Month: April 2023

All About Rice We cook with a lot of rice in our house. It goes well with many dishes and makes a beautiful meal conduit. In this post, I'd like to look at rice from several points of view, so you can better understand how important rice is in so many cultures. What Is Rice and How Is It Used In Cooking? Rice is a cereal grain and one of the most important staple foods for many of the world's human population, especially in Asia. It is the seed of the grass species Oryza sativa (Asian rice) or Oryza glaberrima (African rice). Moreover, it is the agricultural commodity with the third-highest worldwide production, after sugarcane and maize. Popularity Rice is one of the world's most widely consumed staple foods, particularly popular in Asian countries. According to th...

All About Tartar Sauce Who hasn't tried tartar sauce at some point in their life? Unfortunately, most versions I've eaten were commercial brands served with fried seafood. I will go out on a limb by suggesting that any homemade version will be better than a store-bought. The ingredients may be the same, but all those chemicals won't be added to preserve it. What Is Tartar Sauce? It is a creamy and tangy condiment commonly used as a dipping sauce for fried seafood, such as fish and chips, shrimp, and calamari. It is typically made with mayonnaise, chopped pickles or relish, capers, lemon juice, and spices. The ingredients of tartar sauce can vary slightly depending on the recipe, but the base is always mayonnaise. The mayonnaise is typically mixed with chopped pickles ...

Strawberry Corn Flake Cake Is Part of a Complete Breakfast By: Zola Gregory Photos: Eli Lu While there is nothing morally wrong with eating cake for breakfast—I do it all the time—there’s always a small whisper in the back of my head telling me that I’ll be hungry again in half an hour. Even though a cake contains what are arguably the building blocks for an acceptable breakfast—eggs, flour, and milk—wouldn’t I be better off with a hearty omelet? Then I remember the cereal commercials of my early 2000s childhood, where a bowl of milky cereal was announced as being “part of a complete breakfast.” If a bowl of strawberries and a glass of orange juice could tur...

A few years ago, I found myself in a pinch. I had borrowed a friend’s cabin that sat along the Housatonic River in the shadow of northwest Connecticut’s Bear Mountain, an equally short distance from the New York and Massachusetts borders. I brought my dog, my laptop, a pair of hiking boots, not one but two hunting knives, a bottle of Blanton’s Single Barrell Bourbon, a can of bear spray, and the hope that I wouldn’t have to use it. Since I was there to knuckle down and finish the book I’d been working on, I only brought two things to read: a novel, and a copy of The L.L. Bean Game and Fish Cookbook by publishing legends Angus Cameron and Judith Jones. My intention was to cook all three dinners I would eat at the cabin using recipes supplied by Cam...

Fly By Jing chili crisp, the breakout sensation from Jing Gao’s line of Sichuan pantry items, is currently everywhere (and it almost felt like all at once). It’s carried in practically all of the small, hyper-curated grocery stores across the country (the “shoppy shops”), but it’s also sold at big-box big boys Target and, remarkably, Costco. It’s been an impressive rise for a brand launched only in 2018 by a former marketing executive turned condiment queen. Fans of Gao’s spicy, crispy, mouth-numbing condiment often use it as a hot sauce to add flavor (and, in this case, texture) to a finished dish. But Gao first started making and jarring her take on the staple Chinese pantry item to minimize prep work for the supper club she formerly ran in Shan...