Food & Nutrition

A Classic Roman Dish - Bucatini all'Amatriciana Like many of you, Meg and I watched the Stanley Tucci special on CNN called Searching for Italy. In the Rome episode, he has lunch at Armando Al Pantheon to enjoy their famous rigatoni all'amatriciana, one of Rome's famous pastas. I made it a little different and call it bucatini all'Amatriciana. Of course I had to run out and buy the ingredients so we could make it at home. Not a lot of ingredients and very simple to prepare and absolutely delicious. Let's look at some of the ingredients. Bucatini Bucatini is a pasta that looks a lot like spaghetti but it is thicker and has a whole running down through the strand. My kids like to say it looks like a straw made out of pasta.  If you lived in Naples, Italy, you would call...

A Classic Roman Dish - Bucatini all'Amatriciana Like many of you, Meg and I watched the Stanley Tucci special on CNN called Searching for Italy. In the Rome episode, he has lunch at Armando Al Pantheon to enjoy their famous rigatoni all'amatriciana, one of Rome's famous pastas. I made it a little different and call it bucatini all'Amatriciana. Of course I had to run out and buy the ingredients so we could make it at home. Not a lot of ingredients and very simple to prepare and absolutely delicious. Let's look at some of the ingredients. Bucatini Bucatini is a pasta that looks a lot like spaghetti but it is thicker and has a whole running down through the strand. My kids like to say it looks like a straw made out of pasta.  If you lived in Naples, Italy, you would call...

A Classic Roman Dish - Bucatini all'Amatriciana Like many of you, Meg and I watched the Stanley Tucci special on CNN called Searching for Italy. In the Rome episode, he has lunch at Armando Al Pantheon to enjoy their famous rigatoni all'amatriciana, one of Rome's famous pastas. I made it a little different and call it bucatini all'Amatriciana. Of course I had to run out and buy the ingredients so we could make it at home. Not a lot of ingredients and very simple to prepare and absolutely delicious. Let's look at some of the ingredients. Bucatini Bucatini is a pasta that looks a lot like spaghetti but it is thicker and has a whole running down through the strand. My kids like to say it looks like a straw made out of pasta.  If you lived in Naples, Italy, you would call...

Pirloo, perloo, purloo, pelau, pilaf, pilau—these are just six of the many names for one of my favorite rice dishes. The dish has as many names as it does variations found across the world, and in the Lowcountry, we have just as many recipes for it. It’s a one-pot rice dish usually made with some sort of aromatic vegetables and cooked with some kind of meat. The rice absorbs all of the rich flavor from the vegetables and meat, and it coats itself in any fatty goodness that comes from the cooking process as well. Commonly, you’ll find pirloo made with some sort of poultry, chicken being the most common and versatile meat added. But game birds like quail, squab, and guinea fowl have been eaten by common folk and kings forever, and one of my ...

Enjoy succulent hibachi shrimp at home with buttery shrimp seared in a rich Asian-inspired sauce and cooked in only 5 minutes. Pair it with some hibachi rice, noodles, veggies and the addictive Yum Yum sauce. Today we’ll be making some hibachi shrimp to wrap up the hibachi series. If you’ve missed out, we’ve made hibachi steak and hibachi chicken and paired them with hibachi rice, hibachi noodles and some hibachi vegetables to enjoy the full hibachi experience at home. These perfectly seared shrimp are sauteed in butter and garlic then tossed in a soy-teriyaki base as your choice of protein to compliment your rice, noodles and veggies. They have that gorgeous sear and the signature taste you’ll find in most Japanese steakhouses. Dip it in some creamy Yum Yum sauce and you’re s...

Make the famous Japanese Hibachi steakhouse sauce at home and enjoy the creamy, tangy, sweet and savory flavors for drizzling and dipping. Pair it with hibachi rice, noodles, steak, chicken, shrimp, or vegetables for the full hibachi experience. Today we’re making the famous and addictive Yum Yum sauce commonly served as a dip at Japanese steakhouse grills. It’s a pale orange-pink mayo-based sauce made creamy with some melted butter and flavored with Sriracha or ketchup, paprika, garlic and onion powder, sugar and a dash of cayenne. If you have any mirin lying around, I’ve also added some as an option to take the sauce to the next level. It’s really easy to make with pantry staples (aside from the mirin) but is just as good as the sauce at your favorite Japanese hibachi restau...

Skip the calories and mess of deep-fried chicken with these crispy air fryer buffalo chicken wings tossed in restaurant-quality sauce. Enjoy some finger-licking wings from the comfort of your home with some celery sticks, carrots and ranch or blue cheese dressing. If there’s one food that the air fryer was made for, it’s chicken wings. It gives you the same crispy wings you get from deep-frying without the hot oily mess that comes with it AND the healthy benefits of baking them in the oven but in half the time. It’s a game-changer for making wings at home. No more splattering oil messes or waiting 40 minutes for oven-fried wings. All you need is 20 minutes to make 2 lbs. of wings and it’s easy and foolproof. We’ll be tossing them in a homemade classic buffalo wing sauce which ...

With the pervasiveness of pizza and the proliferation of portable backyard ovens (Ooni, Gozney, and Breville all make solid products), pizza at home is reaching a new high. With access to new crops of domestic 00 flours, like King Arthur’s and Central Milling (a joint venture with 13-time World Pizza Cup Champion Tony Gemignani), and pizzaiolo-approved crushed tomatoes (the Chris Bianco–backed Bianco DiNapoli brand), there’s no limit to how high home cooks can ascend the everlasting apex of pizza. As a lifelong pizza cook and now pundit—my first job was at Capriccio in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, in high school, and I haven’t stop pursuing pizza since—I’ve questioned the constitution of San Marzanos, and I’ve promoted the other two tomato variet...

Cabbage is a gentle veggie at heart. Its petals are tight, curious, and crunchy, and its flavor is mild but sweet. Yet most recipes take an aggressive approach to coaxing the leafy vegetable out of its deep winter slumber, opting for aggressive acts of burning, charring, and searing to reach a state of caramelization. But the more delicate approach of steaming cabbage (be it napa, savoy, or classic green) has a lot of advantages that are often overshadowed by those other cooking techniques. First, steaming requires no fat in the cooking process, and this pays off in spades. Since steaming is a gradual way of cooking, it yields a more cabbage-y flavor without being overpowered by char. Steaming cabbage preserves its color, texture, and nutrients,...

My love for fish balls hardened at a Passover seder. I was in elementary school, and my best friend’s family had invited me to their holiday meal. When it came time to serve the infamous gefilte fish, my friend and her brother put on their annual gagging faces in protest. That year, in anticipation of this, my friend’s mother had spent hours chopping the carp and making a light soup for a homemade version of the holiday specialty, in order to avoid serving the jarred stuff that she knew her kids reviled. The results were mixed: They still hated the homemade version just as much, it turned out. I, on the other hand, loved it. I was embarrassed to love it at first, as my friend and her brother were so vocal in their disdain for the matzo-meal-boun...