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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Over the years that I’ve been making fruit cakes, I’ve been asked to modify them for the health regimen or the passing fancy—possibly both—of any number of customers. Don’t change the taste, just make it vegan. Or gluten-free. Just leave out the eggs. The butter. Or the flour. The salt for one with heart problems, […]
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The first time you taste Robert Lambert’s rare citrus fruitcake, it’s a revelation. The fruit is bright and sweet and tart. The nuts are deep and rich and toasty. The cake is lightly spiced with just a hint of the cognac it soaked in. It isn’t just good. It is exceptional.
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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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You are what you eat. Your mom told you that. Turns out it’s true for farm animals, too. When animals live on pasture, they eat a more varied diet of different grasses, herbs, and flowers. The diet has an enormous impact on the flavor of meat it produces. Perhaps the most famous example is Ibérico […]
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The first thing to know about Rangpur limes is that they’re not really limes at all. They’re a hybrid of mandarins and lemons that look like clementines: smallish, bright orange, with a smooth, thin peel that comes off easily to reveal segments that readily pull apart. The resemblance stops, however, when you pop a piece […]
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The Thanksgiving turkey most of us are used to is very different than the turkey that would have been on our table a hundred years ago. They look different: today’s commercial turkeys are all white with a broad, distended breast; traditional turkeys range from white to tan to bronze to black and have a longer, […]
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Nostalgia is a powerful force. Many of us grew up with relatives that made jams or confections, often from the bounty of their own gardens. The memory of those flavors transports us to those times: family gatherings, birthday treats, holiday feasts. We edit those memories into the stories of our life. We leave out the […]
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It’s been a dirty little secret for decades. The Italian salamis all of us merchants sell aren’t Italian. Also, the Spanish ones aren’t Spanish. The French ones aren’t French. In fact, none of them are what they seem. That’s because, with a handful of exceptions, foreign salamis are not allowed in the United States. We […]
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