Welcome to the most recent version of Food52 Founder Amanda Hesser’s weekly e-newsletter, Hey There, It’s Amanda, full of meals, journey, and procuring ideas, Food52 doings, and different issues that catch her eye. Get impressed—join right here for her emails.

We’re nearing peak Sabre, the French flatware that modernized the outdated riveted, bone-handled cutlery by giving it sleeker traces, acrylic handles in fairly hues, and quite a lot of metallic finishes. We use them in our workforce kitchen. Chloe Warner makes use of them in her design agency’s workplace kitchen. Alison Roman has them in her dwelling. However nobody has what we’ve acquired: two-toned handles, tortoise shell on one aspect, fir inexperienced on the opposite. Enterprise on the entrance. Leisure on the again.

Generally it’s enjoyable to exit for an costly Valentine’s Day dinner, to embrace the truth that you’re collaborating in one thing each primal and obscenely business. There’s good people-watching and character-studying to be performed. However one of many sweetest Valentine’s Days I can bear in mind is when our youngsters, then tweens, cooked us dinner (pasta, ofc) after which disappeared into the lounge to look at a film whereas we had a “date” within the kitchen.

In the event you’re staying in and also you don’t have tween servants, our Check Kitchen actually did it up for you this 12 months. Collectively, César, Nea, and Noah put collectively a menu that provides me ’90s vibes in the easiest way—not that they may perceive what I imply by this, however I recognize their reverence for the times of the wedge salad and steaks with a balsamic pan sauce.

Right here’s their No-Res Valentine’s Day menu:

A Filthy Martini by Noah

Steakhouse Wedge Salad by Noah

Steak au Poivre With a Chocolate Balsamic Pan Sauce by César

Eight-Layer Chocolate Cake by Nea (impressed by Claud in NYC)

One among my pet peeves is when individuals design a considerate, well-appointed kitchen and desk after which don’t deal with their kitchenware and tableware choices with the identical care. It is mindless! So I assumed we’d attempt a brand new recreation the place you select an area and I’ll outfit it with some apt wares. Some will probably be from Food52, duh, and the remainder from different sources. Above is a pattern that I grabbed from Pinterest (a rustic dwelling designed by Nina Farmer)—after which it’s your flip to ship me pictures of kitchens or tables that you really want me to model. E-mail your pictures and requests right here.

The individuals who stay right here have already got many good-looking ceramics, baskets, and bowls. It’s all a little bit, effectively, constant. I’m going to do some zhuzh to an imagined desk setting for them:

• With these placemats in honey.

• And these fringed napkins in olive.

• And this elegantly striated flatware to shake up the country surroundings.

• They’ll use the impartial plates that they’ve on their cabinets.

• However then I need to flick in a little bit minimalism with these stackable Japanese tumblers.

• And one thing sudden. Like a pitcher with a large ring for a deal with. Or a latticed ceramic platter as a bread basket.

From Our Store

Lastly, in the event you like almonds and you want Luxardo cherries, you should make Victoria Granof’s almond cherry cookies from her e-book Sicily, My Candy. I did a video of the recipe right here. And yow will discover the recipe right here, and her e-book right here.

Subsequent week: what I discovered from you all about pizza ovens!

Amanda