It starts with the olive varietal Just like wine made from Chardonnay grapes tastes different than a wine made from Merlot grapes, olive oils made from different types of olives can have totally different flavors. There are thousands of different olives in the world. Some are milder. Some are more bitter. Some are more buttery. […]
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Think of a powdered food like ground cinnamon or cornmeal. What do you get if you add it to some water and mix them together? Something like a paste. Now imagine the powder is wheat flour. Mix it with water and it creates a dough that holds together, yet stretches. What makes wet wheat flour […]
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First things first. What’s a grain? The foods we call grains are the seeds of certain members of the grass family. Wheat, barley, oats, rye, rice, corn, sorghum, and millet are all grains. Each grain has three main components: (A) The endosperm: the starchy part that would feed a baby plant if the seed were […]
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1. Really good chocolate. It probably comes as no surprise that the first step to making a really good box of chocolates is to use really high quality chocolate. Here are a few ways you can suss out quality, without an advanced chocolate degree. Look. Good chocolate is glossy. Avoid any chocolates that are dull […]
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1. First things first: What cheeses should you get for a cheese board? The classic answer is to get a variety. Get a young soft cheese. An aged harder cheese. Maybe a blue. Maybe a goat or sheep’s milk option. That is still a safe and delicious way to go. But it’s not the only […]
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Let’s start with the basics. A ham is the meat of the leg—nearly always the back leg—of a pig, from its ankle to its rump. If you were to go to the butcher shop and ask for one that was raw, you’d be getting what’s called a fresh ham. You could cut it up and […]
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When you think of the Mediterranean, what comes to mind? Perhaps sipping an espresso at a cafe tucked along the French riviera? Cruising in a sailboat between rocky Greek islands? How about soaking up the sun on the beaches of Tunisia?
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The origin of the word “curry” is like the story of “kangaroo”—it’s based on a British misunderstanding. Historians suggest that a few centuries ago the Tamil word kari referred to a spiced sauce or to black pepper. British colonizers took that term, anglicized it to “curry,” and used it to describe a wide range of […]
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Fresh or dried pasta, which is better? Are people concerned about this? Are you talking about it at dinner, arguing for one pasta style over the other? Frankly, I don’t know if this is a debate or not. If it is I’m sure it ranks very low on the scale of disputes, somewhere far under […]
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“Extra virgin” is a legal term used to categorize olive oil. It’s like the USDA ratings for beef: Prime, Choice, and Select. For olive oil, the standards are set by the IOC, or International Olive Council, an organization set up by the UN to coordinate and promote olive and olive oil production.
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