Food

    Rachel Maddow, the MSNBC host, is quite a mixologist. She occasionally pops up on “The Late Show With Jimmy Fallon” to demonstrate various cocktails. On a recent episode she demonstrated a classic martini. While shaking and stirring and measuring she informed Mr. Fallon that vermouth is a wine, therefore expires after two weeks. She encouraged the audience to toss out that old bottle of your granny’s that’s been collecting dust in the liquor cabinet and buy a fresh one. I obeyed. I sampled a fresh bottle. What a difference!

Bay Burger

1742 Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike, Sag Harbor

899-3915

Wednesday through Monday,

11 a.m.-9 p.m.

Chicchetti Menu

    Taking a page from Italian wine bars, Nick and Toni’s restaurant in East Hampton has added a list of small dishes, or “chichetti” in Italian, to its menu. The items include crispy chickpeas, house-cured duck prosciutto served with caramelized pearl onion, local cauliflower fritti, and fried foie gras ravioli with truffle oil, among others. Nick and Toni’s is now serving dinner Wednesday through Monday.

       Conca D’Oro is the kind of pizza joint-restaurant that every town should be so lucky to have. It is fast, reasonable, and good. In a way, it is two establishments. Come into the front for a quick slice, takeout, or to enjoy your pie in a booth. Go to the back for sit-down service, a variety of specials, and pasta dishes big enough for Fred Flintstone to bring home in a doggy bag for Dino.

Mozzarella Making

       Jeanine Alfano Burge of Silver Spoon Specialties is offering lessons in making mozzarella. The class costs $40; gift certificates are available as holiday gifts for foodie friends. Ms. Burge and her catering business have a Facebook page, through which she can be contacted.

       Silver Spoon will soon be taking over the cafe at the Sportime arena on Abraham’s Path in Amagansett. Details will follow.

Highway Diner Hours

    La Fondita in Amagansett is serving new brunch specials on Saturdays and Sundays between 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Items on the takeout menu include chilaquiles — tortillas sauteed with salsa verde, a fried egg, cheese, and crema, served with rice and refried beans — and a breakfast burrito filled with eggs sauteed with peppers, onions, tomatoes, rice, and black beans.

Wine Specials

    What is your favorite kind of cookie? Chocolate chip? Me, too! Oatmeal raisin, gingersnap, peanut butter, shortbread? All of those, too. Are you a crisp and delicate cookie aficionado, or a jumbo half-baked shopping mall cookie fan? Super sweet, short and crumbly, filled with jam or just plain Jane, there is a cookie for everyone.

Holiday Treats

    Debbie Geppert, an East Hampton caterer, along with Dreesen’s Catering, is taking orders for Thanksgiving pies and cookies. Choices include pumpkin, pecan, apple, and apple crumb pies, as well as peanut butter, oatmeal, molasses, and chocolate chip cookies.

    Ms. Geppert is also offering classes for holiday-time cooks at the Dreesen’s kitchen on Lumber Lane in East Hampton.

    If ever a tribe of cannibals wanted to fatten up some homo sapiens like the poor geese of Perigord, New Orleans would be the place to do it. The geese of Perigord are force-fed through a contraption called a gavotte, which engorges their livers to create, in some people’s opinions, delicious foie gras fattiness.  Take me to New Orleans and I will voluntarily consume every oyster, etouffee, gumbo, Sazerac, beignet, muffaletta, remoulade, Abita beer, po’ boy, mudbug tail, and praline I can get my hands on — making me one tasty and large human liver.

Farm Bounty

    Balsam Farms farm stand on Town Lane in Amagansett is still overflowing with fall bounty, but with a more limited schedule. The stand is open Friday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., except for Thanksgiving week, when it will be open Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, as well.

Empanadas to Order

    Without a doubt, trying to make a truly delicious vegan dessert is a challenge. Trying to make a flaky, delicious vegan pie crust even more so.

    Some recipes for vegan desserts are better left ignored, or improved upon, or at least challenged. Ignored because some things just don’t taste very good with alterations. Improved upon because some recipes show promise but are sloppy. And some should be challenged because there really is no substitute for whipped cream or meringue or many other things, taste and texture-wise.

New at Harbor Grill

    Winter’s a ‘comin’, the days are darkening early, what to do? Girls nights! Gentlemen, you can turn straight to Jack Graves’s sports page or reread the police blotter, this column is not for you. It is for me and my girlfriends.

Nammo’s Estiatoria

136 Main Street

Southampton

287-5500

Dinner nightly, closed Mondays

    Long Island Restaurant Week begins on Sunday. For a week, through Nov. 10, participating restaurants will be offering $27.95 prix fixe menus. The special will be offered all night each night, except on Saturday, when it will be available only until 7 p.m. It will include a choice from at least three appetizers, three entrees, and three desserts.

    Among the local eateries that are participating are Almond in Bridgehampton, Noah’s in Greenport, the 1770 House and the Living Room in East Hampton, and the Bell and Anchor in Sag Harbor.

    After 23 years at the helm of Cafe Max, Max Weintraub has turned over the wheel to Sami Krasniqi, who began his restaurant career at the iconic eatery as a dishwasher two weeks after it opened. But not much, if anything, has changed. Mr. Weintraub is still involved from afar and has inked a deal with Mr. Krasniqi in which the two share in profits.

Highway Diner and Bar

    The Highway Diner and Bar in Wainscott, a year-round, locally-owned bar and restaurant, is gearing up for the fall and winter season with a new cocktail menu, which includes a spiced pumpkin vodka martini, and lower prices on wines by the glass.

    This is the saga of an attempt to get an interview to publicize a cookbook for the benefit of an author who approached The East Hampton Star for said story in the first place.

Paella Dinner

    A cooking class centered on making a paella dinner, to be offered by Bridgehampton’s Loaves and Fishes Cookshop at the Bridgehampton Inn on Saturday, will include instructions for making both seafood and chicken and sausage paella. For dessert, a milk chocolate flan with a pistachio sable sauce will be prepared. The class takes place from 6 to 9 p.m. and costs $165.

The Merliance

    I love Halloween. I love being scared, love haunted houses, love costumes, and love candy corn. But nowadays it seems like zombies and vampires are so popular that we are inundated with the undead, bloodsucking creatures all year round. Turn on the TV to watch something blandly amusing and ads for “The Walking Dead” or “American Horror Story” will scare the bejesus out of you. Change the channel and there’s Ted Cruz. Eeeek!

1770 House Tavern

143 Main Street

East Hampton

324-1770

Dinner nightly

    Reservations are being taken for a Nov. 1 wine dinner called France Uncorked, featuring French wines and five courses at the Living Room restaurant in East Hampton, at c/o the Maidstone inn.

Farm Fresh Produce

    I know very little about food and wine pairing but am an eager student. I appreciate meals moistened with wine chosen by a friend in the know. But I also agree with Richard Olney’s philosophy that “it is a mistake to freeze such a variable and seductive landscape with rigid rules.”

    The Lucy’s Whey cheese shop has shut its doors on North Main Street in East Hampton, where it was based for six years, but plans to relocate in East Hampton by late spring. In New York City, where there is a Lucy’s Whey shop at the Chelsea Market, another cheese store, with a cafe, will be opening in a few weeks on the Upper East Side, at Lexington Avenue near 93rd Street.

Fall Changes

   With the exception of Swedish meatballs and gravadlax, most Americans, no matter how culinarily sophisticated, have a limited knowledge of Swedish food.

   A lot of our ignorance is due to a concept of humility that informs the Swedish temperament called janteelagen, according to Andrew Reice, an American who lives in Sweden and mounted Swedish Culininary Summer, a marketing campaign to introduce South Forkers to both Swedish cuisine and culture this summer. “It’s hard to promote yourself when you’re not supposed to brag,” he said.

Here Comes Oktoberfest

    The annual Oktoberfest at Rowdy Hall in East Hampton begins on Saturday with a 3 to 5 p.m. celebration featuring a re-creation of a German beer garden, with outdoor picnic tables and communal dining tables in the dining room. There will be Bavarian music outdoors from 3 to 5, and a live broadcast by WEHM radio, along with German bar snacks such as knockwurst, brat­wurst, and bockwurst. Oktoberfest beer specials will be served in a commemorative pilsner glass for $8, with refills for $4, and an Oktoberfest beer tasting flight will be offered for $10.

    I have now had my little camp at Lazy Point for five years. Five years, long enough for the clams in my secret clam bed to mature and become sustenance. Long enough for me to learn what I need and don’t need to make time spent out there worthwhile, restorative, contemplative.

    With Labor Day now past, restaurants have begun to adjust their hours for the quieter season. In East Hampton Village, the Blue Parrot is now open Thursday for dinner starting at 5 p.m., and on Friday and Saturday for lunch and dinner beginning at noon. There are daily happy hour specials.

    Smokin’ Wolf, the barbecue takeout spot on Pantigo Road in East Hampton, has new hours as well. It is open Sunday to Thursday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and on Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

   W­hy pickle, can, and preserve? The best reason is because of where we live. The bounty of fruits and vegetables available to us makes the effort worthwhile. It is also satisfying and economical. And the little jars of what you have made make swell gifts.