Tag: Food & Dining

Grill Your Pizza

Grilled pizza doesn’t immediately sound like the highest use of a grill or a pizza. You’d think the bottom of the crust would burn into a blackened crisp while blocking the coals from melting the cheese on top. Luckily, nobody told Johanne Killeen and George Germon. The two art students from Providence, Rhode Island, met…


How to Save a Disappointing Bottle of Wine

What do you do when you buy a bottle of wine that, for one reason or another, is not to your liking? If the wine is sound and not spoiled in any way, but you just don’t like the style, you could always cook with it. But that’s impractical and costly. Instead, what if you…


Japanese Pickled Cabbage and Kombu Salad

Shiomomi, the salt-massaged method, is the perfect place to start making Japanese-style pickles, or tsukemono. This recipe is adapted with permission from Elizabeth Andoh’s “Impatient Pickles.” Serves 2 to 3 as a side 1 small, dense portion of cabbage (about 6 to 8 ounces), washed, dried, and sliced thinly, as if you are preparing a…


More Moreish Food, Please

Years ago, we moved from our home in Switzerland to England. Among the mixed emotions, one standout was a relief to live again in an English-language culture. While I can write at length about our bumbling and surprisingly foreign experience settling into UK life, I will stay on the topic of language. After all, it…


Pickled Things: An Introduction to Japanese Tsukemono

Think of pickles—what do you think of? Invariably, a sour crunch? Vats of bright green dill, maybe? The Japanese notion of a pickle often comes as a surprise. What the Japanese call tsukemono, or “pickled things,” may be tart and crunchy, yes, or they may be soft, deeply sweet, and imbued with umami. They may…


7 Unexpected (Yet Totally Delicious) Ways to Make Potato Salad Without Mayo

It’s hard to beat a classic potato salad made with creamy mayonnaise. But good news for the mayo-averse: The winning combination of potatoes and mayo isn’t where this backyard barbecue favorite ends. There are a number of condiments that work equally well as a potato salad dressing—so whether you’re in need of a mayo substitute…


Allan Benton: A Tennessee Country Ham Legend

In a small roadside smokehouse in Madisonville, Tennessee, Allan Benton crafts what top chefs across the U.S. consider the gold standard of country ham and bacon. The potent, provocative smell of hickory smoke draws in any visitor—and anyone who tries the finished product. Since Benton started the business 47 years ago, Benton’s Smoky Mountain Country…


Festive Fajitas for a Party

Memorial Day signifies the beginning of summer as well as honoring our soldiers who lost their lives in battle. It’s a time when friends and family often gather together. This year, why not serve these incredibly tasty fajitas? Memorial Day weather can be tricky at best. Just to be on the safe side this year,…


What Is Barbecue? A Brief Introduction

Whether you spell it barbecue, barbeque, BBQ, or Bar-B-Q, there’s much to sort out when trying to distill the origins of the term and a universally accepted meaning for it, let alone a recipe. But leaving aside the Australians’ term for the grill (a couple of shrimp on the barbie?), and the definition as a…


A Chef’s Love Letter to Crete

Author and poet Mary Ann Evens, under the pen name George Eliot, once wrote, “We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.” For chef and cookbook author Marianna Leivaditaki, the love she developed for the food of her culture as a child set the stage for…