Chicago is lucky to have a small (but mighty) pie shop called Hoosier Mama. I knew this the first time I sat in their tiny storefront shop and ate a slice of warm apple pie with a cup of coffee on a rainy autumn afternoon. I am reminded of this good fortune every time I pick up a pie from their stand at the farmers market. And I was reminded of it again last week when I bought a copy of their wonderful new cookbook, The Hoosier Mama Book of Pie.

Paula Haney and Allison Scott managed to translate everything that is charming and wonderful about their shop into a cookbook that includes the recipe for every pie I have ever seen them sell. It is an impressive (and generous!) collection ranging from sweet to savory. There are also handpies, quiches and even suggestions for what to do with dough scraps. Techniques are carefully laid out and encouragingly explained. The book is the perfect kitchen companion and one that I know I will return to often.

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I made this cake last summer, but somehow never got around to writing about it even though it was perfection. Who knows what happened—something distracted me or the moment passed. It is a Nigel Slater recipe (if the title didn’t give it away), and it needs to be made every summer from now until the end of time. I am resurrecting it here with the hope that you all have some raspberries and apricots at your market and can throw this together over the weekend. I sure will.

Sometimes it is nice to talk about something other than food. Which I do a lot of in my real life, but not as much of in my internet life. I was honored and pleased when Rebecca Hernandez from The Women Take Over asked me to answer some questions about feminism and equality, two things I care deeply about. Rebecca is one of the folks behind that fantastic You Don’t Own Me PSA during the last election. The Women Take Over is a great website that profiles feminists and feminist issues, with the goal of inspiring young people. I love it. I hope you will take the time to check out Rebecca’s site and follow along. Yes to feminism! Check out my interview HERE! read more+++

I am here to tell you about a recipe for pasta that you cook in one pan. One pan, people! Dried noodles, sauce ingredients, water—they all get thrown into a big pan and boiled for less than 10 minutes. You end up with a totally delicious dinner, and a party trick.

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This is the best recipe for the day.

Asparagus with Parmesan Pudding and Prosciutto

It is one of those recipes that is so perfect you kind of don’t know what you did before it. It is something I will look forward to serving every spring from now until forever.

The recipe comes from April Bloomfield’s beautiful book, A Girl and Her Pig, which is a book that always makes me want to cook. In this recipe, Bloomfield brilliantly combines the eggs and Parmesan that pair so naturally with asparagus in a pudding. Add some toasted bread and thin slices of prosciutto and you have everything you need. I made this platter for lunch on Saturday and Bryan and Katie and I all ate it up while almost constantly remarking on how good it tasted. It is one of those recipes that makes it hard to talk about much else. read more+++

I am a Zoe Nathan superfan. She and her husband, Josh Loeb, own a bunch of really rad restaurants (Rustic Canyon Wine Bar, Huckleberry, Milo and Olive, Sweet Rose Creamery) in Santa Monica that I eat at whenever I am in town. Zoe also grew up with a bunch of my dearest friends (hi Tini!) and worked at Tartine with another dear friend who happens to own my favorite bakery in Chicago. It is a small world of wonderful people. I convinced Zoe to stop by L + D to share a recipe and answer the ole L+D food quiz—remember that thing? read more+++

English muffins are one of the first foods I can remember eating. My mom has always liked eating breakfast at diners, and as a child I would accompany her to various diners on the southwest side of Chicago. This was in the days when you could smoke in a diner, which lent a certain ambiance that doesn’t exist any more. They were pretty magical places full of regulars, and sassy waitresses. Our usual order was two English muffins and an order of bacon (crisp, please!), which we would split. She had coffee, black, and I had orange juice. It was fun.

When I was a teenager I made a lot of English muffin-pizza-things. It was a good after school snack at a time when I was always hungry.

In Paris I like to get the muffins from the American guy at the farmers market on boulevard Raspail. They are delicious, and a good venue for Bordier butter or preserves.

You see, English muffins and I go way back. I keep hoping there will be an English muffin renaissance in Chicago, but it is all bagels right now. Which left me no other choice but to make them myself. read more+++

Recently I discovered (and shared on Twitter) that there were 243 cookbooks in my apartment. The number has since risen to 245. I was both proud and horrified by the number. It is a lot of books. It is especially a lot of books for a small, one-bedroom apartment. Poor Bryan. At least a hundred of them are in piles around the house, so my new years resolution is to find a storage solution for all of these books. Wish me luck.

One of the two recent additions to the collection was Piece of Cake: Home Baking Made Simple by David Muniz, David Lesniak and Rachel Allen (published in the UK as Baked in America- which is a much better title). It is a book from the two guys who own Outsider Tart bakery in London. The bakery sells American baked goods (whoopie pies, cupcakes, layer cakes, etc) to Brits, and apparently is popular. I didn’t know much about the bakery, and somehow missed the US release of the book back in the Autumn. I honestly have no idea why I bought this cookbook. Why do we buy most things? Boredom? I read a thing? I was hungry? Anyway, I added another general baking book to the dozens that I own and depleted even more of my expendable income. Bad idea, right? read more+++

I thought we’d start off the year the way we’d start off the day, with breakfast. In my case I am also breaking my blogging fast—blogfast? These Liège waffles have been written about before by other bloggers. If you’re anything like me, you skip them because you don’t happen to have any pearl sugar on your shelf—or you read the comments and are annoyed by the discussions of why every recipe is not the authentic recipe. Don’t be like me! Or yourself! These are so good that pearl sugar is worth seeking out, and annoying people are worth ignoring. In fact, a good 2013 resolution is to always seek out unusual ingredients, they’ll teach you something. Also, since the invention of the internet there are not a lot of good excuses for not being able to get your hands on something. It is a wonderful and terrible fact of our time. Pearl sugar is special because it won’t melt under the heat of the waffle iron, leaving little crunches of sugar throughout the waffle. This recipe is not worth making without it. No substitutions! Happy New Year!

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This is what I made for Thanksgiving dinner. It was one of the best recipes I discovered this year, and it seemed perfect for the holiday. I think it would be equally perfect for a Christmas, Hanukkah, or New Years celebrations. Consider it my gift to you, dear reader. The gift of a perfectly roasted paprika and garlic rubbed chicken that cooks on a bed of potato wedges that benefit from chicken fat and high temperatures. When it is done, you have chicken and potatoes and only need a hearty green salad to accompany them. You also have an astonishingly simple and delicious meal. Honestly, this is about as good as it gets. I’ve made this recipe twice already and am giving it another go this weekend. Consider me obsessed.

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Last winter we drove up to Madison, Wisconsin, with our friends Katie and Justin. Winter had us all feeling a little shack-nasty* and we thought a trip out of town might do us good. On the way home from Madison we stopped in New Glarus, a town famous for its brewery and weird alpine architecture. The brewery is fantastic, and totally worth a stop (though admittedly is more fun in the summer when you can sit outside drinking beer). And New Glarus is a charming enough place to spend a few hours. The bakery in town is pretty great and I always pick up a few pastries for the drive home. We had dinner at one of the several touristy Swiss-themed restaurants in town. It was as expected, huge portions and lots of fat, but also pretty satisfying. Among the things we ate was a giant potato rösti. As delicious as it was, about three bites in I felt defeated by the amount of fat (butter and cheese) in the dish. But I’ve been thinking about the potential. read more+++