It’s safe to say that unless I hit the internet blogging jackpot and finally get to cash in on marthaandtom.com, I’m never going to own the recently-published Modernist Cuisine. $600 for a cookbook is just a little beyond this blogger’s budget. It’s a shame, because everything I’ve seen about the book (eGullet has some of […]

There are few things more satisfying on a cold winter’s evening than sitting down to a meal brought about by your own craft and ingenuity. When a morning spent tracking rabbits across the snowed-in woodlands yields a young hare to serve as the centerpiece to a meal, garnished by shallots from the root cellar, carefully […]

Not three hours after Martha published the news yesterday that we had taken delivery of a winter-blues-banishing box of limes and Meyer lemons from the good people at FruitShare, we received an email from one of their marketing people thanking us for the post. Lest you think something untoward has taken place behind your innocent […]

There are plenty of fast foods that you can make better at home: this burger will beat anything that ever crawled out from under any golden arches, or, if Taco Bell is your thing, you can easily beat the experience at home by cooking up a bowl of oatmeal and throwing it in a tortilla. […]

Far be it from me to complain about having a job in this economy, but there are certain inconveniences for the food blogger engaged by day in the 9 to 5 grind. Like bread-baking: for me, it has to be a weekend activity, since even if you take the delayed-fermentation route – doing most of […]

Cookbooks have a life cycle: when a book is new, it’s exciting, it might get cover to cover, torn bits of paper sprouting up like so many shoots in the spring marking promising recipes. Then comes experimentation: making each of those recipes, seeing which work and which don’t. And finally – tragically – the third age […]

Besides being delicious, cooking a variety of cuisines is educational – you learn the quirks of the cuisine itself, and tricks and techniques from one cuisine can enhance the understanding of others. Take the fritter: practically every culture has its little fried ball of something, its croquette, pakora, hush puppy, etc. The methods for producing […]

Food can be used to affect travel, but food also has a big affect on traveling. Perhaps you’ve had the experience – the best glass of white wine you ever had at a picnic in Cinque Terre, that amazing ceviche on the beach in Mexico, the ta’amiya sandwich you spent three hours hunting down through […]

Everybody knows latkes are made out of potatoes. Heck, the Wikipedia page even redirects to “potato pancakes” – and if Wikipedia says it, it’s most certainly true. But consider this: Jews have been celebrating Hanukkah since the Maccabees successfully took back and rededicated the temple in the second century BCE, yet potatoes did not become […]

Eating local food when it is in season – elitist though it may be – is a good trend for food in America, one that I hope has more staying power than most foodie fads. To that end, I try my best to try to promote that style of eating, on this blog and in […]