Ben Starr

The Ultimate Food Geek

Category: Recipes

  • Christian’s Big Chocolate “O”

    Christian is a chocolate FIEND.  I have never seen anyone who can eat more chocolate than Christian.  For his birthday several years ago, Julia Child’s Chocolate Bombe just wasn’t cutting it any more, which was my replacement for Chocolate Blackout Cake.  So I had to think of something new. This was the result: Christian’s Big…

  • Crispy-Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

    Everyone LOVES chocolate chip cookies, right?  I don’t like desserts, and even I like chocolate chip cookies. This is a great recipe honed for several years to produce what I think is the ultimate chocolate chip cookie.  I don’t like cakey cookies because they seem dry in my mouth.  I like the soft, chewy kind,…

  • Ben Starr’s Pumpkin Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Candied Hazelnuts

    **Please note, instructions for making this into cupcakes are located at the bottom of the “cake” section of the recipe. This is the cake that I get demands for every October at my annual Fall Dinner Party, where I serve a 5 course meal with each course based on pumpkin. Regardless of what unique, delicious…

  • Fresh Pumpkin Pie (NO cans!)

    So everyone’s got a recipe for pumpkin pie, and here’s the best one.  (An instructional video for this recipe is located at the bottom.) Of course, the best one involves nothing from a can, which means WORK.  I’ll throw you some shortcuts the deeper we get into the recipe, but if you want to make…

  • Chocolate Espresso Cheesecake

    Cheesecake is so indulgent, right?  I have to make it every once in awhile, usually for special occasions, but it’s so rich and so expensive to make that I only do it a few times a year.  Coffee is one of my favorite flavors, and that’s why I had to marry it with cheesecake.  This…

  • Rustic Italian Veggie Pie

    I saw a picture of something like this in a vegetarian cookbook, and since my household is temporarily vegetarian while my veggie friend is visiting from Brasil, I decided to make my own version.  This is a pretty easy dinner, very hearty, sort of like a calzone.  You could really use a variety of ingredients…

  • Wild Mushroom and Egg Yolk Raviolo with Black Truffle Cream Sauce

    You probably shouldn’t make this.  Food this good shouldn’t exist.  It sorta ruins the rest of the food in the world after you eat it.  But if you MUST… I first had a raviolo (“raviolo” just means a BIG ravioli) stuffed with egg yolk at Joe Bastianich’s restaurant Osteria Mozza, where Mario Batali is the…

  • Crispy Eggplant in Pumpkin Coconut Curry

    Indian food runs a close second to Thai food for me, in terms of complexity and deliciousness!  Curries, which are remarkably simple between Thailand and India, are savory sauces with a complex blend of sweet, sour, spicy, and savory notes.  My favorite curries are the ones with a coconut milk base, rather than a broth…

  • Hoppin’ John (Black Eyed Peas for New Year’s)

    Hoppin’ John (or Hoppy John) is a centuries-old tradition in the American South.  On New Year’s Day…sometimes even at the stroke of midnight…families and friends grab steaming bowls of this hearty stew of black eyed peas, rice, and pork, which is supposed to give us good luck throughout the new year.  The theory is that…

  • Butter Chicken

    ***NOTE***  This recipe has been updated as of September 2019 to improve efficiency and flavor. After tweeting to Chef Suzy Singh, a fellow MasterChef contestant, that I was making Butter Chicken (a dish she made on the show) I received numerous tweets asking for my Butter Chicken recipe.  While I’m entirely certain it’s not as…