Antoni On How To Make Anti-Inflammatory Dinners & Desserts Taste Like Heaven

Any fan of Queer Eye can attest that the Netflix show is the pure and unadulterated joy the world needs more of right now. It's this sense of goodness and comfort that Queer Eye's food and wine expert, Antoni Porowski, infuses into his cooking.

Porowski's food philosophy is all about balance: He loves avocados but has a weak spot for cheese. His fast-casual restaurant in NYC, The Village Den, has a menu that's straight out of a wellness lover's dream, stocked with bowls and smoothies with add-ons like CBD oil, bee pollen, collagen, and keto powder, but his new cookbook, Antoni in the Kitchen, is decidedly heavy-handed on the butter and cream—an ode to his Polish roots.

When we caught up with Porowski at a recent event in Manhattan, where he'd partnered with Country Crock spread to put on a cooking demo, he said that in his own life, he eats clean on weekdays and treats weekends as an invitation to loosen the reins.

As for how he makes a weekday meal feel a little more like a weekend one, it's all about keeping a few flavorful ingredients on hand.

When he's preparing vegan treats, for example, he'll start by making easy swaps like substituting traditional butter with Country Crock's new plant butters, made from a combo of oils. Porowski likes the avocado-oil-based butter for its neutral flavor and high smoke point, and the almond oil one for a bit more sweetness. From there, he'll up the crave factor by throwing in some combination of lemon zest (invest in a microplane, people!), ginger, and vanilla. ("Buy the pure kind," he cautions. "You won't use a lot of it, and it changes the flavor of everything.")

Serves 2 or 3

Ingredients