Tag: Food & Dining

Beat-the-Heat Potato Salad

This is my “I can’t deal” potato salad. (It’s also my favorite potato salad.) In the heat of the summer, when it’s too hot to move, it’s nice to have a few easy recipes to rely on when you simply can’t cope with cooking. These recipes hit the spot without making you sweat unnecessarily over…


Dealing With Wine Snobs

Ever encounter a wine snob? I have—far too often, alas. And dealing with wine snobs is an art form calling for subtlety. Rule No. 1: laughing out loud is verboten. Still, you’d simply not believe some of the things I’ve heard over more than 40 years of drinking wine. Bad times often happen when buffoons…


Honey Orange Chicken Foil Packets Are a Flavorful, Mess-Free Win

These flavorful foil packets are one of my family’s favorite quick and easy meals. Each one is filled with juicy chicken and fresh, colorful, seasonal vegetables, all tossed in a delicious citrusy honey sauce and grilled to perfection. Plus, you can eat them right out of the packet, which makes cleanup a breeze. If you…


For the Best Berry Cobbler, Bake It Twice

The secret to our cobbler is that we bake the berry filling before topping the cobbler with the biscuit dough. Then we bake it again to get our fluffy, flaky biscuits. This works so well because if the berry filling is hot when the biscuit dough is put on top, it helps cook the biscuits…


Summer’s Bounty Means It’s Time for Zucchini Fritters!

Serve these crispy zucchini fritters with creamy dill-yogurt sauce during the summer, when zucchini are abundant at the farmers market (or in your backyard garden). The key to the best fritters is moisture management. Zucchini is primarily made up of water, so this recipe starts with a two-step process of salting and squeezing the vegetable…


A Street Food Favorite in Salad Form

Traditional elotes, grilled Mexican street corn, are coated with a thin layer of garlic mayonnaise and rolled in cotija cheese, a salty, crumbly Mexican cheese. There are many versions of this sweet and salty classic. Some add a few tablespoons of Mexican crema to the mayonnaise mixture, while others add chopped cilantro or scallions as…


Steak Fajitas With a Secret-Ingredient Marinade

This steak fajita recipe uses bottled Italian salad dressing as part of the steak marinade. For a healthy choice, pick a dressing with a short and simple ingredient list including canola or olive oil. Tasty Tips Before cooking, cut the steak with the grain into several portions to make the long piece more manageable on…


Ice-Cold Noodles for Hot Summer Days

There are only so many foods you can throw down a waterslide—well, only so many foods that would survive the trip. Pizza? Nope. Rotisserie chicken? Yuck. But somen, slippery and thread-thin, seems made for it. In fact, Japanese summers wouldn’t be the same without the delicate noodles barreling down a bamboo pipe of ice-cold water,…


Cold Somen With Homemade Tsuyu (Noodle Dipping Broth)

Serves 4 8 bundles dried somen (2 bundles per person, depending on appetite) Ice cubes Tsuyu, for serving (store-bought or homemade, recipe follows) Toppings: grated ginger, chopped scallions (or Japanese negi), sliced myoga (Japanese ginger), julienned cucumbers, citrus supremes, julienned shiso leaves, shredded egg omelette, sliced ham or fishcakes, etc. Bring a large pot of…


Venturing Into the World of Fermentation

In the early days of human civilization, before there were canning jars, refrigeration, and freezer bags, fermentation was the most common way to preserve food. To this day, many of our favorite delicacies, including booze and chocolate, depend on the process. But a lot of home cooks and food savers, myself included, feel intimidated by…