Birthday Lasagna and Key Lime Pie

Plus: A Blog Redesign, Dinner at The Gramercy Tavern, and a Wine Pairing Rant.

Hey everyone,

I did a big thing this weekend. I migrated my blog from Wordpress to Squarespace. I know that probably doesn’t mean much to most of you, but having blogged for twenty years, I’ve always been at the mercy of designers and web people who know how to tweak a font or, more importantly, resuscitate the blog when everything stops working. I liked the simplicity of Squarespace, especially since I wanted to create a static homepage with my books and podcast, etc. [The only catch is that the archives transferred over a little wonky, so I’m fixing them post by post….]

To kick things off, I wrote about the six-hour lasagna that I made for Craig for his birthday. It was an epic endeavor, indeed, starting with meatballs. Yes, you heard that right, meatballs.

Why would you make meatballs to make a lasagna, especially if the end lasagna doesn’t feature meatballs? Check out the post and all will be revealed, including the recipe. Also, here’s a video on the subject.

@amateurgourmetSix hour lasagna for Craig’s birthday. 🍅 #slowcooking #lasagna #italianfood #bolognese #food #foodie

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Our dinner guests on Friday were our pals Lucci, Josh, and Chris who added to the revelry by bringing lots of booze. (Craig made a Naked and Famous, our new favorite cocktail.)

For dessert, I made Nicole Rucker’s legendary Key Lime Pie.

It was perfectly tart (she uses regular limes, not key limes), though next time I may add more butter to the graham cracker crumbs: they didn’t really cohere.

On Saturday night, we continued Craig’s birthday celebration with our pals Mark and Diana at The Gramercy Tavern, Craig’s favorite NY restaurant.

It really is the perfect NY restaurant. Grand in a way that most restaurants in most cities couldn’t emulate; but also rustic and casual. There’s a chef cooking in front of a fire as you walk in. It feels like a cabin in the woods designed for a Rockefeller.

The food was amazing, as always. My favorite course was what you see above: squid ink lumache with seafood. I loved the texture of those curly black noodles.

This course was the most interesting: caraflex cabbage in the style of a Japanese pancake. It turned a humble ingredient into something extraordinary.

You may notice a lot of wine glasses on the table. That’s because — and I feel bad for this — I urged everyone to do the wine pairing. I figured, why not! We’re already splurging. It’s Craig’s birthday. Let’s live a little.

I loved the whole experience of the wine pairing — the sommelier telling the story of each bottle, the specificity of the pairings with each dish (depending on what you ordered, you got your own individual wine to go with it) — except for one very important thing…

WE FELT LIKE SUCH CRAP THE NEXT DAY.

Ugh.

I wouldn’t wish a wine pairing on my worst enemy.

Don’t get me wrong! It was thoughtful and lovely and we were extremely privileged to get to enjoy it.

Only the next morning we said: “NEVER AGAIN.”

Hey, let’s look at some links:

• Are these recipes good, or is the TikTok chef just good looking? (NYT);

• A sweet cream butter t-shirt (Bakery Tee Co; via kottke.org);

• 50 Places to Eat and Drink Before You Die (Atlas Obscura).

Don’t forget: there are still slots still available for my trip to Puglia this fall! E-mail minchillitours@gmail.com to get more information. I’d love to meet you in person.

See you back here on Thursday!

Your pal,
Adam