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Don't wrinkle your nose at prunes (3/28/24)"They're still rather badly wrinkled, you know." That's the punch line in a classic commercial created back in the 1960s by Stan Freeberg. It featured a man who complained that he did not like prunes because they had pits and were wrinkled. He's urged to try one of Sunsweet's new pitted prunes and, complying, agrees that they're moist and sweet. ...
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Whether you say tomato or tomahto, say San Marzano (2/29/24)Years ago, when I first visited the city of Pompeii, famously preserved in volcanic ash in 79 B.C. by the eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius, I could not help but be impressed by two things: the sophistication of the ancient Roman city which had been frozen in time and the power of the forces which took only 15 minutes to overwhelm it...
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The pastrycook's dark secret revealed (2/1/24)You might think of the Kit Kat bar as a simple chocolate treat to give out on Halloween. But in Japan it's far more than that. Considered a cultural touchstone there, more than 400 distinct flavors like melon, purple sweet potato, and matcha green tea are available...
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Five faves that brought raves in 2023 (1/6/24)The year just gone by had more than its share of tragedy and sadness, much of it promising to continue into the year just started. And yet, despite the afflictions of 2023, in many ways it was not unlike other years. People got married. Children were born. Seniors graduated from school. Movies were produced. Music was performed. Art was crafted. Books were written. And recipes were created...
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Put some extra magic in your holiday (12/7/23)"She looks like an overgrown kewpie. She sings like a mood-mad hillbilly. Her dancing is crazily comic." That's how Life magazine described the legendary star, the late Carol Channing. A Tony Award winner, the first celebrity to perform at a Super Bowl halftime show, a Democrat who regarded her inclusion on Richard Nixon's enemies list as the highest honor of her career, and the actress who gave Clint Eastwood his first onscreen kiss, she was among the most unique performers in the history of show business.. ...
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Not by pie alone (11/9/23)This is my favorite season of the year. No, not Fall. Pumpkin season. I like pumpkin in all of its culinary manifestations: pumpkin brownies, pumpkin chili, pumpkin pasta, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin creme brulee, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin risotto, and, of course, pumpkin pie. Forty years ago, incurring the skepticism of some of my relatives, I was making pumpkin ravioli for Thanksgiving long before it was available at the grocery store...
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Cooking the books (10/12/23)"The Internet really ought to have killed cookbooks," Helen Rosner, the award-winning food columnist of the New Yorker observes. But instead, cookbooks are selling better than ever. Rosner says this is because they have become more than merely collections of recipes...
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Nothing light at the end of this tunnel (9/14/23)Jim Carey auditioned several times for Saturday Night Live, but never got on the show. He's now considered a pioneering comedian. Jean Sibelius on his honeymoon tried out for a spot in the Helsinki Philharmonic. He didn't get it. Today he's considered one of the most innovative composers since Beethoven...
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Curds and whey seize the day (8/17/23)I never expected to find an article on cottage cheese in The Wall Street Journal, on the front page no less. But there it was a few weeks ago, with a headline announcing, "Whey Cool: Gen Z Discovers Cottage Cheese." The article explained that cottage cheese has become the new "it" food, at least among young people who are apparently discovering it for the first time...
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Foam sweet foam (7/20/23)Anne Byrn, the Cake Mix Doctor, knows a lot more about cakes than how to jazz up one from a box. Recently I saw in her newsletter a post about the schaum torte, a dessert of meringue, whipped cream, and strawberries found up north, principally in Wisconsin. Some sources go so far as to say it is virtually unknown outside the Badger State...
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Lassi to the rescue (6/22/23)Some years ago a TV ad depicted the representative of a washing machine company sent to India to discover why sales of its product were so high there. He travels to the Punjab region, braves a massive downpour, and ends up in a lassi parlor where that famous ancient drink, the world's first smoothie, is sold. The proprietor takes the agent in back and proudly shows how he is using washing machines, not to clean clothes, but to blend lassis...
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The perfect ingredient for a killer recipe (5/25/23)Back in the 1930s some bright director invented a clever idea to make it appear that actors in the background of a scene were actually carrying on a conversation. They were instructed to silently mouth the word rhubarb over and over again. I wish I had known about this trick during my collegiate thespian career, confined primarily to background scenes. I always used the word rutabega...
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Gotta Horchata? (4/27/23)Given the ubiquity of rice in Mexican restaurants you might think the grain is central to the country's cuisine. But to the contrary, per capita consumption of rice in Mexico is about one-fifth of that in neighboring Belize. Moreover, rice in Mexico is restaurant food, seldom cooked by Mexicans at home...
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Better baking in an instant (3/30/23)Though it was introduced in 1918 by My-T-Fine, it wasn't until years later, after Jello came out with its own version, that such a product attracted the attention of cooks. Thus it was, in the '50s, in response to one of the most irritating television commercials ever produced ("Busy day, busy day, busy day") that my mom tried instant pudding for the first time. ...
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We all scream for semifreddo (3/2/23)Kendall Vanderslice has had a checkered career in the field of culinary arts and sciences which has taken her around the world. Holding an advanced degree in Gastronomy she has worked as a pastry chef in many of the top kitchens of Boston. At one location she specialized in ice cream desserts, which is not necessarily unusual until you realize that during that posting the restaurant in question did not have a single ice cream maker on its premises. ...
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It takes two to Frango (2/2/23)In an editorial in the New York Times this past Christmas Day, Megan Stack observed that when the holidays are in full swing, candy season reaches its peak and, she laments, it never ends, noting that soon Valentine hearts "nudge against the dwindling supply of Santas in the candy aisle."...
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2022's better than all the rest (1/5/23)It's that time again, the time when, though we look forward to the year to come, we naturally look back at the highlights of the year just passed. You won't have to look hard to find compilations of last year's top movies, songs, news stories, Instagram posts, YouTube videos, searched-for recipes, and even Uber Eats' funny delivery requests (among them, "Can you draw a T.Rex with sunglasses on the inside of the box?"). ...
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Drinking the Stars (12/8/22)The team of Lerner and Loewe wrote nine musicals (almost as many as Rodgers and Hammerstein), most notably My Fair Lady. But when the Canadian music critic Gene Lees decided to write a biography of the duo, he chose for his title not a number or a line from My Fair Lady, or Camelot, or Brigadoon. Rather, he titled it Inventing Champagne, a nod to a showstopper tune from the composers' Academy Award winning film, Gigi...
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Vive le Gâteau Français (11/10/22)Dorie Greenspan, the author of reliably luscious cookbooks, tells of the first dinner party she put on in her Paris apartment years ago. Pulling out all the stops, at the end of the meal she brought forth a tall cake laced with fresh raspberries and a rich chocolate ganache. ...
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Nothing iffy with Jiffy (10/13/22)Look up the word "jiffy" in the dictionary and you'll find this definition: "in a moment." Synonyms may be suggested, such as "split second," or "in the blink of an eye," or if the dictionary is given to informality, "like a bat out of hell." It seems to me, however, that a dictionary could hardly do better than simply showing a picture of the iconic small box with the blue logo at the top that says Jiffy. ...
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Viva el Choco Taco (9/15/22)Recently Klondike, the maker of ice cream bars and frozen novelties, announced it was discontinuing production of the iconic Choco Taco, a circular waffle cone folded to resemble a taco shell and filled with ice cream. Products come and go all the time, of course. The majority, like the Edsel, are quickly forgotten or not long mourned. But others are deeply lamented and even produce passionate reactions. So it was with the Choco Taco...
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Borscht on the front lines (8/18/22)The beet-based soup borscht, along with gumbo, gazpacho and goulash, is easily one of the great soups of the world. Moreover, Tom Birchard, owner of Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant in New York (where they go through 5,000 gallons of the stuff every year) contends that there are as many versions of it as there are Eastern European grandmas...
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A world-class way to celebrate World Chocolate Day (7/7/22)Though the last new episode aired 65 years ago, in reruns "I Love Lucy" still draws 40 million viewers every year. So even people who were not yet born when the show started have their favorites. There are plenty to choose from, including the grape stomping sequence (Lucille Ball's favorite), the Vitameatavegamin commercial, or the one where Lucy raises chickens. ...
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Ratatouille rules (6/23/22)"Confit Byaldi." How's that for the name of a movie starring a surprisingly adorable cartoon rat who likes to cook? My guess is had the Disney/Pixar movie with the same premise been given that name, perhaps not enough people would have seen it for it to have won an Oscar or be voted by the BBC one of the 100 greatest motion pictures of the 21st century...
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Bread and butter issues (5/26/22)"Make the bread, buy the butter." This injunction is the title of a delightful cookbook by Jennifer Reese which purports to advise cooks about what is worth the time and trouble to make from scratch and what is better left to the supermarket or carryout...
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A million calories and counting (4/28/22)"The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a star," observed the gastronome Brillat-Savarin, whom I quoted in my first column for this newspaper 25 years ago this month. I still believe he was correct, but I find it hard to believe a quarter century has passed since then. Time really does fly when you're having fun...
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A dish that's all it's cracked up to be (3/31/22)Recently at our house, with my wife's urging and the nudging of our kids who have had one for a while, we joined millions of other Americans and got an air fryer. What the device did for French fries and roasted vegetables, not to mention leftover pizza, was fine, but then we discovered a food that cannot be cooked any better than in an air fryer: hard-cooked eggs. ...
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Fit for a queen (3/3/22)A forthcoming book, "Pride and Pudding," that Jane Austen might have written had she any interest in cooking, notes that pudding is "one of the characteristic dishes of British cuisine." No wonder, then, that Buckingham Palace is celebrating Queen Elizabeth's 70th anniversary on the throne with a competition to select a fitting pudding (in England all desserts are called puddings) to honor the monarch...
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Deliciously down in the dumps (2/3/22)Two elderly ladies were sitting on a park bench, chatting. "Whenever I'm down in the dumps," said the first, "I get myself a new hat." The other lady, without missing a beat, replied, "I've always wondered where you got them." That's an old joke. In fact, I could trace it back at least as far as the October 1946 issue of Boys Life, and it was probably old then. ...
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Better than all the rest (1/6/22)Though the year just gone by was, I hope, better for you than the year before it, for many it was still a difficult one. Yet, even in a difficult year there are some pleasant memories, and for me most of them revolve around recipes. So keeping with custom I offer a list of favorite recipes from last year. ...
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Burnt, Baby, Burnt (12/9/21)Heard about the cook who was so bad his chicken cordon bleu had to be renamed cordon noir? That quip is only marginally more sophisticated than the jokes Henny Youngman used to make about what a bad cook his wife was because she burned everything. Lots of things can go wrong when cooking a dish, like putting in too much of something or too little of something or leaving out something entirely. ...
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Nourishing the stomach for combat (11/4/21)Everybody knows what a baguette is, along with the beret, an iconic symbol of French culture. Ten billion of the long bread batons are consumed annually in France and nearly everyone there knows the proper way to carry one and the proper way to eat one. But they may not know why the baguette is shaped the way it is...
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Figuratively speaking (10/14/21)Recently a food columnist for a St. Louis newspaper wrote an article with the headline, "Here's Why I May Never Eat Another Fig Again." Like any good headline, this one caught my attention, especially since I like figs, which are in season until the end of this month and, of course, available dried year-round...
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Hole foods headquarters (9/16/21)Some foods have holes in them. Often a circular shape with a hole in the middle is purely symbolic, as in the Paris-Brest, a pastry shaped like a bicycle wheel, concocted to celebrate a race from Paris to Brest that was a forerunner of the Tour de France. Mostly, however, a hole in a food serves a purpose, as in a Bundt cake, whose hole helps ensure that its typically dense batter gets baked all the way through...
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Bon Anniversaire to Julia (8/19/21)This week marks Julia Child's 109th birthday. But I remember her when she was barely half that age, way back in 1968, on a day I still recall vividly. I had just turned on the little television in our apartment and sat down to watch her groundbreaking show, "The French Chef."...
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Cold comfort (7/22/21)One of the consequences of the pandemic, my teenage granddaughter realized last year as she was attending school online, is that it may never again be necessary for a school district to observe a snow day. Students no longer have to worry about getting to class in inclement weather. ...
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The chiffon twins (6/24/21)It's not often that a fabric is named after a food, but it's not all that uncommon for a food to be named after a fabric. Thus, we have lace cookies, fruit leather, French silk pie, satin frosting, and red velvet cake. But of all the foods named after fabrics, the ones with chiffon in their names, namely chiffon cake and chiffon pie, are perhaps the most significant because each has a story and a unique individual behind it...
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The Duke of mayo (5/27/21)Some foods are more regal than others, so much so that they've been given royal titles. Thus, there is Chicken ala King, Duchess Potatoes, and anything labelled "a la reine," meaning in the style of the queen. But as noble as any preparation is the iconic mayonnaise of the South — the aptly named Duke's mayonnaise, a product that enjoys the status of royalty below the Mason-Dixon Line...
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Just ducky (4/29/21)You're probably familiar with Van Gogh's famous sunflower paintings, arguably his signature works, immediately recognizable as typical of his style, or as his friend Paul Gauguin put it, "completely Vincent." He did several large canvases of the big yellow blooms, some say under the influence of too much absinthe, a number of them in Paris while staying with his brother and the others while in Arles in the south of France...
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Easter breads rise to the occasion (4/1/21)"One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns." That familiar refrain has to be the best song ever written about an Easter bread. In fact, it's the only one I know. Perhaps there are others, but I think it's reasonably safe to say that there is no song about the traditional Finnish Easter bread made from wheat and rye flour enriched with cream, butter, eggs, raisins and almonds and baked in a milking pail. They call it Pääsiäisleipä, a word which is hard enough to say, let alone sing...
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The Art of Darkness (3/4/21)Ever looked closely at an Oreo, the world's best-selling cookie? I admit that I usually devour them too rapidly to permit full examination of the iconic treat, which is depicted in Naomi Weissman's clever Periodic Table of the Desserts, which I have prominently posted in my kitchen. It holds the number 76 spot, under the Latin name "cuppedia optima" (best cookie), and, in keeping with chemists' conventions, is abbreviated Os...
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A dish celebrating Black History Month (2/4/21)No matter how good your high school or college American History teacher was, chances are you did not find the study of the Compromise of 1790 as compelling as Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical depiction of it in his hit show, "Hamilton." In Act 2 of the play, the compromise is immortalized by arguably the show's most exciting number, "The Room Where It Happens."...
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2020 in recipes (1/7/21)In reviewing the year 2020, one anonymous wag has likened it to looking both ways before crossing the street and then getting hit by an airplane. There's no question that last year, with all of its sadness, is not one we would wish to repeat. And yet, even in a bad year, there are some things we might be happy to have happen again. ...
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Celebrating Beethoven's birthday (12/10/20)The contemporary American composer Ned Rorem has called Beethoven's Ninth Symphony "the first piece of junk in the grand style." He is in a decided minority. To many, Beethoven's Ninth is arguably the greatest symphony ever written. It's the reason a CD holds 74 minutes of music and not just an hour's worth. The technology's inventors wanted to be able to get the entire symphony on one disc...
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Pumpkin spice is all the rage (11/12/20)"Too much of a good thing is wonderful." So said American entertainer and sex symbol, the late Mae West. Were she around today as the annual pumpkin spice craze gets into full swing, she might reconsider. Take, for example, the turns the craze, which started innocently enough as a flavored coffee drink, has taken. ...
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Keeping cookbooks that spark joy (10/15/20)This month is National Cookbook Month, an ideal time, my wife "suggested," for me to pare down my cookbook collection, numbering in the hundreds. Tired of seeing cookbooks not just in burgeoning bookcases, but all over the house, she reasoned that since we are staying home due to the pandemic I'd have plenty of time to tackle the job...
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Cleaning up the Sloppy Joe (9/17/20)It's back to school time. Only for lots of youngsters this year there's no going back. They're still at home trying to learn remotely. Consequently there's been plenty of debate about what students are missing when they aren't together in a classroom. ...
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Gourmet Popsicles are great on a hot summer day (8/20/20)In a recent issue of the New Yorker, Helen Rosner celebrates what most of us consider the travails of cooking during the hot summer months, even if you have air conditioning. This time of year she happily practices the art of the uncooked dinner, opting for cold soups, ceviche, refrigerator salads and occasionally in homage to Tennessee Williams, a glass of gin and a carton of Popsicles...
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Take classic Bisquick, give it a new kick (7/23/20)Editor's note: This column has been updated from its original post. It was 1930 and Carl Smith, an executive at a General Mills West Coast affiliate, was riding a Southern Pacific train from Portland, Oregon, to San Francisco when he had a craving for biscuits. Though the dining car was officially closed, Smith asked the train's chef, an African-American whose identity has been lost to history, if his hankering might be indulged anyway and placed an order. He was astounded that only a short time later a plate of piping hot, fresh biscuits arrived at his table...
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A fresh take on a classic: Cobb salad (6/25/20)In an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," comedian Larry David and his wife are at a restaurant with another couple. When the waiter comes over to the table to take orders, each diner indicates what he or she wants, and Larry orders a Cobb Salad -- without eggs, blue cheese, or bacon, all identifying ingredients of the dish...
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Where have all the flours gone? (5/28/20)New Yorker staff writer Bill Buford recounts in a recent issue of that magazine his experience as an apprentice at a bakery in Lyon, the gastronomic capital of France. At one point he asks his mentor for the secret to good bread. "Good bread comes from good flour," he replies. ...
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Safest travels: Exquisite recipes give a taste of Spain, at home (4/30/20)Understandably, tourist travel these days must be restricted. But in my quarantined solitude I have discovered I can still travel -- in my mind. I was supposed to take a Mediterranean cruise this year, but even though it was cancelled, I made the trip anyway -- with my favorite cookbooks to guide me...
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An appealing Easter carrot cake recipe (4/2/20)In just 10 days it will be Easter, the most important holiday on the Christian calendar, a celebration whose central message of hope is perhaps more sorely needed now than ever before. This year's Easter dinner is likely to be memorable, though not for the right reasons. We might not be able to serve the foods we're used to serving or even risk sitting around the dinner table in close proximity...
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Having a steak from a cast-iron skillet (3/5/20)"Don't throw the past away. You might need it some rainy day. Dreams can come true again, when everything old is new again." So go the lyrics to one of the late Peter Allen's songs, which he once performed on the stage of the Radio City Music Hall, joining the Rockettes' kickline in the process, the first man ever to do so...
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For the love of chocolate (2/6/20)Valentine's Day, just a little over a week away, is a holiday indelibly linked to chocolate ever since clever marketeers back in the 19th century began packaging it in heart-shaped boxes. Just as indelibly linked to chocolate was the late Maida Heatter, who died last year at the age of 102. ...
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A look back at Tom's 2019 favorite recipes (1/9/20)The end of the year is a time when we look forward to the year to come, but it's a time to look back as well. Thus as we head into the New Year we are regularly treated to compilations of the year's top movies, songs, news stories, books, and even Instagram posts. Not wanting to be left out, I offer my contribution to the custom, a collection of some of my favorite dishes from last year...
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A dickens of a holiday punch (12/12/19)"It has inspired Dickens, converted voters, passed legislation, kept nations warm in winter, defined Christmas and ultimately given birth to our modern cocktail." So said barman Ben Leggett, editor of the website Drinking Cup. He was referring to punch, one of the oldest of libations...
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Give up mashed potatoes? (11/14/19)With Thanksgiving around the corner, many cooks are looking for ways to vary the alleged monotony of the traditional holiday meal. For me in years past, this motive has led to not always successful experiments with pumpkin ravioli, cranberry soup, and coconut creamed greens. But unless you have unlimited oven space, adding a new dish to the menu often must come at the expense of getting rid of an old one...
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As the cookie crumbles (10/17/19)What's the most famous cookie in the world? You might think the Oreo. After all, it is the world's best-selling cookie. Available in more than 100 countries there have been nearly 500 billion sold since its inception. Or you might think the chocolate chip cookie. Unlike the Oreo, it's most often made at home and is the subject of cookie lore, having been allegedly invented by accident at the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts...
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Have a rice day (9/19/19)We Americans like to commemorate things -- people, places, events, and even foods. Thus, among the more than 1500 items singled out on the National Day Calendar are many which relate to things to eat. Some of these "holidays," like National Tater Tot Day, or National Grape Popsicle Day, or National Cheese Doodle Day, might seem trivial. But others recognize foods that surely deserve a day of their own. In fact, some might merit an entire month of celebration...
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This recipe is b-a-n-a-n-a-s (8/22/19)Every region of the country has some special or unique dish associated with it that purports to define the character of its culture. But perhaps no region of the country has more of these iconic dishes than the Deep South where some of them have become so associated with that part of the country that the word South now appears in their name. Southern Fried Chicken is a case in point...
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What's for breakfast? (7/25/19)You've probably heard the old adage: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You might have thought the phrase was coined by a committee of nutritionists or the Food and Drug Administration, but the truth is it actually originated in 1944 as part of a marketing campaign launched by General Foods to advertise breakfast cereal. Thus, the second-most important ingredient in the widespread popularity of breakfast cereal is advertising. (The most important is sugar.)...
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Mug cake is considered 'dangerous' (5/2/19)What's the most dangerous cake in the world? Some say wedding cake, but a better answer, I think, is mug cake. A mug cake is a single serving of cake made by quickly stirring up batter in a mug and nuking it in the microwave. It apparently came to widespread public attention in a YouTube video back in 2009. ...
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Well, blows me down! (4/4/19)"On the subject of spinach," screenwriter Delia Ephron, younger sister of Nora, advises, "divide into little piles. Rearrange again into new piles. After five or six maneuvers, sit back and say you are full." This directive, from Ephron's book "How to Eat Like a Child," reinforces the long-held stereotype that kids, and not a few adults, hate spinach...
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Not just a pressure cooker (3/7/19)I wish I could be as productive in my free time as Robert Wang. Laid off from the very software company he had co-founded, he didn't loaf, but, rather, turned his attention toward a problem he had not formerly had time to consider: how to feed his family healthy meals, as opposed to fast food and carryout, even when he had little time to cook. ...
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Chocolate truffle (2/7/19)Kitchens, replete as they are with hot surfaces and sharp edges, can be dangerous places, so it's best to do everything possible to avoid accidents in the cookhouse. Except when it comes to the food itself, for not a few great dishes started out as flukes...
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Best things I cooked in 2018 (1/10/19)This is the time when, though we look forward to the year to come, we naturally look back at the highlights of the year just passed. Thus we've already been treated to compilations of last year's top movies, songs, news stories, Youtube vidoes, presidential tweets and Instagram posts. I even saw online a list of the top lists. Herewith is my contribution to the custom, a compilation of some of the best things I cooked last year...
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Trifle season (12/13/18)Perhaps you remember the classic episode of the television sitcom "Friends" in which Rachel, a notoriously bad cook, concocts a holiday trifle. As Rachel describes to dinner guests Ross and Joey the contents of her version of the classic English layered dessert, the two become suspicious, for interspersed among the typical tiers of ladyfingers, jam, custard, whipped cream, and berries there is a layer of beef sauteed with peas and onions...
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It's in the syrup (11/15/18)What happens when you overstuff yourself with turkey on Thanksgiving day? You eat a few slices of pie. That riddle reveals why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Sure, every holiday has some signature food, but no other literally revolves around food like Thanksgiving...
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Having a ball with Cracker Jack (10/20/18)This week the 114th World Series will begin. The team I routinely root for isn't in it this year. (Actually, I usually root for two teams: the Cardinals and whoever is playing the Cubs.) Nonetheless, I'll keep an occasional eye on the action and follow the progress of the Series until it's over. ...
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A toast to the avocado (9/22/18)The Academy Award-winning actress, socialite and now lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow has come in for a lot of ribbing lately. Not long after the launch of her web site, Goop, which offers, among other things, a coffee enema device and wearable stickers that purportedly re-balance the body's energy frequency, The New York Times reported that parodying it had become a national pastime. ...
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Good for the body: A galaxy of possibilities with milk (8/25/18)The ancient Greeks believed that our galaxy was created when the goddess Hera spilled some of her milk as she was nursing the baby Hercules. Each drop became a star in what we have ever after appropriately called the Milky Way. The root of the word "galaxy," in fact, means milk...
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A walk-off cake (7/28/18)Rose Levy Beranbaum, in her book, "The Pie and Pastry Bible," a volume which I've read religiously, says, "There are two kinds of people: cake people and pie people." All my life I've believed I'm in the second category. I'll eat pie any time of day, even for breakfast like they did in Colonial days; when driving I've been known to slam on my brakes when I see a sign in a restaurant window or bakery advertising homemade pie; and I even served once as a judge at the National Pie Championships sponsored by the American Pie Council, of which I was a charter member.. ...
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Heavenly creations of habit (6/30/18)I have much for which to thank the nuns of the Catholic Church. After all, one of them taught me how to read. But I'm almost equally grateful to the various Roman Catholic female religious orders for their role in inventing and perfecting some of the most heavenly pastries on earth...
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Bowls becoming more fashionable for serving meals at restaurants and home (6/2/18)They say life is just a bowl of cherries. As the late Erma Bombeck used to point out, however, that may not always be the case. If it were, she'd ask, "What am I doing in the pits?" But even if life is not always a bowl of delight, the food we eat to sustain life increasingly is. Food served in bowls is one of today's major culinary trends...
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Hummus history: Middle East restaurants claim they have the best (5/5/18)As famed Israeli chef Yotam Ottolenghi tells it, Abu Shukri has always been considered one of the best hummus restaurants in Israel. One day another place, run by the son-in-law of the original owner, opened across the street sporting a sign that read, "We moved here. This is the real Abu Shukri."...
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Olive oil cake (4/7/18)Though it was not part of the recently concluded Olympics in South Korea, olive oil wrestling is the national sport of Turkey, where an annual tournament has been held since 1346, making it the oldest continuously running, sanctioned sporting competition in the world...
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Buttering your bread -- and cake (3/10/18)Jack Conaway was cutting peat for fuel in the Emlagh bog in County Meath, Ireland, back in 2016 when he made a stinking discovery. Buried twelve feet underground was a twenty-two pound lump of butter estimated to be about 2,000 years old. The surprising thing about this finding is that it is not all that surprising. Hundreds of specimens of so-called "bog butter" have been located across the Emerald Isle. I've even seen one...
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Frozen in time: Birdseye unveiled a revolutionary idea nearly 88 years ago (2/10/18)On March 6, 1930, the newspaper in Springfield, Massachusetts, ran an ad claiming "The Most Revolutionary Idea in the History of Food Will Be Revealed in Springfield Today." The ad probably was guilty of exaggeration -- but not by much. For that day was the day Clarence Birdseye formally introduced his brand of frozen foods to the world at Davidson's Market, and in the process, according to his biographer, Mark Kurlansky, literally changed our civilization by creating a whole new industry and rendering the term "fresh frozen" far less oxymoronic than it initially might appear.. ...
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Voila: A salute to Tom Harte's favorite recipes made last year (1/13/18)The end of the year is a time when we look forward to the year to come, and yet, as you may have noticed, it's a time to look back as well. Thus we've already been treated to compilations of the year's top movies, songs, news stories, even presidential tweets. Herewith is my contribution to the custom, a compilation of some of the favorite things I made last year in the hope that they might become some of your favorites this year...
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Christmas treat (12/16/17)Just about every country has a special dessert to mark the holidays, ranging from the famous English plum pudding (ironically containing no plums) to the less familiar Pan de Pascua, a cross between panettone and stollen popular in Chile...
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Apple twist: Cider may have been the choice of Pilgrims (11/19/17)Contrary to conventional wisdom, putting together a Thanksgiving Day menu is not particularly challenging. After all, the fundamentals of the holiday meal are hardly open to debate. Sure, you may have a choice in how you're going to prepare the turkey, but you're probably going to have turkey as your main course. ...
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Author unveils real story behind favorite cookies (10/22/17)Truly engrossing stories usually involve units of three. Consider "The Three Musketeers," "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" and the bestselling romance novel, "Three Nights of Sin." The story I want to share here also relies on the impact of the number three. I call it "A Tale of Three Cookies." Each tale is drawn from Stella Parks' beautiful new cookbook, and candidate for the year's most clever cookbook title, "BraveTart."...
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Make or break: Springform pan can be a difference-maker when baking (9/24/17)Now that it's fall and winter isn't far behind, it won't be long before people start wishing it were spring again. But not me. For me it's always spring, at least in my kitchen. That's because my favorite item of kitchenware is the springform pan. Technically, the pan I favor is not a springform pan but a plain pan with a removable bottom. I agree with baking authority Rose Levy Beranbaum that such a pan is preferable to an actual springform pan because springs inevitably wear out...
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Beyond scent (8/27/17)Some ingredients you can add to recipes with abandon. For example, in my experience, it seldom hurts to add a little more cream or butter, or a lot more chocolate chips, to whatever you're making. This is not always the case, and nowhere is it less so than when cooking with herbs, especially lavender. ...
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The origin of a frozen American delicacy (7/30/17)You may have never heard of Nephi Grigg, but if you've ever eaten a meal at a grade-school cafeteria, you've probably been served his signature culinary invention. Grigg and his brother Golden made it through the Great Depression growing potatoes and corn in their native Idaho. In 1951, they became convinced the wave of the future was frozen food...
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Ancient discovery (7/2/17)Where would you find the most authentic Chicken Kiev? Probably Russia. The definitive Peking Duck? Certainly Beijing. The perfect Swedish Meatballs? Obviously Sweden. Or maybe Ikea. And where would you go to find the ultimate Greek yogurt? Having just returned from Greece, I now realize that's not so easy a question to answer...
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Food of the gods (6/4/17)"Watching watercress grow is rather boring," volunteered the rather Dickensian-looking agent at the railway station in the medieval town of Alresford in Britain's picturesque Hampshire region, the cradle of cricket, when I asked for a ticket to ride the steam train that in its heyday transported tons of the local watercress crop all the way to Covent Garden...
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Too good to throw (5/7/17)According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the comedienne Mabel Normand threw the first custard pie in a movie in 1913. Her target was Fatty Arbuckle, himself a skilled pie-thrower, who eventually mastered the technique of throwing two pies at once -- in opposite directions...
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Matzo at Passover (4/9/17)Today is Palm Sunday, meaning Easter, the holiest day on the Christian calendar, will be celebrated next Sunday. But, as is typically the case, before Easter comes Passover, the most important religious festival in Judaism. It begins tomorrow night at sundown...
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Cream of the crop: Illinois graduate invented world’s first instant cream-whipping machine (3/12/17)A recent issue of the University of Illinois Alumni magazine, a publication to which as a graduate of the institution I am automatically subscribed for the rest of my life, ran a feature on Charles Getz, who received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Illinois...
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'Be my Valentine' (2/12/17)In the television special "Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown," aired every year since 1975, Snoopy presents Sally a classic Valentine candy heart with the entire verse of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 43 ("How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. ...") in very tiny print...
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Ritz crackers, invented in 1934, have become a staple snack food worldwide (1/15/17)This summer, the Ritz, the most famous hotel in the world, reopened its doors after a $450 million renovation. Situated on Paris' Place Vendome, where dukes and princes used to live, the accommodation is no less palatial than any royal residence, and those who are able to afford a room there (starting at more than $1,000 and running to as high as $25,000 a night) surely must feel like a king or a queen, which was the goal of the hotel's founder, Cesar Ritz...
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Candy canes' origins may go back to 17th-century Germany (12/18/16)According to Will Ferrell, playing the part of Buddy the Elf, unquestionably his greatest role, candy canes are among the four major food groups in the elfin diet. And why shouldn't they be? Candy canes are to Christmas what pumpkins are to Halloween, colored eggs are to Easter or latkes are to Hanukkah: foods without which the holiday wouldn't be the same...
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Good gravy (11/20/16)This Thursday, families across America will bring out of their cupboards a utensil that for most of them makes only an occasional appearance at the dinner table: a gravy boat. Such vessels go back to ancient times. These days, however, the gravy boat has fallen out of favor, as has, to some extent, gravy itself...
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Famous cheese: Holland's most well-known cheese has been around for more than eight centuries (10/23/16)I'm sure you are familiar with Gouda cheese, arguably Holland's most famous, accounting for more than 50 percent of the total production of cheese in that country and these days as ubiquitous, even in this country, as Kraft singles. In fact, Gouda accounts for nearly 60 percent of the cheese consumed the world over...
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'Crack in a jar' (9/25/16)One of my favorite cookbooks contains pages of original cookie recipes interspersed with photographs of vintage cookie jars from the Andy Warhol collection. Besides providing recipes, the volume serves as a reminder that someone like me, who considers a cookie in each hand a balanced diet, has to be careful about getting caught with those hands in the cookie jar...
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Ice cream cold war (8/28/16)"Everything's up to date in Kansas City," Will Parker sings in the groundbreaking Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, "Oklahoma." "They gone about as fer as they can go." Just back from a trip to California, however, I am reminded once again that out there, predictably, they go even "fer-thur." The Golden State is where new trends and fads in this country as often as not begin...
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'Easy as pie' (7/31/16)It can be a flat chunk of concrete, a portion of a tectonic plate, the NASDAQ symbol for Silicon Laboratories or the name of a city in West Virginia, California or Wisconsin. But when I hear the word, I think of pie. I'm talking, of course, about slabs...
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Living the sweet life (7/3/16)With the arrival of the Fourth of July tomorrow, iced tea season is in full swing throughout the country. However, iced tea doesn't mean quite the same thing in the Deep South as it does up north. The truth of this state of affairs was driven home to me recently when I stopped at Eva's, the eponymous restaurant founded almost half a century ago by the late Eva Hinson...
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'A noble nectar' (6/5/16)When they signed the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers toasted their accomplishment with it. George Washington drank of a glass of it every night with dinner. Betsy Ross imbibed it while sewing the American flag. The seizure of John Hancock's boatload of it caused riots in Boston, hastening the American Revolution. Truly, sipping a glass of Madeira wine is like time-traveling through American history...
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Remembering mom's home cooking on Mother's Day (5/8/16)If you had to choose between a meal cooked by a Michelin-starred chef and your mother, which would you pick? Even if today weren't Mother's Day, I wouldn't hesitate a moment to cancel any restaurant reservation in favor of one of my late mother's home-cooked meals. I'm hardly alone...
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Foie Gras: A french culinary luxury (4/10/16)The city of Strasbourg, the capital of the Alsace region of France, rivals Paris in the minds of many, and after a recent trip there I can see why. As one travel writer put it, Strasbourg is precisely what you would expect from Paris! Alas, the charms of the City of Light are sometimes obscured these days by the nearly 30 million tourists each year who inevitably take their toll on the city's infrastructure. Not so with Strasbourg...
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That's a wrap (3/13/16)From Page 5C to the region, even some Wal-Marts have mechanized tortillerias on the premises. It was there in Port Isabel at Manuel's Restaurant that I first tried one of the flour tortillas handmade by Graciela Molina, who has perfected her technique over the past decade making some 200 of them a day. ...
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A variety of 'kisses' for Valentine's Day (2/14/16)Today is Valentine's Day and I'm hoping to get showered with kisses. Not the kind you're probably thinking about, though I trust I'll get my share of those, but the equally amorous kind that's always welcome, always sweet and carries no danger of mononucleosis. I'm referring, of course, to chocolate kisses...
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A versatile tool and Dutch staple (1/17/16)It's a place best known for tulips, wooden shoes and windmills, but the Netherlands has given us much more. For example, it was the Dutch who invented Wi-Fi, gabled architecture and contemporary ice skates, not to mention the foundations of modern oil painting...
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Seasonal snack (12/20/15)Is there anything that signals the start of the holiday season more than Christmas cookies warm from the oven? Not to me there isn't. Neither the decorations hovering over Broadway and Main streets nor the sound of holiday music wafting through the mall better represents the spirit of the season, as far as I'm concerned. I agree with Rose Levy Beranbaum, who observes in her beautiful cookbook on the subject, "There is a reason the word 'cookie' follows 'Christmas' with such inevitability."...
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Authenticity: It's unlikely Pilgrims served our traditional Thanksgiving fare -- except cornbread (11/22/15)With Thanksgiving just about here, are you planning on an authentic holiday meal just like the one the Pilgrims enjoyed nearly 400 years ago? If so, you can forget about the turkey, the cranberries and the pumpkin pie. Now traditional Thanksgiving foods, they were not on the menu when the Indians and the colonists first sat down together...
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A cooking show devoid of sabotage and sport (10/25/15)With the new television season well underway, have you noticed how many of the best programs are from Great Britain? Certainly my very favorite is. Broadcast by PBS, the show features a variety of characters from various walks of life speaking with distinctive English accents. There is lots of drama, intrigue, conflict and suspense. And it's all shot on location at a British manor house...
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Udderly satisfying (9/27/15)Long before it began asking, "Got Milk?" the Dairy Association used to tout milk as "Mother Nature's most nearly perfect food." Not every nutritionist would agree, but the slogan always made sense to me, especially those days when, after I got home from school, my mother would fix me a tall glass of chocolate milk. ...
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Food to live for (8/30/15)Lately there has been a spate of bucket list books: "1,000 Places to See Before You Die," "1,000 Books to Read Before You Die," and, most recently, "1,000 Foods to Eat Before You Die." This newest entry, by former New York Times restaurant critic Mimi Sheraton, as you might imagine, lists lots of exotic foods, like rambutan, the so-called "hairy" fruit from Malaysia, and many elegant foods, like quenelles, as well as many gourmet items, like caviar...
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Time for icebox pie (8/2/15)Ice is an interesting subject for contemplation," wrote Henry David Thoreau in chapter 16 of "Walden." Looking out at his frozen pond in the dead of winter, as the famed transcendentalist was when he penned those words, I suppose it is. This time of year, however, when the temperatures soar, I find not ice but icebox cakes more worthy of consideration. ...
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Fete le souffle (7/5/15)Though our weekend celebration of the American Revolution is about over, we're not putting away the fireworks just yet at our house. That's because there's another July revolution we routinely celebrate, and its anniversary will occur next week, on Bastille Day...
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Celebrating Charlotte (6/7/15)Brits recently have had much to celebrate. First there was the 70th anniversary of V-E Day, then there was a watershed election, and, finally, and perhaps most important, a new royal baby, Princess Charlotte of Cambridge. Named after, among others, her grandfather Prince Charles (Charlotte being the feminine version of Charles) and presumably not after George V's beloved parrot, the infant, in her own right fourth in line to the British throne, is truly, in the eyes of her loyal subjects, something special. ...
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Reflecting on the mother of modern french cooking (5/10/15)"All that I am or ever hope to be," said Abraham Lincoln, "I owe to my angel mother." Today is the day we take time out to reflect on that sentiment. In addition to paying tribute to our own mothers, however, today might also be a good time to celebrate mothers who have made a difference in the lives of many besides ourselves: women like Marie Curie, the Mother of Modern Physics; Rosa Parks, the Mother of the Modern Civil Rights Movement; or even Anna Jarvis, the Mother of Mothers Day, to name just a few.. ...
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Orthodox Easter; unorthodox recipe (4/12/15)If you're like me, perhaps the only thing you found more surprising this year than how quickly Easter Sunday came around was how quickly it was over. Happily, however, you can celebrate Easter once again today if you wish. That's because today, for the nearly 300 million adherents of the Eastern Orthodox church, well over a million here in this country, whose religious observances are dictated by the Julian, not the Gregorian calendar, today is Easter Sunday...
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Churros, one of Spain's greatest gifts to gastronomy (3/15/15)"No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn," observed the late journalist Hal Borland. Thank goodness that's true, for this winter has been one of unusual climactic discontent. The weather has tested our patience and rendered typical methods of coping -- like getting extra sleep, trying to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer when we complained about the heat, and browsing seed catalogs -- only marginally effective...
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Love of chocolate (2/15/15)__A visit to Belgium -- 'choclate heaven' -- where the sweet stuff pervades__ Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and, if you're like me and most Americans, you celebrated with chocolate, some 60 million pounds of it collectively. But just because the holiday is over doesn't mean we have to quit celebrating. It turns out there are a number of chocolate-coated holidays during February. ...
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Stew is more than 'souped-up' soup (1/18/15)As I write this, it is 25 degrees outside. By the time you read this, if the folks at the National Weather Service are right, it will still be below freezing. Alas, it looks like it will be another winter during which we will be doing much shivering, not to mention shoveling. Sure enough, a source some trust more than the weather service, the Farmers' Almanac, predicts below-normal winter temperatures this year...
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Dreamy white Christmas (12/21/14)"The sun is shining, the grass is green, The orange and palm trees sway. There's never been such a day in Beverly Hills, L.A. But it's December the twenty-fourth -- And I'm longing to be up North." Nearly 75 years ago Irving Berlin wrote those words, now seldom sung, as the opening verse to what would become the most recorded song of all time: "White Christmas." It's easy to understand how Berlin, born in a town near Siberia, could feel nostalgic about a winter snowfall while staying in the warm resort town of La Quinta, California, where he wrote his blockbuster tune one December.. ...
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Brilliant beans (11/23/14)We really don't know much about early Thanksgiving dinners. There's even some question about whether turkey was actually on the menu when the Pilgrims sat down with Native Americans in 1621 to celebrate the harvest. But one iconic Thanksgiving dish was surely not served at that first Thanksgiving meal -- green-bean casserole, a concoction that for many is as emblematic of the holiday as cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie or even the turkey...
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Authentic Italian (10/26/14)What's the one item you're likely to find on nearly every menu in Italy? If you said spaghetti and meatballs, your answer is plausible, but it's wrong. Spaghetti and meatballs is actually an American dish, invented, it is true, by Italian immigrants to this country, but invented here nonetheless. Though both meatballs and spaghetti are classic Italian foods, putting them together was something that never occurred to people in the Old Country...
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Molten cakes flow in several flavors (9/28/14)The U.S. Geological Survey lists some 1,500 active volcanoes in the world, and I've been fortunate enough to have had close encounters with three of them: Mount Rainier by plane, Mount Stromboli by ship and Kilauea on foot. All were unforgettable experiences, but, honestly, my most memorable meet up with a volcano was years ago when I was served my first chocolate molten cake...
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Maximum flavor, minimal effort (8/31/14)
Clever cheating helps put good food on the table while spending less time in the kitchen "Life is too short to stuff a mushroom." So said British feminist icon Shirley Conran. She might have added that it may also be too short to stir risotto, can tomatoes or make your own puff pastry...
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Rosés that won't make you blush (8/3/14)Until lately I would never have been caught dead drinking rosé wine. Sure, I slurped my share of Lancer's and Mateus in college, but that was before I knew better and required what wine blogger Leah Odze Epstein calls wine with training wheels...
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Ice cream pie, a marriage made in Hawaii (7/6/14)On a recent trip to Hawaii, I fell in love with the sweet grace, the sensuous beauty, and the rich symbolism of the hula. Mind you, I'm not referring to the famous native dance, but to Hula Pie. Hula Pie is the signature dessert of Hawaii's TS Restaurant chain and originated at the company's first restaurant, Kimo's in Old Lahaina Town in Maui, which is where I was introduced to it...
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Beauty and benefits of Japanese breadcrumbs (6/8/14)Hansel and Gretel never heard of them and, in their case, they wouldn't have made much difference anyway. But modern cooks who want the crispiest coatings, the lightest stuffings, and the crunchiest toppings for their dishes would be just as lost as the famous duo of the Grimm fairy tale without their panko breadcrumbs...
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Lazy Salad: The wedge is making a comeback (5/11/14)WEDGE SALAD may be too pedestrian for gourmands, and health nuts may find it beside the point, but done right it can be a spectacularly satisfying dish. Originally a mechanical device designed to split objects, it can also be a shoe, a political issue or a kind of golf club, and, if you're of a certain age, the salad your mom most likely fixed when you were having company...
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Eggs, an Easter tradition (4/13/14)
That's why the best mass market chocolate-covered marshmallow egg available is the one made by Missouri's own Russell Stover company, headquartered in Kansas City. If you were asked to identify the biggest candy holiday in America you might very well select Valentine's Day, when heart-shaped boxes of chocolates crowd out nearly every other confection on store shelves. But you'd be wrong...
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Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with oysters (3/16/14)"He was a bold man that first ate an oyster," observed Jonathan Swift. He was undoubtedly right, but what Swift didn't say that might be just as true is that the first oyster eater might very well have been, like him, of Celtic origin. Certainly the first person who thought of pairing oysters with beer, most notably stout, must have been Irish. ...
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Puddin' It On (2/16/14)"Let us seriously reflect what a pudding is composed of," Samuel Johnson suggested while touring the Hebrides with Boswell. "It is composed of flour, that once waved in the golden grain, and drank the dews of the morning; of milk, pressed from the swelling udder by the gentle hand of the beauteous milk-maid ... It is made with an egg, that miracle of nature, which the theoretical Burnet has compared to Creation."...
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Super blender - like having a Ferrari in the kitchen (1/19/14)Did you hear about the chef who put his iPhone in the blender? He was trying to make Apple juice. That cook is either one of the dumbest culinary school graduates ever -- or, perhaps, like most professional chefs, he has a Vitamix. The Vitamix and similar high-powered blenders easily will pulverize an iPhone or, for that matter, just about anything put into them. ...
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Marzipan-tastic: A fascinating food with a rich Christmas history (12/22/13)"I have observed with pain," Leonardo da Vinci wrote in 1470 while in service to the Duke of Milan, "that my Signor Ludovico and his court gobble up all the sculptures I give them, right to the last morsel, and now I am determined to find other means that do not taste as good, so that my works may survive."...
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Authentic Thanksgiving dessert from Native Americans (11/24/13)"When you look at the big picture," pastry chef Bill Yosses and restaurant critic Bryan Miller, co-authors of "Desserts for Dummies," maintain, "Native Americans in the 16th and 17th centuries probably made a big mistake by teaching Europeans anything at all that helped them survive in the wilderness -- especially anything about cooking." Had the Indians simply ignored the colonists, these authors suggest, the Europeans might very well have gone back home...
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A modern take on a sweet from the past is all the rage (10/27/13)With 600 million pounds of candy with a street value of nearly $2 billion sold each year at Halloween, it's obvious that Snickers, M&M's and Hershey bars are the preferred treats of the ghosts and goblins who will be at your door in a few days. It hasn't always been this way. ...
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Spirit of Marie Callendar lives on at The Pie Hole (9/29/13)She looked much like any other grandmother, but she hardly was. By the time she died at the age of 87, the company that bore her name was making hundreds of millions of dollars annually and had become a culinary icon in the western United States. She was Marie Callender and her specialty was pie. This time of year, when, with the holidays approaching and pie season is in full swing, her story is worth remembering if like me you're a pie lover...
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Food beat on the street (9/1/13)Where's the best place to eat in New York? How about Paris or London? The answer, it turns out, is the same for all these places: Right on the street. That's what celebrity chef Susan Feniger maintains. "I believe that in any country, what you see and taste on the street is the best food you'll find ...," she says...
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Quiche made the right way (8/4/13)Back in 1982, Bruce Feirstein, a screenwriter and humorist whose credits include screenplays for the James Bond series and a brief stint as a writer for "Saturday Night Live," landed on The New York Times best-seller list and stayed there for more than a year with his tongue-in-cheek book, "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche."...
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The many flavors of gelato (7/7/13)Thanks to President Reagan, who in 1984 issued a proclamation (No. 5219 in the Federal Archives), the month of July is National Ice Cream Month. In his edict the President enjoined all Americans to celebrate the month with "appropriate ceremonies and activities."...
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Match made in heaven (6/9/13)Named for the Roman goddess of marriage, June has traditionally been the most popular month for weddings, a time when prospective brides and grooms might hear swirling in their heads the lyrics to a popular Frank Sinatra tune:"Love and marriage, love and marriage,...
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Knives: A chef's essential tools (5/12/13)As British food historian Bee Wilson observes in her recent book, "Technology in the kitchen has remained a matter of life and death." As she points out, the two basic processes of cooking--slicing and heating--are inherently dangerous. "Kitchens are places of violence," Wilson explains. ...
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A wine deserving of the Pope's title (4/14/13)The world has a new pope, as announced recently by white smoke emanating from the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel. [As they say at the Vatican--loosely translated--"white means pope; black means nope."] Since the announcement, speculation has run rampant regarding every attribute of the new pontiff, except one. ...
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A cut above traditional Easter ham (3/17/13)With Easter just around the corner, ham consumption in the United States will soon peak. Ham, after all, is the traditional food of Easter in this country and has been for centuries. America's pork industry, in fact, owes its existence to the 13 pigs brought to the New World in the 16th century by the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto...
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Patatas bravas are popular at Spanish tapas bars (2/17/13)You've probably heard the old joke about the guy who thinks he's been invited to go to a topless bar, only to discover to his dismay upon arrival that he is at a tapas bar. Never having been to a topless establishment, I cannot relate to his disappointment, but I can tell you this: If I were expecting a tapas bar and ended up at a topless one instead, I too would be extremely unhappy...
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Return of the Twinkies (1/20/13)The New Year is a time to look forward, but as the strains of Auld Lang Syne remind us, it is also a time to say farewell. In the culinary world, perhaps the saddest demise of 2012 was that of the Twinkie, which ceased production when its maker went out of business...
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Tamales and enchiladas are traditional Christmas Day meals for some (12/23/12)What's the oldest American Christmas food? You might be tempted to answer cookies, pumpkin pie or fruitcake. But these are foods whose origins go back only hundreds of years. By contrast, Hispanic families in the United States traditionally celebrate the holidays with a food that can be traced back literally thousands of years: the tamale...
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Eggless cookie dough recipe is intended to be eaten with a spoon, not baked (11/25/12)Now that Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is on the horizon, I've started my annual holiday cookie baking. I've been doing this for years and it gives me great satisfaction to see how my family and friends enjoy the results of my efforts. But the truth is I really do it for the dough...
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A feast fit for the dead (10/28/12)"To the inhabitant of New York, Paris, or London, death is a word that is never uttered because it burns the lips. The Mexican on the other hand, frequents it, mocks it, caresses it, sleeps with it, entertains it; it is one of his favorite playthings and his most enduring love."...
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Ramen - food for the college student (9/30/12)In Cape Girardeau and other college towns, autumn brings evidence that university students have returned to the city. It's harder to find a place to park, stores are more crowded, the neighborhoods near the campus aren't as quiet as they were over the summer, and local grocers are hard-pressed to keep shelves stocked with ramen noodles...
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Food often a tool for candidates (9/2/12)According to Nelson Rockefeller, four-time governor of New York and the 41st vice president of the United States, "No candidate for any office can hope to get elected in this country without being photographed eating a hot dog." His comment points to a truth long known to politicians: what we eat says a lot about us, or, as the 19th-century French epicure Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin put it, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."...
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Goo Goo Cluster marks 100th anniversary (8/5/12)"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together," said Vincent Van Gogh. In other words, combinations of things are almost always better than the things by themselves. Thus, combination locks (technically permutation locks, a mathematician would say) are more secure than mere locks with keys, a combination of drugs is often the best prescription for a patient, and the victor in a boxing match is not likely the one who throws the same punch over and over but one who strategically strings together a group of punches, called a boxing combination.. ...
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Czech Republic, modern lager beer home (7/8/12)"Beer is proof God loves us," Ben Franklin supposedly said. If so, God must have a special fondness for the people of the Czech Republic. At least that's my conclusion having just returned from Prague. I went there to attend the annual Czech Beer Festival and to make a pilgrimage to nearby Pilsen, where modern lager beer was invented...
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Pimiento cheese, a Southern delicacy (6/10/12)Charleston, S.C., knows a thing or two about revolutions. The siege of Charleston was a key battle of the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War started there when Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor was fired upon. These days the city is in the midst of yet another revolution -- a culinary one. ...
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Mother sauce a source of variety (5/13/12)This is a day when we should all ask ourselves, "Where would I be without my mother?" For many the answer is "Probably in the middle of traffic, without my jacket, and talking to some stranger." For professional chefs, however, the situation would be even more dire without their mothers -- their mother sauces, that is...
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Making a meal from a cactus (4/15/12)"He was a bold man who first ate an oyster," Jonathon Swift observed. But surely the man -- or woman -- who first ate a cactus was just as daring, or, perhaps, merely desperate. That was the case with Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and his men who in 1540 set out to find the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola whose streets were said to be paved with gold. ...
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Cannele could be next food fad (3/18/12)Ever since the HBO series "Sex and the City" set off the cupcake craze, each year has seen rampant speculation about what would be the next food fad. This year is no exception with culinary prognosticators nominating gourmet marshmallows, Parisian macaroons and even whoopee pies as "the next cupcake." Some of these are clearly outmoded (macaroons were identified in this space two years ago as the successor to the cupcake) and others obviously self-serving (the principal proselytizer for the whoopee pie is the state of Maine, where they were invented).. ...
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Buffalo: America's original health food (2/15/12)Why did the buffalo cross the road? Because it was the chicken's day off. It's not much of a joke, I know, but from a nutritional standpoint it's no joke at all. That's because when it comes to a healthy diet, buffalo can replace chicken any day. A standard serving of chicken, for example, contains 7.41 grams of fat, while the same amount of buffalo meat has only 2.42 grams, about a third as much. ...
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The origin and importance of oatmeal (1/18/12)It is not true, as the humor website Cracked satirically suggests, that oatmeal was invented by a research scientist at Britain's Royal Academy of Adhesives and Sealants during an experiment in search of new forms of industrial glue. But if your idea of oatmeal is the pasty variety made in a microwave from a packet, the story can seem plausible...
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A foreign remedy could help battle the cold this winter (12/21/11)"If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" Shelly asked. Perhaps not, but in the meantime we have the challenge of keeping warm until it does arrive. Some days that challenge is formidable, as when we experience, in the words of award-winning children's author Jane Barclay, "a freezing, sneezing, goose-bumpy, teeth-chattering, can't-get-out-of-bed, blankets-over-my-head kind of cold." And, unless we take refuge in Hawaii or some place with a similar climate, we are bound to face days like that this winter.. ...
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Wine-injected turkey adds a new flavor to your Thanksgiving meal (11/23/11)When it comes to Thanksgiving turkey a lot of people blithely ignore the clear lesson of Aesop's fable about the fox and the hedgehog and refuse to leave well enough alone. According to the National Turkey Federation more and more of us are looking for nontraditional ways to cook the holiday bird...
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Eat, drink and be scary (10/26/11)Halloween is just around the corner. It's a day when truly the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, for the holiday is dedicated to things frightening and scary. In fact, some people are even afraid of Halloween itself, a condition called Samhainophobia, after the Celtic festival of Samhain, a medieval precursor of Halloween...
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A Harte Appetite: Cuisinart inventor died unknown but left a huge mark in the cooking world (9/28/11)Carl G. Sontheimer died recently at the age of 83. Though he invented a device used in a NASA moon mission, not much press attention was given to his passing and you may not have ever heard of him. But if you have even a modest interest in cooking, you doubtless have heard of his most famous invention, because it revolutionized food preparation. Carl Sontheimer invented the Cuisinart...
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Outrageous fair food (8/31/11)Fair food has come a long way since the corn dog was introduced at the Texas State Fair in the 1940s. Nowadays there's hardly any food that some vendor hasn't thought of throwing into a deep fat fryer. For example, recently fried Kool-Aid and even fried beer have been added to the midway menu. ...
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Versatile veggie: Swiss chard is similar to spinach but has an earthier flavor (8/3/11)When you hear the word "Swiss" what do you think of? Watches and army knives, perhaps? For me, not surprisingly, it's food. There are at least three Swiss foods about which I am decidedly not neutral, and you can probably guess what two of them are: Swiss chocolate and Swiss cheese. But during the hot summer months, when it's in its prime, there's another Swiss food toward which I am not impartial: Swiss chard, a leafy green vegetable not unlike spinach but with an earthier flavor...
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Culture-defining cuisine: Refined, understated French gastronomy sets the standard worldwide (7/6/11)Recognizing that cultural heritage is not restricted to material things, UNESCO has been assembling The List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Among the practices added this year are the Peruvian scissors dance, Azerbaijani carpet weaving and French gastronomy. I don't know about dancing or weaving, but French gastronomy surely belongs on this list...
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Poland has perfected pierogi, a dumplinglike dish (6/8/11)A few years ago a pierogi, a Polish dumplinglike delicacy, said to bear the image of Jesus Christ was placed on eBay for auction. It sold for almost $2,000. Many of the nearly 50,000 people who followed the bidding doubtless believed that it constituted something miraculous. Frankly, I wouldn't know, but as someone who has just returned from a few weeks in Poland, I can tell you that eating pierogi can truly be a religious experience...
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In Belgium, which claims to have invented french fries, the dish is a national treasure (5/11/11)"Personally I always feel perfectly safe with British railways," Col. Hastings tells his friend Hercule Poirot in a scene from "The Alphabet Murders." "Mind you it's very different in France, isn't it?" "I wouldn't know," Agatha Christie's famed detective replies. "I am not French. I am Belgian."...
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A Titanic meal: Recreating the final meal on the ill-fated ship (4/13/11)Thursday marks the anniversary of one of the most fateful days in maritime history (with the possible exception of the wreck of the SS Minnow following what was to have been a three hour cruise, leaving Willy Gilligan and fellow castaways stranded on network television for 98 episodes). On April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean...
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Ireland's young chefs forge new cuisine from country's traditions (3/16/11)The acerbic comedian Dennis Leary, son of Irish immigrants, once remarked, "Irish food isn't cuisine ... it's penance." While they might think his comment a bit harsh, an awful lot of people would agree with the sentiment. At the least, they'd say the phrase "Irish cuisine" is an oxymoron...
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A Harte Appetite: Strawberry fields of flavor (2/16/11)I spent some time this month in Southern California, escaping Missouri's winter weather. Out there the sun was shining, the temperature was balmy and everything was green. And as if that weren't enough, you occasionally even bump into a movie star. But of all the advantages attendant to being in California, I think the biggest one may be that the strawberry season there begins in January and lasts practically year-round. ...
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Secret to losing weight is stop dieting, start cooking (1/19/11)Having exceeded the feed limit throughout the holidays, I'm mindful of this verse from an anonymous take on Clement Moore:Every last bit of food that I like must be banished, Till all the additional ounces have vanished. I won't have a cookie, not even a lick,...
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Good eats: Tom Harte's list of places to visit in 2011 (1/5/11)While your list of things to do in 2011 may consist of places to see, books to read or things to learn, my list, of course, is made up of places to eat that I'd like to visit or revisit in the coming year. It's an idiosyncratic inventory, to be sure, but I herewith offer it for your consideration. After all, you don't need me to suggest the famous places like Charlie Trotter's or The French Laundry. These are eateries that I think are well worth seeking out in the new year...
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Harte Appetite: Whether roasted over an open fire or not, chestnuts are a delicious holiday treat (12/22/10)"Chestnuts roasting on an open fire" goes the opening lyric to one of the most popular Christmas songs ever written. But the truth is, it's much easier to roast chestnuts in the microwave, though it's far less romantic, as the song's composer, Mel Torme, perhaps realized. Besides, it's not that easy to come up with words that rhyme with microwave...
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Elevating the sweet potato (11/24/10)"It grows in the ground, is considered a staple in the diet of the lower economic classes, comes wrapped in an ugly brown skin, doesn't stand out among the vast array of supermarket vegetables, and, to be candid, is just plain ugly." That's how Lyniece North Talmadge, in her book on the subject, describes the sweet potato. ...
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A devilish good use for Halloween candy (10/27/10)Recently Kimberly Daniels, writing on Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network website, warned that Halloween candy is demonic. "Most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches," she maintained. Now I know why I always pilfered candy from my children's Halloween bags, just like 90 percent of parents, according to surveys. The devil made me do it...
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Learn to make an iconic lobster dish at home (9/29/10)Ben Wenberg was a wealthy sea captain who sailed between Cuba and New York in the late 19th century, taking part in the fruit trade. A gastronome, when ashore he often dined at New York's Delmonico's Restaurant. One evening in 1876 he walked into the restaurant and announced he had learned a new way to cook lobster. Summoning a chafing dish to his table he proceeded to concoct an extravagant preparation of lobster chunks, cream, eggs, butter, sherry and a little cayenne pepper...
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A Harte Appetite: Culinary icon Chef Boyardee was a real person (9/1/10)Betty Crocker, Mrs. Butterworth and Chef Boyardee. There are so many culinary icons that have been invented purely for marketing purposes that you could be excused for assuming all three of these names and faces are fictitious. Betty Crocker clearly is, even though at one time she was named by Fortune magazine as the second most popular woman in America after Eleanor Roosevelt. But she was created out of whole cloth by a home economist at General Mills...
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A Harte Appetite: Feta cheese is classically Greek (8/11/10)I've recently returned from Athens, Greece, and just like every other time I've visited there I've come away with a renewed appreciation for the contributions of the ancient Greeks to human civilization. No, I'm not talking about democracy, the theater or even the Olympics. I'm talking about feta cheese...
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A Harte Appetite: Dinner is in the can (7/7/10)It's the bane of alley cats, de rigueur decoration for newlyweds' cars, and the primary device behind many children's first telephone. But, according to The Wiley Encyclopedia of Packaging Technology, it's also the greatest influence ever on the food habits of the civilized world. It's the tin can, and this year marks its 200th anniversary...
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A Harte Appetite: One letter makes world of difference (6/9/10)Recently the leader of the choir in a small church learned firsthand how much difference one letter in a word can make when he spotted in the church bulletin this notice: "The choir director invites any members of the congregation who enjoy sinning to join the choir."...
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The makings of a Margarita (5/5/10)Today, the fifth of May, marks the improbable victory of the Mexican army over larger French forces at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. Outside the state of Puebla, in the rest of Mexico, the day is all but ignored, but here in the United States it has become a huge celebration of Mexican culture. Today, millions of Americans, regardless of their ethnic heritage, will make a point to dine on Mexican food, though the truth is there really is no one traditional food for Cinco de Mayo...
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A Harte Appetite: Eating by the rules (4/14/10)"You are what you eat," the famous gastronome Anthelme Brillat-Savarin suggested in a treatise published in 1826. Over the years, nutritionists have confirmed just how right he was. The connection between diet and health is now irrefutable and can clearly be seen across cultures. ...
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A Harte Appetite: Corned beef an American addition to St. Patrick's Day celebrations (3/17/10)"There are only two kinds of people in the world," an Irish saying goes. "The Irish and those who wish they were." If you look around you today, you might think that's true, for on St. Patrick's Day Americans, regardless of their ancestry, will wear green, sing Irish songs, guzzle Irish beer and dine on corned beef and cabbage...
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A Harte Appetite: An American cook in Paris (2/17/10)Everything about Paris is enchanting: from Montmarte (Toulouse Loutrec's Paris), to the Right Bank (Napoleon's Paris), to Notre Dame and the city's amazing sewers (Victor Hugo's Paris). But for me, you may not be surprised to learn, the most enchanting Paris of all is Julia Child's Paris...
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A Harte Appetite: Toy oven can cook more than cookies and cakes (1/20/10)What do award-winning cookbook author Rick Bayless, Food Network Iron Chef Bobby Flay, nationally acclaimed pastry chef Gale Gand and Chloe, my 5-year-old granddaughter, have in common? They all began their culinary education by slaving over a hot light bulb...
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A Harte Appetite: Dresden and the history of stollen (12/23/09)I well remember the devastation I felt when, following the intimations of family and friends, I began to wonder if there really was a Santa Claus. After all, it wasn't that long ago. I was 45 at the time. My sense of demoralization must be akin to that experienced by the citizens of Dresden, Germany, in the wake of recent claims that their city may not be the birthplace of stollen, the archetypical holiday pastry of Saxony. ...
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First facts: How the meal was really served (11/25/09)Mark Twain referred to Thanksgiving Day as "a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for -- annually, not oftener -- if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians."...
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A Harte Appetite: Caramel apples with bourbon make for a grown-up confection (10/28/09)Do you have some gold jewelry that needs polishing? Try using beer. Is your hair frizzy and in need of conditioning? Try using olive oil. Have some plants that need fertilizing? Try using coffee grounds. These are just a few examples of the proven alternative uses of some common food items...
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Mushroom head (9/30/09)"Is there anything more provocative and mysterious than a mushroom?" Amy Farges asks in her "Mushroom Lover's Cookbook." Not if you're Mark Jones. Jones, a self-described science geek and the son of Edith and Martin Jones of Cape Girardeau, first became fascinated with fungi when he took a mycology class in college. Now cultivating mushrooms and helping others appreciate them has become his life's work...
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A Harte Appetite: Cupcakes no longer just for children (9/2/09)When Candace Nelson was looking for space to rent for her new Sprinkles Cupcakes shop in Beverly Hills back in 2005, an apprehensive landlord asked, "But what else will you be selling?" He needn't have worried. Today Nelson's store routinely sells about a thousand cupcakes a day, and she has since opened four other stores...
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A Harte Appetite: Some 'foreign' foods were created in America (7/8/09)The humorist Gerald Nachman contends, "When it comes to foreign food, the less authentic the better." Ironically, he probably doesn't realize just how many so-called "foreign" foods were invented right here in the United States. Take, for example, spaghetti and meatballs, that presumably quintessential Italian combination. Though both meatballs and spaghetti are classic Italian foods, putting them together was something that never occurred to people in the Old Country...
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A Harte Appetite: Praise the lard (6/10/09)Remember the movie "Sleeper"? It stars Woody Allen as a health food store owner who is cryogenically frozen in 1973 and revived 200 years later. In my favorite scene, a physician of the future -- puzzled by Allen's request for wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk -- asks a colleague for an explanation. "Oh, yes," he replies, chuckling. "Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties."...
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A Harte Appetite: Tips for the beginning of brunch season (5/13/09)With Mother's Day behind us, brunch season is in full swing. The next big brunching opportunity comes with Father's Day. Then with summer weather on the way, the appeal of a bountiful buffet on the weekend will become downright irresistible. The word brunch is a blend of breakfast and lunch, indicating a meal that combines elements of both...
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It's Wonder-ful: Wonder Bread gets new twist -- or squish -- as strudel dough (3/18/09)I remember well the first time I went to Paris, more than 30 years ago. What impressed me most was not the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre or even the petits fours at Stohrer's, the oldest patisserie in the city. No, it was the bread. Crusty, chewy and full of flavor, there was simply nothing like it available at home at the time...
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Hot tamales: Try making the casserole version of this southwest dish at home (2/18/09)Where would you go for the best sushi in the world? You might answer Tokyo, but in this era of celebrity chefs, many connoisseurs maintain it's New York -- at the eponymous restaurant run by transplanted Japanese culinary star Nobu Matsuhisa. Similarly, there is a growing consensus that the best Indian food these days is found not in New Delhi, but, thanks to immigration patterns, in London. ...
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A Harte Appetite: The legendary bread of Italy (12/24/08)Back in the 15th century in Milan, Italy, there lived a young nobleman who wished to marry the girl in the bakery next door run by her father, Tonio. He would secretly visit his sweetheart at the bakery at night while she prepared bread for the next day, and before long he began helping out. ...
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A Harte Appetite: The making of mincemeat (11/26/08)The universe, they say, is full of mysteries, and the culinary world is no exception. Why, for example, is Boston cream pie called a pie when a child of 3 can plainly see that it's a cake? How come we call peanuts nuts when they are actually legumes? And why can't you count a piece of carrot cake as a serving of vegetables?...
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A Harte Appetite: Going beyond chips and cheese (11/5/08)Michael David Monn will probably be celebrating Thursday. That's because Thursday is National Nachos Day and Monn is given to going overboard when it comes to arguably the most famous of Tex-Mex snacks. A few years ago Monn broke into a snack bar in his hometown of Marysville, Tenn., at 5 a.m. on a Sunday, stripped naked, covered himself in nacho cheese, and then scaled an 8-foot-high wall to return to his car where he was nabbed, no doubt with some difficulty, by police...
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A Harte Appetite: A saintly celebration with St. Honore-style cake (10/29/08)You know you're too old for Halloween when people compliment you on your John McCain mask and you're not wearing one. But with surveys indicating that two-thirds of adults will celebrate the holiday, the truth is you're never too old for Halloween...
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All tied up: Pretzels have been getting people in a twist for hundreds of years (10/1/08)Today is the first day of October, a month which has been officially designated as National Pretzel Month. You might not think we need an entire month dedicated to the pretzel, and, frankly, neither did I until I visited Lititz, Pa., the birthplace of the American pretzel. ...