Real wild rice has a light, nutty, delicately earthy flavor. When you eat real wild rice, you’re about as close to the taste of centuries past as you’re going to get. Other comparable foods (such as wheat, oats, rice, barley, and corn) have evolved over the years through human intervention and breeding or even genetic […]
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A decade ago, the only way to eat good salami in the US was to smuggle it in from Europe. That’s an exaggeration, but not by much. Practically no one was making traditional salami in the US. How times have changed! In the last few years suddenly it seems like there’s a new salami maker […]
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In my twenty plus years in the food world, I’ve had the privilege of visiting some of the world’s best cheesemakers. The Comté aging caves of Marcel Petite in the Jura mountains of France. Jamie Montgomery’s bucolic estate in Somerset, England where they make traditional cheddar in the birthplace of the world’s most famous cheese. […]
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Twenty years ago we started gift boxing our as-of-yet-not-quite-famous sourcream coffeecake in traditional cheese crates made by Dufeck Manufacturing in Denmark, Wisconsin. What I didn’t know then was they were—and are—the last surviving cheese crate maker in the United States.
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Color indicates ripeness All olives start out green. A green olive is an unripe olive. It doesn’t mean it’s not a tasty olive if it’s picked and cured at that stage, but in the same way a ripe fruit will be more luscious and flavorful, a green olive is going to have less succulence, less […]
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These days boutique coffee shops offer about seventeen different ways to make a cup of coffee. Each of those different brewing methods will produce slightly different flavors. To get the sweetest, smoothest cup of coffee, though, your best bet is to skip the in-the-moment brewing all together and go with a bottle of cold brew.
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One day, several thousand years ago, the very first would-be farmer was out looking at some wild grains, and she had an idea: what if, instead of eating the healthiest, most robust plants, she carefully harvested them, collected the seeds, and used them to grow healthy plants again next year? The idea worked, and for […]
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Twenty years ago, brothers Kevin and Seamus Sheridan started selling cheese in Galway, Ireland. Today they own a handful of cheese shops across Ireland called Sheridans Cheesemongers—good spots to visit the next time you’re in that corner of the world. From the beginning, the Sheridan brothers wanted to find the perfect cracker to go with […]
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Cyrilla Suwarsa grew up in Indonesia eating her grandma’s roasted cashews. Now, inspired by grandma’s recipes, she and her sister roast Indonesian cashews. They start with great nuts. They roast them in tiny batches. And the results are really, really good.
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White asparagus isn’t all that popular in the US. In Europe, though, it’s practically a rock star. Home cooks snatch it up. Chefs design entire menus around it. Even the king of Spain gets excited about it. And when it’s not in season, people buy it in cans and gobble it up.
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