Food & Nutrition

Early last year, when COVID-19 began to tear through the United States, creating fissures in our food systems and wreaking havoc on our grocery stores, Leah Penniman knew exactly what to do. The founding codirector of Soul Fire Farms, located in Petersburg, New York, had spent the past decade developing sustainable ways to produce and deliver fresh fruits, vegetables, eggs, and other groceries directly to the doorsteps of communities in nearby Albany. For many of the people who receive these Solidarity Shares (Soul Fire Farms’ sliding-scale version of a CSA box), the deliveries already filled in the gaps in a defunct system that left their neighborhoods in a state of food apartheid—a population devoid of nutritious, fresh, accessible food. These ...

I’m adamant about keeping a steady supply of full-fat coconut milk cans stowed away in my kitchen cabinet, ready to be poured into batters, stews, and beverages alike. It’s nonnegotiable for seafood stews like moqueca de peixe, and a chewy cassava cake would be incomplete without it. A worthy pantry mainstay, it’s affordable (typically $2–$4 for a standard 13.5-ounce can), shelf stable for at least two years, and stocked at most grocery stores, markets, and vegetable stands. But best of all, the can’s versatility lends itself to spicy, savory, and acidic main courses just as well as it does to lush, creamy desserts.  I tend to gravitate toward recipes that have been designed to use up the entire coconut milk can in one go—like butter mochi, banan...

From Otajoy yakisoba to Maya Kaimal tikka masala to Hamburger Helper, the dump-and-stir sauté sauce has been part of our cooking vocabulary for a generation—and for good reason. Packed with powerful flavors, and the vapors of nostalgia blowing through a kitchen within minutes, these pouches, bottles, and jars can transform a kitchen in Tulsa to a stove in Kerala, Osaka, Seoul, or Tuscany. Vanessa and Kim Pham, founders of start-up food company Omsom, grew up with these sauces in their lives, too. “Mapo tofu mixes, the Japanese curry packets, they’re incredible, and I use them—like, literally, if you walk over to my pantry, you’ll see a ton of them,” Kim reveals in a mid-December Zoom. Growing up as first-generation American children of Vietnamese r...

There is nothing quite like a patty melt to drive home everything we love (and have dearly missed over the course of the past year) about a visit to a local diner. There was the famous melt from the now-closed MeMe’s Diner, in Brooklyn, which went heavy on the industrial American cheese and grainy mustard. There’s the larger-than-life melt at Phoenicia Diner in the Hudson Valley, which swapped in pimento cheese for those deli slices. The best versions of the classic hybrid combine the fast-food appeal of a cheeseburger with plenty of caramelized onions and the homey crunch of a good rye bread—a harmony of buttery, salty, slightly charred, and sweet flavors. It raises the question: Why don’t we pile caramelized onions and melted cheese onto all sa...

Connie’s Real Authentic Italian Meatballs I heard about Connie’s meatballs over 25 years ago, even before I was married to Meg. She told me they were the best meatballs she’d ever eaten. This is Connie’s meatball recipe. Connie is the mother of Susan, one of Meg’s best friends. I’ve met Connie several times over the years and have asked her to share her meatball recipe with me after my own opportunity to try them. As usual for many home cooks, she said, “I don’t have a recipe. I just make them as my mother taught me.” Well, a few years back, Susan watched her mom make them with a pad and pencil in hand and this recipe is the result of that afternoon. I’ve been sitting on this recipe for a while and just found it in my archive of mail from Susan. Is It the Best Meatball Rec...

Not Your Mother’s Thanksgiving   By Meg Jones - wife, mother,professional, contributor When I was a little girl, the period from Halloween through New Year’s was always the most exciting because it meant that I would see more of my siblings, all of whom are older and had gone off to college by the time I was 10, and that there would be a lot of great food and reasons to celebrate.  And of course my birthday falls in that period, so just ANOTHER excuse for a party.  Turns out I never grew out of this excitement and just to make it a little crazier, both of our daughters were born between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Yippee!  A swarm of Sagittarians.  Like me, our daughters treasure the holidays and for sure Thanksgiving is at the top of the list.  So we have estab...

As the restaurant industry was forced to pivot in the wake of COVID-19, Food and Finance High School’s curriculum found itself in a similar position. At the New York City culinary high school, students’ mornings are devoted to general courses like English and history before breaking out into their own internships, working the line at restaurants or assisting with social media for food organizations. Last year’s junior showcase—an annual event with food prepared and served by the entire class—was put on hold. But staying true to their mission to highlight trailblazing chefs of color, the elements of the showcase evolved into Pass the Spatula, a student-run food magazine released in August 2020. (You can order a copy here.) Paging through the one-o...

Christmas in The Reluctant Gourmet’s House I did this cartoon years ago but never gave it a caption so I never posted it. It being holiday time, I thought I would finally post it without a caption. I welcome any captions you come up with. Let me know in my comments section below. What’s Behind This Cartoon? To be honest, I’m not sure what I was going for with this cartoon but looking at it now after all these years, I’ve got a couple of ideas. Idea 1 It could be as a Reluctant Gourmet, these are some of the gifts I would love to see under the tree on Christmas morning. In truth, I’ve never received a haul like this but over the 25 years as the Reluctant Gourmet, I’ve received all of these kitchen appliances and even the caviar. Although I did buy many for myself, wrapped...

In Malaysia and Singapore, kaya, a sweet coconut jam, is most commonly slathered on crustless white toast, sandwiched in with a thick slab of cold salted butter, and eaten for breakfast alongside a big mug of strong black coffee with evaporated milk and sugar. It’s a unique contrast of textures and temperatures—warm, toasted bread married with the cool saltiness of butter, all in sync with the sticky, sweet, and profound nuttiness of the spread. It might be tempting to pigeonhole kaya as the approximation of the jam that accompanies British teatime, swapping in fresh coconut for strawberries or raspberries. But in reality, the condiment has hundreds of years of history in Southeast Asia and is very much its own foundational ingredient. For centur...

After a life of devout kitchen minimalism, I found myself reverse-Marie-Kondoing my kitchen this spring. Suddenly, there were cans of whole peeled tomatoes and bags of red lentils stacking up, and the top of the fridge became a perilous Jenga stack of cereal boxes. And, yes, like the rest of my fellow millennial apartment dwellers, scallions started to sprout on my windowsill. As if that weren’t enough, I found myself caving to the allure of a restaurant-grade countertop blender, a tortilla press, and even a paella pan (which, for the record, I have used exactly once). For some of us, 2020’s surplus of spare time at home became an opportunity to obsess over our cooking—both as a way to extend the gaps between trips to the grocery store, and as an...