Month: March 2023

I was ten years old when I tasted pizza for the first time. My family had moved to Rome in the middle of the school year, and my brother and I were dropped into a fancy private school improbably run by Irish nuns near Piazza di Spagna in the city’s Centro Storico (historic center). It was an abrupt introduction to Italian bourgeois culture, including the Italian pizza ritual. Every morning as we filed into class, we passed the school custodian selling neatly wrapped packets of pizza rossa and pizza bianca. In the classroom, we slid our paper-packaged snack in between the radiator columns to keep them warm until our midmorning break. I’m not sure if anything has ever tasted as delicious since.  Pizza bianca was a little basic, just straight dough...

What Is Food Fraud and How to Avoid It? I had never thought of food fraud until my oldest daughter brought it up and thought I should research it. So in this post, I will look at some of the issues surrounding food fraud and what foods we should keep our eyes on. Food fraud intentionally deceives consumers by misrepresenting food products or ingredients through substitution, dilution, or mislabeling. It is a global issue that affects the entire food supply chain, from producers and manufacturers to retailers and consumers. The motivations for food fraud are typically financial gain, as fraudulent products can be sold at a higher price or with less expensive ingredients or to circumvent regulatory requirements. What Does It Look Like? Food fraud can take many form...

All About Pancetta and How to Cook with It We don't cook with or serve pancetta often, but it is a treat when we do. There are some recipes like carbonara sauce that require it, and then I will look for it at our local market. Pancetta is an Italian bacon made from pork belly that has been salt-cured and seasoned with various herbs and spices. It is a popular ingredient in Italian cuisine, known for its rich, savory flavor and versatility in cooking. How Is It Made? Traditionally, pancetta is made by rubbing a pork belly with salt, black pepper, and other spices such as juniper berries, nutmeg, or garlic. The meat is then rolled up and tied with string before being hung to dry for several weeks. The curing process gives pancetta its distinctive flavor, which is less smoky ...

Compound butters are undeniably delicious, and they’re all over the food internet. But I stick to infusing spices and aromatics into homemade ghee instead. The result? A complex fat that’s perfect for making quick pan sauces, frying pancakes, searing steaks, and preparing pretty much any dish that typically calls for butter—only shelf-stable and with a higher smoke point.  Ghee, or clarified butter, is what you get after straining the milk solids out of freshly browned butter. For centuries, South Asian cuisine has harnessed the full effect of ghee and its tantalizing nutty notes on top of dals, in pots of rice, and in countless desserts. But its 465°F smoke point (55 degrees higher than olive oil) and its buttery flavor have popularized ghee ar...

I live in Seattle, where spring almost never comes early, whether the world’s only famous groundhog predicts it or not. As winter stretches on, the cozy stews and roasts I once found comforting suddenly seem too rich and heavy. It’s not only spring I desire but the bounty that comes with it—tender asparagus, ruby-hued strawberries, and sweet peas. But as root vegetable season drags on, I find myself turning to frozen peas instead.  Frozen vegetables get a bad reputation. They can be mushy once no longer frozen, as any firmness associated with fresh produce is lost in the freezing process. But frozen vegetables can at times rival their fresh counterparts—at least in terms of flavor. Most vegetables in the freezer section were picked at their prim...

Fish sauce is nothing new. The salty, sweet, and seafood-y condiment, typically made by fermenting small salted fish like anchovies, has been flavoring dishes in Asia for thousands of years. But for the last couple decades, articles in Western food media have frequently cast fish sauce as a “secret ingredient,” used by “chefs” to imbue just about anything with umami on the sly—Caesar dressing, Bolognese, or beans on toast. A furtive dash of a potent, exotic elixir. It’s true that a splash of fish sauce makes for a good marinara. But the implication was that you had to hide fish sauce, sneaking it into the food of unsuspecting diners, lest they balk (“You put what in the tomato sauce?”). Everyone loves a good secret, but fish sauce—which is known...