Food & Nutrition

In the spring of 1994, while his Soho restaurant, Savoy, was still open, the chef, writer, and farmers’ market hype man Peter Hoffman hosted a Passover seder. In attendance was the former New York Times critic and journalist Raymond Sokolov, who at one point stood up and pontificated about the history of cocido madrileno, the classic dish of Madrid, and how it was was actually a Jewish dish with origins prior to the Inquisition. “My sister turned to me and said, ‘You should do more things like that,’” Hoffman recalled in a 2016 interview with Eater. “And I said, ‘You’re right,’ and that’s sort of where it began.” The “it” here is Hoffman’s initial instinct, and later passion, for telling the candid stories behind the farm-to-table movement that ...

Sure, it’s easy to dream about a life of fruit perpetually ripening on the counter, perfectly timed for juicy desserts and lush salads. Alas, not every peach is redolent with summer’s sultry perfume, worthy to be served au naturel, say, in a gleaming fig-leaf-lined copper bowl, like certain restaurants do out here in California. My favorite stone fruit is the pluot—especially one that was nurtured perfectly, so its acidity and sweetness link up on their own personal flavor dance floor and its bouquet is distinctly recognizable as both plum and apricot. But, inevitably, unripe pluots and all kinds of other stone fruits make their way into our lives, whether we do our shopping at a New York City bodega or a California farmers’ market. So, what do ...

My ideal summer dessert is fruit-forward, extremely unfussy, and takes no more than 30 minutes to make, tops. Because, when the sun is out and the water is calling, the last thing I want to do is fuss over pie dough or, frankly, make anything that requires forethought. After numerous summers spent tussling with my rolling pin and waiting for icebox cakes to miraculously coalesce, I’ve zeroed in on a formula that delivers an easygoing yet aspirational, composed summer dessert: seasonal fruit + something creamy + something crunchy. What really delivers the wow factor and turns it into a dinner-party-worthy dessert is the crunch. For this, I turn to sheet pan streusel. From the moment the first crimson stalks of rhubarb show up in May at the market...

“It’s the perfect bite,” Seung Hee Lee, the coauthor of Everyday Korean, says about kimbap, and I’m kind of annoyed I didn’t think of that before. As a second-generation Korean American, I ate plenty of kimbap growing up and have recently been making it obsessively—and thinking about what exactly makes it good (and not so good). I just hadn’t been able to sum it up so pithily. Kimbap, indeed a wonderfully balanced bite, literally translates from Korean to English as “seaweed rice,” though it’s more accurately described as a rice roll—a piece of kim (seaweed) covered with well-seasoned bap (rice) and rolled around fillings. It’s irritatingly too often called “Korean sushi” because of its visual similarity to futomaki, Japanese sushi rolls. Sushi,...

This is the best creamy potato salad for barbeque and grilling, potlucks and as a family favorite, delicious summertime staple. With tender potatoes, crunchy veggies and eggs in a tangy and creamy dressing! My best creamy potato salad includes yellow potatoes, a creamy mayonnaise and sour cream mixed dressing, hard-boiled eggs, crunchy celery and red onions, dill pickle relish and some yellow mustard to add some bite. That said, a favorite potato salad can be a very personal thing so there’s always room to leave out ingredients you don’t like or add some more stuff like paprika and fresh herbs to put your own spin to it. And while we’re talking about potatoes, here are a few fun things to make with them. Mashed potato puffs are a holiday family favorite for repurposing leftove...

There’s a controversial, utterly modern, and endlessly discussed movement taking place here in the city of Portland, Oregon, where I live. You may have seen it breathlessly depicted in the national media or shared again and again, with infinite commentary, online. I am, of course, referring to vegan ice cream. Portland is positively awash with it: coconut soft serve floats, psychotropic chromagraphic nouveau kulfi, vegan donutteries with hour-long brunch lines serving pink bubblegum soft serve in a charcoal waffle, Szechuan chickpea strawberry scoops, plant-based paletas, and more—much more—with at least a dozen individual establishments serving vegan ice cream riffs within a 15-minute drive of my house. Even the classic ice cream shops are ge...

I wanted to write about ranch dressing because I felt ranch dressing needed a little PR to pull itself out of the junk food gutter. To break free from the salad bowl. Ranch needed a tailwind to help it sail evenly with the star sauces and condiments of the day: chile crisp, gochujang, and preserved lemons, to name a few. This is because ranch dressing, a creamy blend invented by an Alaska plumber turned dude ranch operator in 1950, is not simply to be squeezed over a limp salad of iceberg lettuce and shredded carrots. Ranch is exciting when you look closely, and it has expanded well beyond its Midwestern pizza topping roots, a process well covered in a great Julia Moskin article in the New York Times a couple years back. Ranch is seasoning pickles...

Among the wide world of yuba mock meats and seitan patties, there’s a mushroom that has been rising from its slumber as a worthy meaty substitute. Wake not a sleeping lion, the saying goes. But if we’re speaking of lion’s mane mushrooms, and its awakening comes with nutty umami and a texture that rivals meat, I say prod away. Lion’s mane—or, if you know it by its scientific name, Hericium erinaceus—is a furry, globular fungus that resembles fist-size beige pom-poms. It is firmer and stringier than most mushrooms, with a subtly sweet woodiness and a texture closer to succulent chicken breast than squeaky-soft button mushrooms. What was once a niche fungus is experiencing budding growth; you might’ve even spotted lion’s mane growing kits at your local farmers’ market recently or during bou...

One whiff of its pungent, unabashedly funky aroma straight from the bottle, and it’s clear that fish sauce needs no introduction. In fact, it skips right past it. Typically made by fermenting small fish, like anchovies, with salt for several months in wooden barrels before extracting the liquid through pressure and time, fish sauce is known for its ability to turn up the volume on everything it touches. Its distinct essence of the ocean has many kitchen applications, including the smacking umami bursting with brightness when combined with limes or calamansi in dipping sauces like nuoc cham or patismansi, as well as mellow emulsions with olive oil and parsley over pasta, as in the Amalfi staple spaghetti con la colatura di alici. Each fish sauce–...

About fifteen years ago, Sam W. Edwards III realized that country ham needed a bit of a rebrand. The third-generation ham maker, based in Surry, Virginia, was trying to convince the world that country ham had much more nuance, history, and craftsmanship than those thick, cheap, skillet-fried steaks that people were used to feasting on at waffle houses and Cracker Barrel outposts. He brought some 18-month-aged, pasture-raised, heritage pork ham to Union Square Cafe in New York to do his best to convince Carmen Quagliata, the chef at the time. “You prepare it like you would a prosciutto or a serrano,” he told the chef. “We’re going to call it Surryano.” Union Square Cafe put it on the menu with this tongue-in-cheek nickname, and soon after, Edward...