Latest news with #HamElWaylly
New York Times
03-07-2025
- General
- New York Times
Impressively Easy Berries and Cream Cake Impresses, Easily
No words strike fear in me quite like 'butter, softened.' I've mentioned it before in this newsletter, but I'm missing that part of my brain that remembers to take butter out of the fridge to come to room temperature. And before you ask, no, I don't have a microwave, so I can't do that nifty soften-your-butter-in-short-zaps thing. So I tend to stick to baking recipes that call for fridge-cold or melted butter, like Yossy Arefi's generously easy berries and cream sheet cake, which calls for butter, melted. You don't need any special equipment to make this beautiful cake, either: just a big bowl, a whisk, a flexible spatula for scraping said bowl and your trusty 9-by-13-inch baking pan. If you're angling for star baker at your July 4 cookout, arrange your berries in flag formation. But I like the 'pile 'em on' approach (which also means more berries). Featured Recipe View Recipe → Pollo asado: I've planned a nice gathering for you. Get Ham El-Waylly's pollo asado in its marinade on Saturday so that it can luxuriate in all those citrusy, spicy flavors overnight. On Sunday, make beans and rice and ask your friends to bring corn tortillas, pickled red onions and beer. Enjoy your glorious Sunday feast (and your fantastic Monday leftovers). Marinated green beans: This recipe from Dan Pelosi is now on repeat; I've made it twice in the past couple of weeks. I followed the recipe exactly the first time, but the second time, I swapped out his garlicky red wine vinaigrette for some ginger-scallion sauce loosened with a splash of apple cider vinegar. I haven't decided what to do for my next batch, but there will be a next batch. Summer shrimp scampi with tomatoes and corn: The name pretty much says it all, doesn't it? As Ali Slagle mentions in her recipe headnotes, this dish is perfect on its own, but would also be great draped over pasta. You made the pickle lemonade and loved it. And now you're thinking that you'd like to stay on this sweet-and-sour beverage train, but maybe introduce a little cold creaminess. Say hello to limonada (click the image to watch our video):
New York Times
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
They're Gentle. They're Seasonal. They're Soft Boy Cooks.
I first noticed them when I came across the British chef Julius Roberts's videos on Instagram, where he showcases his idyllic farm life and seemingly effortless, seasonal cooking (which I wrote about last year). Then I kept seeing them: youngish men whose cooking on TikTok and Instagram felt gentle, understated and sincere, even though it sometimes veered toward the cheffy. On social media, these sensitive men with palpable charisma are a little heartthrob, a little boy-next-door and entirely devoted to food. I've come to call them 'soft boy cooks,' everything the cultural bent toward protein-maxxing and large hunks of beef is not. They are not 'purposefully slamming ingredients down on the counter, haphazardly throwing things into pots,' as the chef (and my friend and colleague) Ham El-Waylly described it. Instead, they nurture produce rather than contort it into foams. The soft boy cook observes the arrival of ramps and tomatoes like holidays. Dessert is fruit. This straightforward sensitivity is the antithesis to a more hypermasculine cooking that snatches your attention online with excessive portions, aggressive editing and thunderous noise. A more tender approach requires not just a glance, but your sustained focus. A soft boy cook makes you lean in. In his senior year at Columbia University, Jonah Reider made people lean in when he started a supper club out of his dorm room that landed him on late-night television and got him written up in seemingly every media outlet, including this one. His delicate cooking and thoughtful, market-driven dishes also put him on my soft boy cook radar. Rather than pursue a career as a restaurant chef, Mr. Reider, now 31, said he'd peek at dishes through dining room windows and then interpret them in his own kitchen. When his father took him to the chef Gabrielle Hamilton's former restaurant Prune, in New York, 'it was life-changing,' he said. The food, he added, was delicious — 'simple but not' — a sort-of ease conveyed only with years of experience. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
