The editor of the City Eagle has a long illustrious history in many of Central New York's finest restaurants including The Sherwood Inn in Skaneateles and Pastabilities in Armory Square. She is an adjunct in the food service department at OCC where she teaches a course that covers designing an independent restaurant from the ground up. She also produced Food For Thought a one hour program from food radio's kitchen back in the early 1990s - before the advent of Food Televsion. This blog is simply a conversation about food and beverage and all that goes along with it - "Please join me, I'd love to hear what you are enjoying at your table or range."
Watching...
New restaurant reality show on NBC - not sure about it yet
This is a basic dry vodka martini garnished with fresh radishes and caper berries.It's all I had! photo by Ellen Leahy.
Whoever invented the extra, extra, extra dry martini did a huge disservice to this cocktail. You know the one, where the barkeep puts the vermouth behind their ears as with perfume, instead of in the glass with the spirit. The vermouth is everything to the flavor of a martini, as without it you just have vodka or gin - anyone can do that - duh. That’s called, “vodka or gin on the rocks.”
Years ago Balloons Restaurant across from the backside of Auburn prison made headlines with its atomized martini...
I’m not talking cocoa dust. Venerable Gourmet Magazine will cease publication, Conde Nast announced this week.
Once known for its magnificent monthly menu centerfold, the food world’s Playboy is played out. Was it the Internet? The Food Channel? People’s time? The economy?
Perhaps a little of all of the above, but for me it started with former New York Times food critic and author, “Tender to the Bone,” Ruth Reichl. She radically changed the format and for the life of me, I can’t even tell you why it left me cold. But it did. And, I heard this over and over from lifetime subscribers. Don’t get me wrong, I admire Reichl as a writer and even a foodie...
While Julia Child’s image is gracing the big screen and Rachael Ray is winning Emmys – an American culinary great has slipped away quietly in Manhattan.
Sheila Gail Block Lukins, the co-creator of the Silver Palate, died in her home on Aug. 30 of brain cancer. She was only 66.
Not to take away from Alice Waters, who is credited with starting the quality, eat local American food movement from her Berkeley based Chez Panisse Restaurant in the 1970s, instead, Lukins, certainly could be Water’s East Coast bookend.
In the 1970s Lukins started a catering business from her apartment in the Dakota on Central Park West in Manhattan...
Oddly enough the other day I was recalling my first food memory. It was when we lived in California, so I was younger than 4-years-old. And I believe it was at our neighbor’s house.
It was a homemade frozen lemonade popsicle of sorts. I couldn’t remember if it was really shaped like a little chick, as I often picture, or if that was my imagination. But the frozen lemon treat always remains as a constant memory of California in the 1950s.
Now in the 21st century, Friday nights I reserve for a visit to my parent’s home. We take a ride, maybe run some errands, almost always go to the P&C, have dinner, I do some chores around their pad, and then the fun begins. My father and I watch WCNY’s Ivory Tower Half Hour together at 8 p.m...
I finally got around to dining at The Black Olive on Clinton Street in Armory Square, across the street from Al’s Whisky Bar. I gotta come right out and tell you that this particular dining experience didn’t really work for me. This is not to say you wouldn’t like it, because there are so many degrees of expectation, taste and style. For example, when I was a kid I really liked those ripe black olives mainly from California, whereas now I much prefer the taste and mouth-feel of imported black olives, like the ones in the big white buckets at the deli counter in Lombardi’s Imported Foods on Butternut Street.
The Black Olive Restaurant’s menu is pretty much Greek. The chef has his or her own interpretations of many of these items that didn’t match my expectations...
My friend Al Julian shared two foods he rcv'd from his friend’s family in Italy. Thanks dude.
Knowing they wanted to ship a VW bus to America, this family from Apulia (that's the province that includes the heel of the boot), they packed the bus with lots of goodies. These included a grape jam that is ridiculous in its richness and nature. It tasted a bit caramelized and the occasional ground seed is noticed and was thick and rich. It is nothing like Concord grape jelly that is produced in the United States. The other product he gave me was a container of cured olives from a tree in their yard in Italy...
A fresh approach to new tomatoes, but it ain’t pretty
lellen, Leahy's Food Blog
Our tomatoes are coming in very tasty, but also in odd dimensions and extremely firm.
So I had this idea.
Maybe it is a common practice - but I took out a platter and poured in a pool of extra virgin olive oil and seasoned with chopped fresh basil, sea salt and cracked pepper. Then, I cut the tommys in half and rolled them in the oil.
Next, I tonged the toms onto a very hot grill - alongside some swordfish steaks I was grilling (marinated in rice wine vinegar and mustard).
I went back into the house to grab the imported grated Romano cheese, and also grabbed some honey and a ripe peach, which I cut in half.
Back on the front porch with the grill, I threw some cheese into the oil...
