Lidia Bastianich’s Italian Christmas
By admin at November 12, 2010 | 3:14 am | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Lidia Bastianich’s earliest Christmases are distinguished by luxuries few, simple and sweet: juniper bushes, figs, bay leaves and a warm familial welcome at her grandparents’ home in Istria, a peninsula on the Adriatic Sea. This year, Bastianich celebrates the season with the release of Nonna Tell Me a Story: Lidia’s Christmas Kitchen
Holiday dinner 911
By admin at November 24, 2010 | 10:35 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Hosting any major holiday meal can be a stressful proposition. You’ve got a house full of relatives, friends and relatives’ friends not necessarily from compatible demographics, making alcohol-fueled small talk in the foyer. They have one thing in common: waiting for you to produce a banquet par excellence. The kitchen is a sauna, peas have
Keep on wokking in the free world
By admin at December 29, 2010 | 5:06 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Any cooking course can teach you how to prepare a steak medium rare, but rare is the one that gives you a stake in another culture through the medium of cuisine. Norma Chang served up a trio of quick-fix Chinese dishes at the Kingston Library on Saturday, December 18. Chang, the “Travelling Gourmet,” grew up in Jamaica and mainland China and
Food words
By admin at January 3, 2011 | 6:43 pm | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - Conveying the character of food to friends and readers is a perennial challenge of my personal and professional life. Words like “yummy” and “delicious” just don’t cut it. I’m always seeking more ways to describe what I eat in ways that are not too clichéd or annoying.Many restaurant reviewers and food writers have adapted terms like
Something in Commons
By admin at January 7, 2011 | 1:56 pm | 2 Comments
by Megan Labrise - If you weren’t born before this date in 1949, you won’t get a room at Vineyard Commons — but you can still get a table at its restaurant. Though The Bistro at Vineyard Commons serves residents of the luxury assisted-living complex on Routes 44-55 in Highland, a notable majority of diners are from the general public. Fine dining takes on
In for the mill
By admin at January 28, 2011 | 11:25 pm | 2 Comments
by Megan Labrise - Places that were sacred to us as children often change as much as we do. “Going back to the old neighborhood” is a well-worn trope (recently employed by 60 Minutes to humanize new House speaker John Boehner). For a girl who grew up in rural New York, it’s not so much the neighborhood as a constellation of significant places throughout the
Thai one on
By admin at February 23, 2011 | 4:46 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Judging world cuisines is a challenge for a local food writer. Dining in a Japanese restaurant here in the Hudson Valley, I can tell you how the food tastes and whether the ingredients are fresh and skillfully prepared; I can’t say with absolute certainty that it’s authentic. I can read books, interview proprietors and occasionally dine with expats
Fortuitous fortnight
By admin at March 7, 2011 | 11:07 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - It’s a magical time of year for Hudson Valley food enthusiasts: A three-course lunch is $20, a three-course dinner is $28 and a week is 14 days. Hudson Valley Restaurant Week returns from March 14 through 27, boasting bargain prix-fixe meals at more than 150 area restaurants from Columbia County all the way down to Greenwich, Connecticut. This
Bringing fresh produce to the vulnerable
By admin at March 23, 2011 | 5:31 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Help yourself to a multi-course meal prepared by one of the area’s finest chefs – and help Ulster County’s needy families receive fresh fruits, vegetables and nutritional education all season long. The sixth Farm to Families Benefit Dinner will be held on Thursday, March 31 at Robibero Family Vineyards on Albany Post Road in New Paltz. Created by
Caveat emptor when it comes to buying versatile but costly saffron
By admin at March 30, 2011 | 11:57 am | 0 Comments
by Jennifer Brizzi - This time of year, crocuses cheer me. One of the first flowers to bloom in the yard after a long cold winter, their cute exuberance evokes hope. But it’s the autumn-blooming crocus that brings us the mysterious saffron: a spice that is the stuff of myth and lore and a conduit to deceit and death. Throughout history, saffron has been used for
Inter-nosh-ional Twisted Soul in Poughkeepsie
By admin at April 8, 2011 | 10:51 am | 2 Comments
by Megan Labrise - My table is a mini-United Nations. Representatives of Malaysia, Korea and Colombia have assembled in the form of coconut/curry tofu, sesame wings and arepas, their colors as vibrant and varied as the flags that line First Avenue. There are greens, yellow and orange, and bright sriracha red. The food is so fresh that I feel entitled to a few new stamps
Spice is the variety of life
By admin at April 28, 2011 | 5:22 pm | 1 Comment
By Megan Labrise - A seasonal catalogue of seasonings has redeemed my repast. For the last two months, I’ve been on a ridiculous diet consisting of beans, chicken breast, green vegetables and more beans. On the seventh day I rest, never quite getting around to inhaling that dozen doughnuts to which I am entitled. Before you can say “Krispy Kreme,” it’s back to
Trial by CIA
By admin at May 11, 2011 | 7:24 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Jonathan Dixon dishes on life at Hyde Park’s formidable culinary school in new book Beaten, Seared and Sauced Nanny, apartment-cleaner, inspector of nurses’ shoes, coffin-factory janitor, staff writer at Martha Stewart Living, newspaper book and music critic, Creative Writing professor: Jonathan Dixon tried them all. While the path may have
Grape expectations
By admin at May 27, 2011 | 1:07 am | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Fine Wine + Fine Art auction with Kevin Zraly to benefit Dorsky Museum Oenophiles blest with a cup that runneth over may do well – and good – next month. On Wednesday, June 1, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY-New Paltz presents its third annual “Fine Wine + Fine Art” benefit auction, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the Twenty-Four Fifth
The tao of meat
By admin at June 9, 2011 | 12:43 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise Fleisher’s new book lays bare butcher’s lore Hold on, Mr. Meat-Eater: What’s that pressed between those buns? Is it 100 percent USDA-Certified Organic beef, “natural” turkey or “cage-free” chicken? The parts of docile, pastured Black Angus cattle or tormented industrialized steers fattened on the scraps of their brethren? Antibiotics,
The Joy of cooking
By admin at June 24, 2011 | 6:07 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise Pioneering vegetarian and octogenarian Gross shares her recipes & tips in new book Joy Gross’s recipe for living younger longer couldn’t be more basic; it’s downright alkalinizing. In Joy’s Recipes for Living Younger...Longer! An Eighty-Something Beauty Reveals Her Secrets (Epigraph Books, 2010), Gross, 83, weaves autobiography
Saran raps
By admin at July 7, 2011 | 5:07 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Celebrity chef and organic farmer gives workshop in Rhinebeck this Saturday Chef Suvir Saran likes to stir the pot. “For me, life is a dialogue, and if you leave people thinking that something is good or bad, you’ve left them thinking,” he said. This Saturday, July 9 Saran will have Rhinebeck thinking, talking and tasting. At 3
Al fresco freshness
By admin at July 20, 2011 | 5:25 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Gardiner’s Phillies Bridge Farm hosts “Meal in the Field” July 30 Many of us may never know the aches, pains, strains and stresses of a farmer’s life. But on July 30, the Phillies Bridge Farm Project invites us to discover one of its sweetest rewards: finishing a day’s work before sundown to dine al fresco on hearty homegrown food. An
Beer near here
By admin at August 17, 2011 | 7:31 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - NYS Craft BeerFest at Terrapin Catering in Staatsburg was a showcase of superior suds Sudsy, sunny summer: the most wonderful time of the beer. I dream of steamy afternoons spent clutching perspiring pint glasses on patios and porches, when languorous sips beget foam-on-tongue, fizz-on-lips bliss. Little wonder there are so many froth festivals
Under the Tuscan bun
By admin at September 9, 2011 | 6:32 pm | 1 Comment
In which our intrepid food reporter eats her way through most of a regione of Italy “Piove sul bagnato,” Italians say: “It rains on the wet (i.e., bathed).” Far from ill-starred, the phrase refers to an individual who would, in English, be called, regrettably, “a lucky bastard.” My brother is now captain of a firehouse on the Tuscan
Appeteasers
By admin at September 15, 2011 | 6:20 pm | 0 Comments
by Megan Labrise - 21st annual Taste of New Paltz returns to County Fairgrounds this Sunday Foodies agree that this Sunday, the Taste is the place to be. The 21st annual Taste of New Paltz will be held on Sunday, September 18 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Ulster County Fairgrounds. Conceived of by New Paltz Chamber of Commerce member Linda Babb in 1991, the Taste
Small wonders
By admin at September 29, 2011 | 4:29 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Moxie Cupcake in New Paltz offers baked morsels ranging from sweet to savory Summer babies of the 1980s have a complicated relationship with cupcakes. The besprinkled treats routinely heralded classmates’ birthdays in elementary school. September-through-June was spent seething in cupcake envy. Adding insult to injustice, parents invariably
Say it ain’t so, John
By admin at October 13, 2011 | 11:07 am | 2 Comments
by Megan Labrise - High Falls’ culinary temple the DePuy Canal House closes its restaurant doors after 42 years and begins a new chapter The lights are off when we step onto the white-and-black honeycomb tile. Wooden counters, arranged for swift segues between food-prep steps, are mostly bare. Burners and refrigerators are silenced. A panoply of copper pots hangs
Small package, good things
By admin at November 9, 2011 | 8:11 pm | 2 Comments
by Megan Labrise - Rhinebeck’s Matchbox Café brings Gotham gustatory greatness There’s a billboard on Route 9, just south of downtown Rhinebeck, urging motorists to “Stay nice...” Pictured is an open box of matches, heads ignited, with a grill set over the cumulative flame. It’s an advertisement for the Matchbox Café, just ten seconds up the road – as in
No-fuss Noël
By admin at November 23, 2011 | 5:40 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - A few tips to make holiday hosting less stressful I don’t flatter myself: No one reads food columns on Thanksgiving Day. The soporific amalgamation of sweet potatoes, turkey, alcohol and pie makes napping the greater good. So here we are, reunited the day after the day after, leftovers still spilling from our respective refrigerators. After all
You take Manhattan
By admin at December 7, 2011 | 5:45 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Lots of fantastic dining right here, without the schlep and big-city prices O, glorious winter, season of good cheer and gift giving! It’s getting harder to get excited over you. As the list of occupied American cities grew — and as our torpid economy makes it harder to justify indulgences — my Christmas list dwindled. But Christmas is not
#delicious
By admin at December 28, 2011 | 5:50 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Twitter feeds help local diners feed themselves The only screen I enjoy staring at is a fine mesh strainer. The computer kind strains my eyes. And that’s just one reason why I’m a Megan-come-lately to Twitter, the microblogging super-site that launched in July 2006 and has since become the font of all wisdom, or the wisdom which can be expressed
Bake your winter
By admin at January 11, 2012 | 9:46 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Some tips on how to make seasonal feel-good cooking go even better My picture-postcard White Christmas dream got dashed. (A White Halloween was little retrospective consolation.) Come on, Winter: Cloak this ground in immaculate white, fluffy flakes competing for airspace with perfect, graduated steam puffs from stovepipes! Let’s unfurl the blankets
Why do you think they call it “romance”?
By admin at February 15, 2012 | 7:48 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Fall in love with Italian food again at New Paltz’s A Tavola Trattoria It takes hope – or gall – to pad into a popular restaurant at 6 p.m. on Valentine’s Day (observed) without reservations. Yet up the few stone steps we went, through the familiar perpendicular doors to the hostess station beside the wide staircase. At A Tavola Trattoria at
Yum Yum Noodle Bar opens in Kingston
By admin at February 29, 2012 | 10:14 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - As a restaurant reviewer, I observe an unrecorded rule: Avoid tangents about places other than the one under consideration. But my view of the new Yum Yum Noodle Shop at 275 Fair Street in Kingston cannot be explained without mentioning the Mizuna Café, the building’s previous inhabitant. For many years Mizuna was a laid-back little place run by
Finding fine vegan fare in the mid-Hudson Valley
By admin at March 21, 2012 | 12:49 pm | 1 Comment
Written by Megan Labrise -- Photos by Dion Ogust -- Vegan? Never heard the word before. I assumed it rhymed with my name. In fact, with two Sharpie swipes, I used to change my friends’ sticker-labeled vegan brownies to Megan brownies while we ate in the college cafeteria. This was a small liberal arts joint in the Pacific Northwest. Not only did they have vegan baked
Ian Knauer’s new cookbook
By admin at April 19, 2012 | 7:00 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise Henceforth, we are tabling “farm to table” and farming out the job to a new phrase. I nominate, in no special order: soil to skillet, field to fork, barnyard to backyard, slaughter to house, and range to range. These phrases echo the modern mantra that ingredients are best when they are locally sourced, picked at peak freshness and used as soon as
A festive fifth
By admin at May 5, 2012 | 12:03 am | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise Where to celebrate Cinco de Mayo in the mid-Hudson, con gusto I don’t know much about Cinco de Mayo I’m never sure what it’s all about. – from the song “Mexico,” by Cake This year marks the 150th anniversary of Cinco de Mayo, and many of us still haven’t learned what it stands for. It’s become one of those vaguely ethnic
Home Sweet Home
By admin at May 17, 2012 | 6:23 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Rebecca Miller Ffrench offers up old family recipes to evoke a delicious past & help the Phoenicia Library Rebecca Miller Ffrench was trying to figure out how to recreate her local bakery’s apple-cider doughnuts at home, when her eldest daughter, Anna, made a helpful suggestion. “Why don’t you make the doughnuts that are in there?” she
What’s shaking
By admin at May 31, 2012 | 10:25 am | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - The Stockade Tavern is bringing old-school cool back to Uptown Kingston There was a time when drinking felt deliciously illicit: an inconspicuous tavern, a door with strange markings, windows of diamond-paned glass. Inside, the light was low, the crowd conspiratorial. Bartenders clutched silver shakers, arms pumping like rods on a steam locomotive,
Summer fruit, makes me feel fine
By admin at June 13, 2012 | 9:52 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Tea up the jam, flip the cake or play the fool with tasty local bounty Give that chocolate lava cake a break and send the crème brulée away. Why waste one more mouthful on unseasonable treats when local fruit has come to bear? We’ve got strawberries aplenty, and it’s just the start — cherries, raspberries, blackberries, apricots, plums,
Gunk Haus brings German cuisine & international beers to Clintondale
By admin at July 7, 2012 | 1:36 am | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise Five years ago this October, Dirk Schalle and Elizabeth Steckel bought the Hollywood Bar. For those who don’t remember, the 1830s Greek Revival establishment in Clintondale became, by turns, a boardinghouse, a Depression-era Italian restaurant that sold ten-cent spaghetti dinners and a Jamaican bar and dance club frequented by agricultural workers
Bold as Brasserie 292
By admin at July 14, 2012 | 8:15 pm | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Po-town eatery looks good, tastes even better It’s Friday night at Brasserie 292. You wish you made reservations. You’ll get a table in due time, but it probably won’t be at one of those six, slick red banquettes with their perfect rows of upholstery nails caught in the lamp’s low gleam. To planners go the spoils: an air of importance; a
Grab-able gourmet
By admin at July 29, 2012 | 12:30 am | 1 Comment
by Megan Labrise - Rhinebeck’s bluecashew to host book-signing with Eat with Your Hands author Zakary Pelaccio Zakary Pelaccio’s Eat with Your Hands is cheeky in the Rabelaisian sense. It also contains at least four recipes for pig jowls: with champagne grapes, with rice pot kimchi, with strawberry salad or brined and braised. The entire dessert chapter is a
Burn, baby, burn
By Megan Labrise at September 5, 2012 | 5:51 pm | 1 Comment
Ignite your own kitchen inferno with homemade hot sauce I recently ate in a restaurant with a chalkboard wall. Written upon it: “Sriracha makes everything better.” Bon Appétit agrees; editors named it Ingredient of the Year in 2010. They’re complimenting that thick, vibrant version with the green cap, the one with the rooster and the Thai writing on it,
Beer, here
By admin at September 20, 2012 | 4:19 pm | 1 Comment
State’s best brews to be showcased at Terrapin in Rhinebeck - by Megan Labrise When Terrapin chef-owner Josh Kroner decided not to renew the lease on the Dinsmore Golf Course catering facility, I wondered what it would mean for the New York State Craft BeerFest. The location, perched above one of the oldest golf courses in America, hosted that exquisite tasting of
Haven from the storm
By admin at October 25, 2012 | 4:58 pm | 1 Comment
Julie Neely’s place in Middle Hope offers great breakfast, lunch & homey desserts - by Megan Labrise My rain boots rest on the wooden crossbar beneath the table. I see the Friday afternoon deluge pinging off the hood of my car through the front window, and a classic illuminated marquee sign sits just beyond. It reads: “Deep Dark Chocolate Cake, Snickers
Oliver Kita Great Estates
By admin at November 27, 2012 | 3:42 pm | 1 Comment
Eight historic Hudson Valley homes in chocolate - by Megan Labrise Chocolatier Oliver Kita and I shared an ambitious afternoon. From Olana to Boscobel, we explored eight historic Hudson Valley homes without breaking a sweat. I learned a lot. And we never left the exquisite comfort of his downtown Rhinebeck chocolate shop. Together we sat, sampling every flavor in
Vegetarian heroine
By admin at January 30, 2013 | 6:33 pm | 0 Comments
Amanda Cohen brings her graphic novel cookbook to Rhinebeck this Sunday - by Megan Labrise Amanda Cohen made vegetables cool. She waged the first all-veggie battle on Iron Chef America against the renowned Masaharu Morimoto. She wrote a graphic novel cookbook. And at Dirt Candy, her diorama-sized Manhattan vegetable restaurant – not traditional “vegetarian,” with
Delicious energy
By admin at February 13, 2013 | 10:35 pm | 0 Comments
Wappingers Falls entrepreneur scores with Whey Beyond Bars – by Megan Labrise Energy bars have never really been my thing – too chalky, and what’s in them, anyway? – until now. My conversion experience began at Bank Square Coffeehouse in Beacon. I was on my way to New York City via train for the grad school commute, running late, missing lunch. On a whim I
