Today’s Calabria, the region at the toe of Italy’s boot, is one of the country’s poorest provinces. But once upon a time, 26 centuries ago, it was home to Sybaris, a town synonymous with wealth and excess. While Calabria may no longer have Sybaris’s fabled luxury, it does have at least one sybaritic indulgence: candied […]
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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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Think of springerles as the medieval greeting card of cookies for the 14th century’s 1%. Many of the foods we sell started out as peasant foods, the cuisine of the 99% in a way. Springerles are not one of them. Springerles (pronounced shpring-er-lees) are cookies originally from the Swabia region in southern Germany, where they’re […]
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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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Some foods are so much a part of a place that you never think of one without the other. Belgium’s got their waffles. Champagne has their bubbly. Buffalo has its chicken wings; Nashville has its hot fried chicken. In the Spanish village of Almoharín, they’re all about their figs.
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On the surface, making caramel is simple enough: take sugar, heat it to boiling, add cream, let cool until creamy or chewy. But it’s tricky to make really well, which is why it’s hard to find great versions of the darkly sweet treat in stores. It comes in a variety of consistencies and flavors and […]
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Black Mitcham peppermint was first cultivated around 1750 in the county of Surrey’s Mitcham district, just southwest of London. The “black” part of the name comes from the dark color of the plants. Under grey English skies, the deep purple undersides of the leaves can appear black in some crops. For 200 years, Black Mitcham […]
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1. Butter tastes better You can’t tell just from looking at a cookie or a piece of cake whether it’s been baked with butter or shortening. The bottom line on baked goods’ flavor is that butter tastes better. It’s also about ten times more costly, so many bakeries make the choice to use less expensive […]
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Torrone is the Italian word for nougat with nuts mixed in (and like most things, it sounds much better in Italian). It’s been made in northern Italy since at least the 1400s. Though today you might find it year round, it started as a Christmas indulgence. These days most of it is mass-produced by machines. […]
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The Germans know their Christmas cookies. Depending on where you hail from, you might celebrate with spicy little pfeffernüsse or anise-scented springerles. But the real showstoppers are thick and chewy lebkuchen.
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