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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Twenty-five years ago, you might have heard me patiently explain to a customer what a chipotle was: a smoky, slightly sweet dried pepper with a hint of heat. Nowadays there are more than 2300 “fast fresh” restaurants across the country with the same name. I remember snaking through unorganized aisles at Asian food stores looking […]
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Allan Benton’s bacon is powerful. Salty, smoky stuff, it’s by far the most intense bacon we sell. After tasting it for the first time, I imagined Allan Benton to be a big, burly guy, with thick, tattooed forearms and a bushy beard. But as the old adage goes, never judge a smoker by his bacon. […]
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In Brooklyn, you know it’s officially springtime that week in April when suddenly ramps start showing up on the menu at every restaurant in town. But what exactly are ramps, and why are they the darling of so many hip chefs? And what’s a home cook to do to enjoy ramps the 49 weeks of […]
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All chunks of Parmigiano Reggiano aren’t created equal—but you wouldn’t know that by looking at them. One 80-pound wheel of Parmesan looks pretty much like another. But there can be a world of difference in flavor between Parmesans made by different dairies. They’re all going to be good—but only a few are fantastic.
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Traditional cooking, the popular cooking of countries passed down through time, is the cooking of the poor because, let’s face it, there have been a lot more poor people than rich people in history. Traditional cooks figured out how to squeeze the last bit of flavor from the ham bone, to find flavor in foods […]
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What’s the best rice for risotto? If you ask that question in the US, you’ll probably hear it’s Arborio. But if you ask an Italian expert, odds are they’ll say Carnaroli. Both Arborio and Carnaroli were first grown in Italy in the middle of the 20th century, but Arborio was exported way sooner. By the […]
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Baobab (bay-oh-bab) trees are fairly famous for their giant, bottle-shaped trunks and their odd, spindly branches that look like roots. They look like a tree turned upside down. But baobab fruit is almost unknown. It’s a pity. The fruit is incredible—healthy, with bright, sweet-tart flavor. It makes for amazing jelly.
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I grew up in Michigan. We often had summer sausage in the fridge. But mention summer sausage to a friend from California and chances are they’ve never even heard of it. Why is it so ubiquitous in the midwest and so unknown elsewhere in the country?
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If you’ve gone out to eat or looked at menus for restaurants in New York City in the last few years, there’s a good chance you’ve noticed one ingredient show up again and again: nduja. It’s everywhere: in egg dishes, on burgers, with pasta, with vegetables, with fish or shellfish, with cheese. Its status as […]
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