I save up all my good potato dishes for passover week. I make fish (cod) and potatoes from Mark Bittman's Fish, Potatoes married to mozzarella from Marcella Hazan, and Richard Olney's Leek and Potato soup. I also make a fabulous crustless spinach and feta pie (sub some matzo meal for flour in the filling) from Diane Kochilas's Greek Vegetarian Cooking. My dog eats the matzoh.

Remember, there is nothing easier or cheaper than making your own hummus! It takes 5 minutes if you use canned chick peas, or if you use leftover chick peas from cooking something else (like soup). That said, Taim rocks.

Ribera del Duero (Condado de Haza).
It is one of the only big wines I splurge on.

If you want a good pub with decent grub, go to the Brass Monkey on Little West 12th St. between Washington and West.

Good selection of tap beer and a deck up top. Decent happy hour specials (I think I paid $4 for a pint of Blue Moon on a weekday evening), and a small roof deck overlooking the dog run.

I have been in the store (live nearby) and find the salt precocious and expensive. Maldon sea salt is good enough for me. I also have found them to be not very friendly.
On the other hand they have a good selection of esoteric chocolate bars that somehow do not rub me the wrong way. Go figure (chocolate greed trumps all other feelings?).

I live in what used to be called the West Village and is now "meatpacking". Hardly anyone who lives in the neighborhood eats at Pastis (although many of us ate in Florent right up until the end). It is fake-fake-fake like Disney French and expensive. There are way better places to eat nearby. For example, check out Meme on Bank & Hudson.

There is a much better version of this type of soup in Claudia Roden's New Book of Middle Eastern Food. The recipe is listed as creamy lentil soup or shorbet adas. Serve with pita chips and browned onions. The best....

Guys, I don't know about you- but I don't normally eat canned tomatoes out of the can/fridge, I generally cook them.
So I would really want to know, side by side, which tatsed best as either a simple marinara sauce or baked on a slab of dough.
Also tomatoes need salt to really bring out their flavor (and crust and cheese)!

The recipe is not clear. Do you mean 8 ounces weight coffee (1/2 pound!) or 1 cup ground coffee? My guess is that you mean 1 cup ground coffee which gives roughly a 1:4 ratio (32oz water) which is how I make this overnight in the refrigerator.

This is a wieght vs. volume issue for coffee grounds vs. water (weight and volume are equal for water but not for coffee grounds)- but it could really confuse someone. A pound of coarse ground coffee should give a bit more than 4 cups of grounds.

The most fabulous onion pasta in the world is Marcella Hazan's. You cook the 6 cups of sliced onions in 1/3 cup olive oil unitl soft, carmelize them over high heat, deglaze them with white wine, toss in a little parsely, add parmesan when you toss with the spagetti (if you are not vegan) and wow! This is my all time favorite pasta dish. It takes about an hour and a half from start to finish but it is worth every minute.

Nick,
You have a couple of ambiguities in the recipe. 1/4 cup spinach? Chopped? Crumpled? Cooked? Baby? Do you set the asparagus tips aside forever? When do you add the tips (when you toss with the sauce?)? Do you do anything with the remaining chopped asparagus? Come on man, don't make me guess.

Ambitious,
Where in Elmhurst did you find the spices like Holy Basil (finding a good source for this frustrates me in Manhattan)?
Is there a particular store you like to shop in or a market street that you can recommend?

Are those shrimp raw or precooked?
I am guessing that you meant 1/4 cup canola oil :)
Great tip from carioca on using rice flour for dredging, got to try.