DePalma's desserts at Babbo in New York City. I have had the privilege of eating DePalma's desserts since the restaurant opened. I have over the years sampled every dessert on the menu at least once, and I can tell you there isn't a loser in the bunch. Now that DePalma has written Dolce Italiano: Desserts From the Babbo Kitchen, we can all try to replicate the magic that comes out of Mario Batali's tiny kitchen at Babbo every night. What's really cool about Dolce Italiano is that DePalma herself...
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