Food & Nutrition

There are so many Kold-Draft cubes of wisdom in John deBary’s hilarious and heretical cocktail book Drink What You Want, which was published in June and continues to keep this no-alcohol-drinking writer entertained about the world of drink: the deep bench of drinks one can make at home with a few (or many) bottles and syrups and fruits laying around, the ongoing jokes about an industry that takes itself too seriously. DeBary came up as a bartender during New York’s “cocktail boom,” after happening into an interview in 2008 at Jim Meehan’s Please Don’t Tell in the East Village. For a Columbia grad with the LSAT in his sights, the bartending job was just that—a job—but it sent deBary down a path of discovery. “I was the queen of ‘fake it ’til you mak...

How to Make Incredible Pasta Primavera   By Meg Jones - wife, mother,professional, contributor Now that it’s July and the heat is on, my culinary interests lean toward vegetables and fruits.  Ironically, is was my love of bacon and cheese that brought me back to a veggie-focused favorite, Pasta Primavera. What do bacon and cheese have to do with Pasta Primavera? I am told by my college friends that I once said that when I am old, I will eat cheese and bacon with careless abandon.  While I don’t specifically recall that declaration, I’m glad they did because it resulted in a group “…..-of-the-month” gift of cheese AND bacon, for my 60th birthday. We have enjoyed each delivery so much that I decided to research other food-item-of-the-month clubs for the Reluctant...

Sign up for our newsletter    Figs and Feta Forever By: The TASTE Editors Photo: Laurie Ellen Pellicano Let’s recount what we know about figs. They’ve been wrapped in bacon and passed around at cocktail parties for ages. In the ’90s, we all ate a few of them showered with balsamic vinaigrette, tossed onto a plate of arugula. We’ve seen them turned into jam to pair with stinky blue cheese. And let’s face it—they can be perfect eaten completely raw, draped with a few slices of prosciutto or drizzled with a little bit of olive oil and some grains of salt. Yet there are even more chapters in the savory si...

There is no singular Hawaiian mac salad recipe—and the same can be said about molded pucks of Spam musubi, cubed shoyu ahi poke, and pork laulau bundled in taro leaves. Tackling the complex cuisines and varied culinary traditions of Hawaii is no easy feat, but the Maui-born, Los Angeles–based author Alana Kysar leaves it up to your interpretation in her influential cookbook, Aloha Kitchen. Bound by the spirit of aloha as a way of life, Kysar notes that many of the iconic dishes we associate with Hawaii’s local cuisine vary from island to island and household to household. As she puts it, “You can’t just assign one ethnic group to local Hawai’i food; it’s the combination that makes it what it is.” The identity of the islands is a complicated one—t...

Photo Credit – Freepick.com Where Does Lamb Steaks and Roasts Come From? My family are big lamb eaters especially my wife. I like lamb too, but some lamb cuts more than others. When I was a kid, a Sunday leg of lamb roast was very familiar and always served with mint jelly. But then there were those lamb chop dinners where my mom would broil them until they curled up on the edges. So dry, they were barely edible.  I don’t remember lamb burgers, lamb kebabs, lamb stew or a braised shoulder growing up but my kids have enjoyed them over the years. Lamb Cuts Chart I thought it would be interesting to look at various lamb steaks and roasts and which cuts are associated with them. The lamb cuts chart above is simple, but allows you to see exactly where on the lamb these cuts...

Long before anyone could have anticipated national flour shortages and memes about caring for sourdough starters, Ken Forkish was trying his hardest to get America to bake more bread. When he opened his Portland, Oregon, bakery, Ken’s Artisan Bakery, in 2001, Forkish’s was one of only a handful of bakeries in the city dedicated to baking bread using levain (i.e., sourdough starter). And later, when his influential 2012 book, Flour Water Salt Yeast, was published by Ten Speed Press, it brought this style of baking into many people’s home kitchens for the first time. In the past two months, a full eight years after the book’s release, it’s spent three weeks on the New York Times best seller list. In the midst of a busy month (both his bakery and hi...

What is Bouquet Garni and How to Use It In Your Recipes When I hear a recipe call for bouquet garni, I immediately think of a bouquet of flowers. I know what it is, use it often when preparing soups and stews, but often get comments from readers asking more about it. The term bouquet garni is French for “garnished bouquet” and consists of a variety of herbs that can be tied into a bundle especially when fresh or placed in some cheesecloth and tied with some kitchen twine. I even bought little cheesecloth pouches especially made for bouquet garni. Pronunciation of Bouquet Garni This is one of those terms that you may or may not be familiar with but is fun to say. Bo-kay‘ Gar-knee. What Herbs Are In Bouquet Garni Although there is no set rule for what herbs and sometimes...

How to Cook Those Pork Chops You Found at the Bottom of Your Freezer   By Meg Jones - wife, mother,professional, contributor When our youngest daughter was born 10 weeks early, we invested in a deep freezer for storing breast milk.  Over time, the inventory of breast milk diminished and the supply of who-knows-what took over. Between trips to Costco and our Foodsaver that vacuum-seals anything and everything, sometimes our freezer becomes a bit of a mess.  So when we first started quarantining, my once little preemie, now 20, and I teamed up to create an inventory of what was in the freezer for our meal planning. I was surprised at how many pork loin chops we were storing in our freezer, since we are not big pork eaters (the exception being bacon).  When I was a ...

Birthday Chocolate 3-Layer Cake For My Husband   By Meg Jones - wife, mother,professional, contributor The Reluctant Gourmet is not much of a dessert person, but he does have two favorites: key lime pie and pineapple upside down cake.  So for his birthday recently, we made him a chocolate three layer cake (!). “What were we thinking?” you ask.  We were thinking that we, the makers and bakers of the dessert, prefer chocolate.    So that was the deciding factor that tilted the scale toward what ended up being quite a journey. Maddie found a recipe that she thought was pretty interesting and I thought was a lot of effort.  I tend to shy away from making layer cakes, mostly because the icing never ends up looking the way I think it should. Past Attempts My other ...

A Lemon Garlic Kale Salad Now Is One of My Favorites Back in May, my oldest daughter Nell came home from college with her boyfriend Emir. We wanted to make them something special for dinner and the kids said they wanted to help by making this kale salad with lemon and garlic dressing they found in the New York Times. Rack of Lamb We knew from Nell, Emir loves lamb. So we picked up a couple of racks of lamb ribs consisting of eight ribs each for a total of 16.  When cut between the ribs, these tender “lollipops” are incredible when grilled to medium rare. The rack we purchased from Costco was already “frenched” or exposed. This means the meat was cut off from the bone end of the rib chop. It is not necessary to do this, but it does make for an extravagant presentat...