Leite's Culinaria » leites culinaria

Renee Schettler Rossi, our new Deputy Editor

David Leite — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 03:05:00 +0000

Say hello to Renee Schettler Rossi, our new deputy editor. All of us are thrilled about her joining LC, and we’ve been sitting on our hands, refraining from writing, blogging, tweeting, and FBing about it. I wanted to wait until the redesign was up (thank you, thank you for all the well wishes) and our Valentine’s Day coverage was lined up before announcing Renee’s new postion. But you’ve already seen some of the results of her work (and I’ve seen early-morning hours, the likes of which I haven’t experienced since college), as we started to revamp the site’s design and content, think differently about how best to present recipes and articles, and shift writers—wonderful, quirky, beloved, thoughtful writers—back to the forefront of LC.

But let me back up a bit. I first met Renee several years ago when she was second in command at Martha Stewart Living. She wanted to chat about my possibly writing a story for the magazine. We met at Starbucks at Broadway and 75th St. (what we would later call “the office”). It was a long year before an MSLO article and I were eventually paired. In the interim, I figured Renee had forgotten about me, but I didn’t know back then how she worked. Not only didn’t she lose track of me, but she was following everything I was writing. Eventually, I wrote five pieces for the magazine, with Renee as my editor.

As we became friendly—hard not to do when you discover your editor lives a block away from you—we would meet at the office and catch up. Me: a tall latte (sorry, Amanda Hesser), and Renee: a bottle of water. Every once and a while one of us would say, “Wouldn’t it be fun to work together on a project of our own?” Then she’d peel off to 42nd St., and I’d head home and peel off my jeans and jump back into my sweatpants to write.

But we knew it was inevitable. We liked each other too much, held too many of the same convictions, and loved writers too much not to eventually find a way to become collaborators. Last month when I asked her to join LC, she agreed, and I shouted out to The One, “SHE SAID ‘YES’! It’s the second proposal she accepted in a month!” Renee and her fiancé had tied the knot not three weeks earlier.

Since then, it’s been gargantuan e-mails, marathon phone calls with each other and with experts across the pond, and meetings at my apartment. (The office just isn’t big enough to sprawl out; and neither one of us wants to cower beneath the withering glances of ticked-off Upper West Siders.) The dining room table has been strewn with cookbooks, food books, computers, papers, and my and The One’s two cats. Rolodexes were exchanged—perhaps the work analogy of wedding rings—lists of ideas drawn up, an online virtual office was created (thank you, Google Docs), and the sleepless nights began.

We’re just beginning our re-tooling of the site, and we look forward to your input. In the meantime, please take a moment and join all of here at Leite’s Culinaria in welcoming Renee by leaving her a comment below. And if you have a suggestion or other thoughts that require a few more characters, you can always shoot her an e-mail.

A Fond Farewell

David Leite — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:47:19 +0000

It was a day I was dreading, but I knew would come. Kind of what my parents felt throughout my senior year of high school when they kept suddenly hugging me, saying, “We know you have to leave one day, but does it have to be so soon?” For me that day was today, the person Linda Avery. Linda has been a part of Leite’s Culinaria for almost seven years. And during that time she has been many things: a partner, a cohort, a friend.

Being such a preternaturally organized, fast, and accurate worker (that I have on more than one occasion wondered if she practices the Dark Arts), Linda was able to mow through piles of papers, mountains of cookbooks, and a raft of recipes looking for just the right stuff to post on the site. She was always one step a head of me, so much so that I would her replies to my questions via e-mail while we were still on the phone.

But nothing conveys Linda’s character more than the story of how we met. I’ve told this many times at industry events, but never to our readers—or even our testers. Seven years ago, I got an e-mail from Linda in response to an essay of mine that had appeared in Bon Appétit. She commented on how much she liked the piece «blush», and then her tone was clear, to the point, and she wasted no words. The message: I want to be a part of Leite’s Culinaria. Now, I get these kind of e-mails all the time, and after spending even a modicum of time with these people on the phone, it was usually clear they didn’t have the kind of stamina I needed. So before we got to the phone stage, I nipped it in the bud. “There’s nothing for you to do, but thank you for your interest,” I relied. I figured that was enough, and I’d never hear from her again.

Well, that’s not Linda. She wrote a few months later saying she definitely wanted to be a part of the site. Now, I just wanted to get this over with, so I told her she could be a member of our recipe testing section, which I had started a few years earlier and which was small. I figured a few rounds of this and she’s be history, like so many others.

Well, that’s not Linda. A few months later she came to me and said, “I want to run the testing section.” So I figured, why not? In less than a year, she grew the section to ten times its size—complete with more Excel spread sheets, time tables, and algebratic equations than NASA. I was impressed.

Then she came to me again. (Are you detecting a pattern here?) Now she wanted to have a hand in the food section of the site, selecting cookbooks and recipes to feature. By now I knew better than to brush her off. So I said, “Sure.” And in true Linda form, she started sending me my own personal Excel spread sheets, time tables, and schedules. And it all paid off. Together we won two James Beard Awards (the first site ever to do so) and a bookshelf of other accolades. And in the process, we grew a lot.

Linda’s contributions have been significant, and she will be missed terribly. But as with me when I was 18, we all want new and different challenges, and its her turn now. I wish her a warm farewell. Oh, and all I can say is if one day you ever get a call from a Ms. Linda Avery, I suggest you take it.

Won’t you please take a moment and join all of here at Leite’s Culinaria in wishing Linda the best by leaving her a comment below?

iPhone Interface for Leite’s Culinaria

David Leite — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 06:00:49 +0000

I don’t know about you, but I’m a gadget freak. And a dyed-in-the-wool Macophile. (Just to show you how easy a Mac is to learn—for the trillions of people still on PCs—I was indoctrinated when I was 27 years old. By a third grader. And that was on an original Macintosh. You know the one; it was heralded in the famous “Why 1984 won’t be like 1984” TV spot.

So what does this all have to do with Leite’s Culinaria? Plenty. I’ve been looking for a way to make us portable. So that you, and I, can make better use of the site. Our old technology (and at 10 years old, it was a dinosaur in tech terms) didn’t allow for it. Enter Brave New Code. It’s a bunch of brilliant designers, developers, and coders who created an interface so that Leite’s Culinaria can stream to your iPhone at speeds up to twice as fast as other programs. And the interface is pure, elegant Macintosh. Click on the photo at the left, and you’ll see the three newest entries on the site (as of the time of this writing). And there are three important drop-down menus on top: Categories, Search, and Menu. It lets you get to the information you want faster and easier.

So once I customized it, I had to do a test drive. I’m alone in the city this weekend—The One is in CT hobnobbing with our friend Ellen at an art opening. So, I decided to make Rhode Island Clam Chowder, part of the article written by Laurie Jones. I went to Fairway, yes the same Fairway I’ve been complaining about for years, to gather ingredients. While my fellow shoppers balanced a shopping cart, sometimes an infant, ingredients list and pen, which when held in the hand while digging though a pile of shallots can be horror-movie frightening—all I had was my trusty phone. I clicked on the recipe, complete with pictures, turned the phone sideways for better viewing, scooped up the ingredients, and was out of there in no time. I even sent a comment from my phone.

The best part is you don’t have to do anything to make it work. We did it all for you. Now, if you don’t like the mobile interface, just scroll to the bottom of the phone’s page and turn it off. From then on you’ll get LC content exactly as you get it here.

Gotta go. There’s a chowder with my name on it.

Welcome to Our Newly Re-Designed Site

David Leite — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 02:00:16 +0000

The countdown is over! We’ve been working day and night to get our newly designed site up and running so you can access your old favorites plus enjoy a menu’s worth of new dishes, articles, and blog posts. We’re sure you’ll like the new layout: we took a lot of the suggestions, tips, and comments you made in our 2008 year-end poll and built the new Leite’s Culinaria from the ground up with those in mind.

Here’s a little tour of how the site works.

Above are two sections: Read This Now and Eat This Now. These are the areas to look at first when visiting the site. Anything new and noteworthy, such as articles, blog posts, musings, etc., will be featured to the left. Our carousel to the right will highlight the latest recipes, holiday favorites, or seasonal menus.

To the right are four sections: giveaways, for our devoted contesters; lc {blog}; new portuguese table, where you can find the latest information about David’s book; and writings. Think of these as departments in a magazine or sections of a newspaper. We learned not everyone uses the site the same way, and we wanted to offer more ways into the content you want to read most.

Beneath the departments are what we think will be the heart of your navigation: categories and our tag cloud. In the categories, we’ve broken down our content into small (forgive the pun) digestible bites that allows you to drill deep and specifically. The tag cloud is another way of parsing our content. We tried to make these as varied and eclectic as possible. We’ll be refining both the categories and tags as time goes on to better reflect our changing content and your needs.

Now, we’ve migrated less than half of all our existing content. So for the time being, if you can’t find what you’re looking for in the search engine at the above right of all the pages here, just drop Linda or me a line and we’ll try to help. The existing version of the site is still up, and everything is still at your fingertips.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to write either Linda or me. We look forward to your thoughts.

Chocolate Guinness Cake

Julie Dreyfoos — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 20:09:37 +0000

by Tish Boyle
from The Cake Book
(John Wiley & Sons, 2006)
Makes one 9-inch cake, serving 10

During a recent trip to Ireland, I was delighted to see cakes and other desserts flavored with Guinness stout on restaurant menus. The bitter, coffee-like flavor of stout marries marvelously with dark chocolate in particular, as in this ultra-moist, slightly earthy cake. Serve a slice with whipped cream or plain vanilla ice cream — and a pint of Guinness — on St. Patrick’s (or any other) Day.—Tish Boyle

convert Ingredients
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup natural (not Dutch-processed) cocoa powder
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 sticks plus 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
2 1/4 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups Guinness stout (do not include foam when measuring)
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

Confectioners’ sugar for dusting

Want it? Click it.

Method
1. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 325°F (160°C). Grease the bottom and sides of a 9-by-3-inch round cake pan or springform pan. Dust the pan with flour.

2. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon into a medium bowl. Whisk to combine, and set aside.

3. In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium-high speed until creamy, about 1 minute. Gradually add the brown sugar and beat at high speed until very light and creamy, about 3 minutes. Reduce the speed to medium-low and add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as necessary. Beat in the vanilla extract. Reduce the speed to low and add the dry ingredients in three additions, alternating with the stout in two additions and mixing just until blended. Add the pecans and mix just until combined. Remove bowl from the mixer stand and stir a few times with the rubber spatula to make sure the batter is evenly blended. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.

4. Bake the cake for 70 to 75 minutes, until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool the cake in the pan on a rack for 20 minutes.

5. Invert the cake onto the rack and cool completely.

6. Just before serving, dust the top of the cake lightly with confectioners’ sugar. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a week.