Paper Palate

Ken Haedrich made me brave when he wrote this book.
What do I mean by that?
I mean, this is the book that made me get over my phobia of piecrust, roll up my sleeves, get in the kitchen and make everyone some pie.
Haedrich’s calm, sensible, measured prose illuminates the process of making pies step-by-step; his […]

While the cover of this week’s (June 12th) issue of Time Magazine shows images from the war in Iraq, inside, there are a plethora of articles of interest to foodies everywhere.
Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, presents “Six Rules for Eating Wisely,” which includes the great advice to never eat anything that your great-grandmother […]

Jane and Michael Stern have become giants in the world of American food; their travels up and down the highways and byways of the nation in search of delicious local specialties in the greasy-spoon diners, tearooms, truck stops and roadside cafes that grace the roadsides have become a mythic journey that Joseph Campbell himself […]

Although it was written by an historian, Curry: A Tale of Cooks & Conquerors, does not come across as a definitive view of the history and development of Indian food in the subcontinent, so much as a look at how a dish whose roots are in India, travelled across the world and has become […]

There are many reasons to read Shoba Narayan’s memoir, Monsoon Diary; one could read it for the grace of her liquid prose which carries the reader from page to page on a cloud of sensual remembrance. Or, one could read it for her transcriptions of her family’s South Indian vegetarian recipes, classics one and […]

Red Wine Marinated Braised Short Ribs
(allegedly serves 4–6)
Ingredients:
2 large cloves garlic, smashed and peeled
2 large sprigs thyme
2 strips orange zest (1” wide x 3-4” long)
2 bay leaves
¼ tsp allspice berries, crushed in mortar or with side of knife
¼ tsp black peppercorns
4 whole cloves
1 bottle (750 ml) hearty dry red wine (they suggest Zinfandel, I […]

The Washington Post reported yesterday that a study done by the Union of Concerned Scientists has found that the composition of meat and milk of pasture-fed cows to be quite different from cows that are kept in feedlots or barns and fed corn.
The study is the first to synthesize the information gleaned from most […]

Yesterday’s New York Times Magazine featured an article by Randy Kennedy: “The Way We Eat: Rabbit is Rich,” that made me salivate.
For one thing, rabbit, though I have eaten it only a couple of times and cooked it only once, is one of my favorite meats of all time, so of course it got […]

Washington Post writer Jane Mengenhauser entertained me last week with a list of recent culinary slang terms or coined words that she has come across in the media and on the ‘Net, with definitions and citations as to where she has seen the term used most recently.
Some of the terms are really silly ones, like […]

Cooking sous vide may be all the rage across the globe, but New York City health inspectors don’t care; over the past few weeks, they have told chefs to throw out food cooked and stored in the vacuum-sealed packages, they have ordered them to stop using the equipment to produce those packages and they have […]