May 7 thru May 14, 2012 One of the best French-style onion soups I've ever had was shared with 70 others at the Zen Mountain Monastery when I arrived on Friday night. The place, altogether mysterious and tranquil, is a real life Buddhist monastery, complete with strict meditation sessions and communal meals in a welcoming dining room. The chef, who is also a senior monk with many responsibilities, cooks three meals a day for the residents and many guests who come for retreats. The food is delicious. Sankai, the chef, comes from Belgium and describes his soup as more Flemish than French. I am waiting for him to share the recipe (it's in his head at the moment and he has never written it down). Sankai is deserving of a story of his life -- which I hope to write at some point -- as it's a compelling path of a young man's journey from a Benedictine upbringing near Antwerp to life as a Zen monk in Woodstock, New York. Sankai loves to cook and it shows in all the food he prepares. He is a firm believer that the emotions of the cook are transmitted during the preparation of a meal and so if he feels angry or agitated he simply "steps out" of the kitchen until that mood passes. Something for all of us to think about in our own lives. Highlights of the weekend meals included a glorious quinoa salad with slivers of sorrel, mint, peas, scallions and radishes; fresh beet salad with feta cheese, fennel and blood orange, and a tantalizing chickpea tajine with roasted butternut squash, carrots and onions, flavored with cumin, caraway and coriander seeds, cayenne and paprika. And while some of the dishes have a lovely complexity, others are stunningly simple such as his vinaigrette made with red grapes, good olive oil and red wine vinegar. Three ingredients: It made me smile. When asked which three cookbooks are most often at his elbow, he replied, "Twelve Months of Monastery Soups," the "Vegetarian Times Cookbook" (most useful, he said, for its organization), and "The Joy of Cooking" where he cuts all the sugar in half. Other adaptations include a recipe for cornbread from "Joy" where instead of flour he substitutes a comparable amount of cooked quinoa. One of my housekeeping chores during my weekend stay was sweeping the large homey kitchen. A meditation in itself.

Last week after the lengthy James Beard Awards at Lincoln Center was a food fest for 1000. While I'm not sure of the actual number of guests, it felt like there was enough food to feed us all. Chefs from all over the country came to cook their hearts out for the award winners, nominees, and the food community at large. Much of the food was really outstanding, served in divine, diminutive portions, inspired by a James Beard recipe of the chef's choice. My favorites: Jonathan Waxman's Shaved Asparagus & Kale Salad with Caesar dressing and croutons; Nora Pouillon's Mini Cheeseburgers with Dill-Mustard Mayo and Micro Lettuces on a Whole-Grain Pumpkin Seed Bun (inspired by Beard's book "How to Eat Better for Less Money"); Alan Wong's Skewered Lamb Sausage with five-Spice Greek Yogurt, Pickled Red Onions and Jalapeno (inspired by Beard's lamb kebabs in "American Cookery"): Keith Luce's Farm Egg Custard and Long Island Duckling with Nettle Puree and Spring Alliums (inspired by "Beard on Food"), and Angela Pinkerton's Port-Infused Prunes with Citrus Creme and Candied Violets (inspired by Menus for Entertaining.) I must say I left feeling pretty inspired...and full.

Last week also marked the birthday celebration for food writer Erica Marcus at abckitchen with Brian Lehrer from WNYC and Steve North from the CBS Morning Show. What didn't we eat? The caramel ice cream, popcorn, chocolate sauced sundae was a knockout.

Had a wonderful meal at the home of Debbie and Larry Freundlich. Debbie is a fabulous home cook and we loved the super-fresh asparagus soup deepened with garden peas; duck breasts with prunes and wonderful roasted potatoes, sorbet and chocolate oatmeal cookies topped with a few addictive grains of sea salt.

And my husband and I had the true pleasure of sharing a meal with Miles and Lillian Cahn, the creators of Coach (yes, the handbag company) and Coach Farms (the goat cheese company). They are legends in each industry. We had lunch at St. Ambroeus on Madison Avenue. Fabulous bread and superb coffee. Lunch was pretty good, too. Lovely beet-filled ravioli, homemade pasta bolognese. (Very, very expensive. So glad we did some "sharing").

Enjoy your own tastes of the week. Be mindful and you'll double the pleasure. More about "The Sacred Art of Eating" by Roshi Dr. Jan Chozen Bays, another time.

March 19 to March 26, 2012 It was all-Italian all-the-time last week with three indelible meals. So here’s an homage to pizza, to pizzazz, to posterity, and to the maestri behind the magic: Antonio, two Frankies, and Pepe.

Last summer in Naples, we forked out a fistful of Euros to a clueless cab driver while searching for the legendary pizzeria named “Starita” in the twisty-curvy district of Mater Dei. Of course it was closed. But a version of it recently opened on Manhattan’s easy-to-locate West 50th Street, and there he was, Don Antonio Starita himself, overseeing the grand parade of pizzas in and out of his wood burning oven and, oh, yes, his deep fat fryer. I’ll come back to the fried stuff in a moment.

Antonio has partnered with a former student who also runs the pizzeria Keste in New York and the new place is called “Don Antonio by Starita.” We were a party of six celebrating dear friend Arthur Schwartz’s birthday, and I can tell you that every dish was its own celebration. We began with a huge platter of angioletti, which are fried puffy strips of dough topped with marinated cherry tomatoes and arugula, and then onto pizzas chosen by Antonio and not necessarily on the menu.

We went nuts over a two-layer affair stuffed with a mix of sautéed escarole, pine nuts, raisins and ricotta, then topped with wafer-thin dough and fresh mozzarella. For dessert there was a pizza slathered with ricotta, honey and almonds.

But in between these pies came Starita’s justly famous fried pizza – called montanara -- invented there about ten years ago where it simply is called pizza fritte. They drop a round of pizza into hot palm oil and it puffs up into an amazingly light disc (light as in texture; caloric like the dickens), which they top with an intense tomato sauce and imported smoked mozzarella di bufala, and slide it into their oven for finishing. You’re looking at a trend here, mark my words.

We all rolled home to sleep off dinner because there was another the following night, celebrating another friend’s birthday…Erica Marcus, former honcho cookbook editor and now ace food reporter for Newsday. That feast took place at Frankies (no apostrophe – there are two guys named Frank) in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens. We sat at two long tables in a romantically refitted old stable behind the restaurant and took our food from huge platters of antipasti; crostini of chicken liver mousse, delectable eggplant caponata, split fresh sardines en saor, followed by platters of homemade cavetelli and hot sausage in brown butter; of ethereal meatballs with pine nuts and raisins; and robust braciola marinara -- all washed down with an infinity of excellent Barbera.

My husband especially liked Frankies’s opening aperitif, made with gin, Cointreau and lemon juice topped off with prosecco. He reminded me the following morning precisely how many he’d had as we got into the car for a two-hour drive to Yale where our daughter will be attending a high school summer program. I knew he was worse for wear when he popped a couple of Tums on I-95, which he blamed merely on two days of feasting.

Now Yale is in New Haven, and you don’t drive there without stopping either at Sally’s or Pepe’s, both of which are the town’s equivalent of Starita, both of which bake a thin-and-crispy crust in coal-fired ovens. Yale could wait because we had just enough time for a pepperoni pie (pretty good) and for New Haven’s gastro-gift to the world – the white clam pie, which we had at Pepe’s (Sally’s being closed for lunch). This is a fairly affable assemblage of chunks of chewy clams, a sprinkling of cheese, some oregano, copious dousings of olive oil and enough garlic to eradicate all the witches in Transylvania. It was an ultimate umami assault on our tastebuds, and while some folk make pilgrimages for the white clam pie, I think it is OK just to make it a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Tonight we’re having broccoli.