Category: Food & Dining

Forget Pumpkin, Make Your Pies With Kabocha—and Chocolate

Kabocha, also known as Japanese pumpkin, is a versatile and delicious winter squash. The flavor is starchy and sweet, with a firm body that can handle being cooked many ways, from tempura-fried to roasted to steamed to sweet purees. The seeds are plump. The hard skin is edible. The squash experience is complete. Once upon…


Smoking-Hot Salmon

As we head into the holiday season, it’s handy to have a few healthy appetizers and snacks up our sleeves for guilt-free meals and nibbling before and between festivities. Hot-smoked salmon salad should be on your list. It’s a healthy, elegant, and seriously tasty salad—served chilled, despite the name—that is delightfully versatile and can be…


Autumn Tuscan Panzanella (Panzanella Autunnale)

Panzanella, the summer Tuscan bread salad, is a blank canvas that exalts the freshest seasonal flavors: juicy, ripe tomatoes, crisp cucumbers, spicy red onion, and fragrant basil leaves. It’s dressed with vinegar and extra virgin olive oil, then stashed in the fridge so that all the flavors can mingle into a refreshing salad. Why not…


Crostoni With Tuscan Kale and Beans

If there’s a favorite way to taste the olio nuovo in Tuscany, it has to be these Tuscan kale (cavolo nero) and cannellini bean crostoni, a real seasonal treat. When you know you’ll be bringing home the freshly pressed olive oil, prepare all the trimmings in advance. Have some good crusty country bread ready, soak…


Unexpected Potato and Cabbage Soup

Two tag-teaming, game-changing ingredients transform this unassuming potato and cabbage soup into a vibrant concoction. Looking at the ingredients list, you’ll see that this is an uncomplicated recipe—one that tells a story of saving leftover vegetables that have been sitting in the fridge or in the pantry for too long. Half a head of cabbage,…


Olio Nuovo: How to Savor the Season’s Freshest, Most Prized Olive Oil

“Olio nuovo e vino vecchio.” New oil and old wine. This saying pretty much sums up the Italian philosophy on these two culinary elixirs. If wine, properly stored, as a general rule is better the older it gets, with olive oil, the opposite is true. As time goes by, even in a matter of months,…


Easier Than Pumpkin Pie: Better Pumpkin Desserts for Your Thanksgiving Table

Thanksgiving is nearly upon us. It’s a time to be thankful for our friends and family, our good fortune, and for some, the end of pumpkin spice season. The pumpkin, first cultivated by humans in the Americas as many as 9,000 years ago, was one of the first foods taken back to Europe. Cookbooks in…


This Garlic Bread Deserves a Seat at the Thanksgiving Table

Some type of bread, roll, or biscuit is absolutely essential to any Thanksgiving spread. After all, you need something to push the delicious sides together and to sop up every drop of gravy left on your plate. Of course, you might not want to bake from-scratch dinner rolls. We hear you. That’s where Thanksgiving garlic…


Roasted Cabbage Wedges Make an Unexpectedly Beautiful Side Dish

These roasted cabbage wedges with honey and balsamic vinegar make an attractive side dish that’s also very easy to prepare. You can use red or green cabbage or make a double batch with one of each for a pretty presentation. Balsamic Roasted Cabbage Active Time: 15 minutes Total Time: 30 minutes Serves 6 1/2 teaspoon…


Episode 10: Hungary – Tokaj

The approaching wine harvest is the most beautiful time for Count Arno von Wimpffen and his wife Countess Katinka Kékessy-Wimpffen. For weeks the local Roma families harvest the grapes on the Kékessy vineyard in Tokaj, the estate has been in the Hungarian noble family for generations. They have invited friends and family to a festive…