My beauty routine has changed a lot since I turned 30. But also, being on camera more has made me dial in on my skincare and makeup routine. I have acne-prone skin, and washing my face with cleanser in the morning, using witch hazel to tone, and washing twice at night to take off all of my makeup has really made a difference.
I've always just operated with the attitude that if I work just as hard as I can, everything will be fine.
I'm so bad at self-care.
Cooking has always been work.
Having those people that you trust implicitly is so important.
Criticism of a dish is not a criticism of the cook.
Don't get attached to any one idea. Nothing is too precious.
I ate cottage cheese all the time growing up, but it wasn't until I was in college that I became aware of the stigma surrounding it.
As an adult, I use whole-milk cottage cheese anywhere you might use plain Greek yogurt or ricotta cheese.
In the height of summer, a ripe cantaloupe is one of the most intoxicating pieces of produce under the sun.
Every year since culinary school I have made a Buche de Noel, or Yule Log.
I made my first Yule Log as a culinary student in Paris, complete with the traditional chestnut filling, silky chocolate buttercream, and almost-too-adorable mushrooms. Since then, I've tweaked and updated both the recipe and the process - and I've definitely learned tips and tricks to make it easier.
For reasons that aren't quite clear I derive a weird and almost inappropriate pleasure from making a cake that looks like a decomposing log. Essentially, that's what a Buche de Noel is supposed to look like, complete with meringue 'mushrooms' poking out of the chocolate buttercream 'bark.'
Lemon curd is one of the first things I remember cooking when I was old enough to use the stove without supervision. I looked up a recipe in my one of my mom's Martha Stewart cookbooks and went to work, stirring anxiously and monitoring closely for signs that the mixture was thickening so as not to curdle the eggs.
Lemon curd is a basic custard, meaning it's thickened by eggs. Although many curd recipes call for just yolks, I prefer to use a combination of whole eggs and yolks to add a bit of lightness.
The last time I ordered soup in a restaurant was - well, let me see - possibly never. That's because in my mind, soup is something to be made and eaten at home, ideally with a cuddly animal at your feet in front of a blazing fireplace while the wind whips outside.
For rave-worthy soups, skip the store-bought stock. You can extract a cleaner, stronger broth from a combination of water and several pantry ingredients. It's all about layering powerful flavor-enhancers that you probably already have on hand - bacon, tomato paste, herbs, peppercorns, a Parm rind, and, of course, kosher salt.
Simmering vegetables in a covered pot over low heat so that they steam in their own liquid - a French technique called a l'etouffee - is the ticket to achieving a soup with pronounced depth.
When making any pureed soup, don't blend all the liquids and solids together at once. Hold back some liquid at first and use it to thin the soup as needed. You can always add more liquid, but there's not much you can do to fix a too-thin soup.
My maternal grandmother, a.k.a. Nanny, wasn't much of a cook. As a kid I remember her making only a handful of things, mostly dishes with Ashkenazi Jewish origins like kasha and bowties (which, for the record, only my dad liked).
