Check Out My Rack (of Lamb)

Plus: My Favorite Granola, A Bagel Brunch, and Dinners at Bar Béte and Barbuto.

Hey everyone,

I cooked up quite a rack of lamb this weekend! My in-laws are still visiting and I decided to cook Steve, my father-in-law, his favorite dinner on Sunday. I turned to America’s Test Kitchen via YouTube and found this incredible recipe that involves lots of garlic and lemon zest and olive oil and rosemary (well the rosemary was my idea) and Panko. Check out these happy customers:

I bet you want the recipe. So here you go… just click the button!

We’ve had quite the week here in New York. When you have visitors in from out of town you do so many more things than you would otherwise.

For example, we saw our pal Jim Parsons in Mother Play by Paula Vogel and it was incredibly moving and Jim was so good in it and nice enough to invite us backstage after.

We also hit up so many local spots, including The Clover Club, a prominent cocktail spot in our neighborhood where I drank something called the Panthera that had a panther on the mug.

I noticed Craig’s parents liked eating granola in the morning so I whipped up a batch of my favorite recipe which you can get here.

We also hosted a bagel brunch for our pals Mark and Diana and their kiddos so Craig’s family could see them. I ran over to Smith Street Bagels and bought a whole spread, as they say. Here was my little set-up.

Everything bagels, sesame bagels, plain bagels (just in case), a toaster, onions and tomatoes, 4 pounds of cream cheese (2 scallion cream cheeses, plain cream cheese, and one dill and cucumber), and smoked salmon.

Here we are showing our wedding album to the kiddos because Diana (their mother) performed the ceremony and Mark gave a toast.

Dinners out! We went back to Bar Bete which I declared my favorite restaurant in New York on Instagram. But just look at this food.

That’s white asparagus wrapped in ramps and ham and served with the most electric dipping sauce.

And this salad, while simple looking, was a huge star of the evening: with crispy shallots and pickled mushrooms and a vibrant vinaigrette.

Of course we got the yellow cake with chocolate ganache but you’ve seen that a million times already.

Finally, we went to Barbuto on Saturday night and I had my favorite dish of the week: this gnocchi with morel mushrooms, sugar snap peas, and other springy ingredients like asparagus.

And the way they seared that gnocchi… bravo! (Little secret: Jonathan Waxman, the chef, taught me how to sear gnocchi for my cookbook over ten years ago.)

This pistachio cake for dessert wasn’t too shabby either:

Wow, what a week of eating.

Let’s look at some links:

• Did a Top Chef contestant steal a winning dish? (Eater);

• Mama Cass didn’t choke to death on a ham sandwich, so stop the jokes (Deadline);

• Cicadas are here. Time to eat. Blech!!! (NYT).

That’s all for today, folks!

See you back here on Thursday….

Your pal,

Adam