A Weekend in Diana's Kitchen

Plus: A Black Friday Sale, Risi e Bisi, and Ottolenghi's Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Hey everyone,

We just had the loveliest weekend visiting our friends Mark and Diana and their three kiddos Pheobe, Gabe, and Teddy. It’s Mark’s birthday on Tuesday and normally he sings the Thanksgiving blues — as in: everyone is gone for Thanksgiving and not there to celebrate his birthday — but this time around we did the celebrating early.

Diana cooked up an absolute storm. Before I get to that, though, I want to offer you a little gift!

Since Black Friday is rapidly approaching, and since I won’t be doing a Thursday newsletter this week (pretty sure that Thursday is Thanksgiving!), I wanted to offer you a spectacular deal: 50% off my newsletter for the next year.

This offer is good for one week. Unfortunately, it’s not available for those who are already paid subscribers. But if you want to get my newsletter twice a week (Mondays are free, Thursdays are not), and have access to my full archives, there’s no better time to become a paid subscriber.

Here are real quotes from actual readers:

Okay, enough self-promotion. If you’d like to grab the deal before it’s gone, click this button:

Back to Diana-promotion!

When we arrived on Friday, Diana was cooking up a scrumptious citrus salmon dinner a la Alison Roman.

She made an incredible beet salad from Chez Panisse:

And for dessert, an upside-down pineapple cake from Ad Hoc at Home:

If you’re like: “Wow, that’s a lot of cooking!” we’re just getting started.

On Saturday morning, Diana put out a gorgeous bowl of fruit (mangos, blueberries, blackberries), yogurt, and granola:

For lunch, Craig and Mark bought empanadas from the farmer’s market and Diana made Bar Tartine’s Chicory Salad with Anchovy Dressing:

And then she really got to work cooking Mark’s birthday dinner. The main event was Carla Lalli Music’s hands-off pork and beans:

This was an absolute masterpiece: the pork shoulder fat infuses black-eyed peas; then you blend half of them and get a creamy sauce.

There was a wintery salad that came from my blog (Diana’s is much prettier)!

It was so juicy and crunchy: celery, apples, fennel… plus raisins and parsley and nuts. A winning combination.

Here are Mark’s NYU film school friends (including Craig) and their spouses all gathered around the table:

For Mark’s birthday dessert, there was a sunken Black forest cake from Smitten Kitchen:

How’s that for a weekend of cooking? If we’d stayed at the Ritz in Paris, we wouldn’t have eaten better.

Thank you, Diana, for a gorgeous weekend of eating! And happy birthday, Mark!

In case you think I was useless in all of this, I brought Ottolenghi’s pecan and chocolate chip cookies which I just made a video about on Instagram (recipe’s in the caption):

amateurgourmet

A post shared by @amateurgourmet

Another video I posted is the risi e bisi that I made the night before we left. Rice and peas can’t really stand up to Diana’s creations, but it’s a nice quick dinner:

amateurgourmet

A post shared by @amateurgourmet

Hey, let’s look at some links:

• Helen Rosner’s annual holiday gift guide (The New Yorker);

• Really curious about Ruth Reichl’s sour cream apple pie (La Briffe);

• A Members-Only Café for Dogs is Now Open… my gift to Winston? (Eater NY).

That’s all for this week, folks!

Hope you have terrific Thanksgivings. If you want to keep tabs on me, give me a follow on Instagram: I’ll be updating from a Florida buffet.

Until next time….

Your pal,

Adam