What I Cooked and Ate This Month: Brown Butter-Bathed Noodles, Breakfast Cake, Rosemary-Garlic Lamb

A diary of the dishes defining my April

Apr 14, 2025

Hello and happy Monday! Teo and I spent the weekend in Hudson, New York with our friends Hannah and Alex. It was a much-needed respite after a few weeks of relentless city activity, and the April showers (and unexpected snow) only made it more restful. My favorite part of the weekend might’ve been our visit to Big Towel, a wood-fired mobile sauna with residencies around the Hudson Valley. We booked a private session for the four of us and moved back and forth between the cedar-scented heat and tubs of chilly water for almost two hours, chatting about our lives and listening to the rain fall outside. When our time ran out, we emerged slower and softer, and drove straight to Fortunes to fuel our bodies with ice cream. I can’t overstate the healing powers of a sauna session-into-ice cream date.

Today, back in Brooklyn and back to The Dish, I’m sharing a handful of memorable things I’ve cooked and/or eaten lately. There will be brown butter-bathed noodles, breakfast cake, rosemary-garlic lamb, and more (plus: a custom menu I designed for a special dinner).

Cooking & Eating

(In no particular order)

Clam pasta at home
On a recent solo night at home, I couldn’t summon the energy to go to the grocery store, so I raided the pantry instead and ended up making myself clam pasta. This clam pasta is not the elegant spaghetti alle vongole of my Roman fantasies, iridescent shells tumbled throughout. This clam pasta is its American counterpart, with canned clams instead of fresh. Whenever I make canned clam pasta, I loosely follow my grandmother’s recipe, which is the simplest thing — just garlic, white wine, canned clams and their juices, pasta, and parsley. And as far as I’m concerned, it tastes just as silky and delicious as its romantic Roman cousin.

Cavatelli at Frankies
The other week, we finally made it to Frankies 457 Spuntino in Carroll Gardens, and it was just what I’d hoped for — not groundbreaking, but supremely cozy, with warming Italian food and comfortable neighborhood vibes. I ordered the cavatelli with sausage and sage, which arrived swimming in brown butter (always a good omen), and, unsurprisingly, loved every bite.

Breakfast cake
Clare de Boer’s Carrot & Clementine Cake, a cross between carrot cake and a morning glory muffin, with its own clementine twist, is the perfect breakfast cake. Tender and squidgy, with bits of crunchy walnut and juicy clementine in the batter and a turbinado sugar-speckled surface. I’ll make it forever.

Chicken-basil stir fry
Please forgive the horrid photo below, but I need to tell you about this sub-fifteen-minute recipe for Thai Chicken Stir Fry with Basil & Mint from The Woks of Life, one of my favorite recipe sites. A weeknight dinner at its finest, the sticky, aromatic chicken gets balanced out with handfuls of basil and mint, which need to be reclassified as greens rather than herbs so people start using them with more abandon. Some of the best green salads, for example, have soft herbs tossed throughout. I ate this stir fry with white rice and miso-butter bok choy, and it was delightful.

Crispy crêpes at Cafe Mutton
After years of hearing Food Friends rave about Cafe Mutton in Hudson, I had a feeling I’d like it, but it still managed to exceed my expectations. Mutton is a quirky neighborhood spot helmed by Shaina Loew-Banayan, where the food leans rich and meat-heavy but is handled with a deft, balanced touch. We ordered much of the menu — chicken liver mousse on toast, brothy clams with grilled bread — but one of my favorite bites was the ultra-buttery, crisp-edged crêpes, served simply with dark maple syrup.

Figs and feta
This is a small thing, but Teo’s mom, Mary, recently served figs with Meredith Dairy Marinated Feta, and I thought the combination was completely delicious. The figs were jammy and just-sweet, the feta creamy and tangy, and I ate more than my fair share.

Rome Sustainable Food Project dinner
At the beginning of April, I had the opportunity to help out with a dinner in support of the Rome Sustainable Food Project, which I attended in 2023 and documented here. Mark Bittman cooked the dinner, who, along with his partner Kathleen Finlay, are the program’s new co-directors, building the next iteration of RSFP. Dyanne Iandoli, a fellow RSFP alum, joined me as a co-sous chef, and we had such a nice afternoon-into-evening, cooking together.

Many of the ingredients were sourced from Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming, which Kathleen leads, including the lamb, which we rubbed with garlic and rosemary and roasted. The greens were Glynwood-sourced, too, which were so flavorful that all we did was blanch them in salted water and serve, which felt very RSFP of us. I didn’t take many photos, but here are a few, one of which shows the menu I designed for the dinner. The whole day made me feel proud to be a RSFP alum and excited to find ways to give back to it and keep it in my life.