I wish I could say that 1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover’s Life List, the latest book by journalist, restaurant critic, and national treasure Mimi Sheraton, was the sort of thing I kept next to the bed, for dipping into last thing at night. But it makes me too hungry. I end up […]

For most people, their first oyster is a rite of passage. M.F.K. Fisher’s was at the Christmas banquet at the southern California boarding school where she was a student. “I swallowed once,” she wrote in The Gastronomical Me, “and felt light and attractive and daring, to know what I had done.” My first wasn’t raw, […]

There are about as many versions of chowder as there are cooks who make it, which is perfectly reasonable when you think about it. Like vegetable soup or gumbo, it’s more a product of circumstance and soulful interpretation than an actual recipe.  I myself was raised on a brothy Hatteras clam chowder, which tastes of the ocean, […]

And how. Happy Fourth, and see you in a few weeks. Meanwhile, poke around in the archives if so inclined. You will find summer squash, a Cool ‘o the Evening cocktail, the localest shrimp, what to do with an extravagance of sour cherries, and more. Personally, I am long overdue for a root-beer float and my first taste of […]

“There’s never too much June,” my mother would declare this time of year. No kidding. After a long, cold spring (on May 28, Climate Central tweeted there had been more daily record lows by that date than in all of 2012), kitchen and market gardeners are racing to catch up to the calendar. And, at last, […]

Saint Paddy’s Day is around the corner, and supermarket meat cases are brimming with vacuum-packed slabs of salty, rich corned beef. In a day or so, I expect Sam will be bringing one home, like he always does. That came out wrong. I like corned beef, I really do. Sam goes the extra mile to […]

The year, 2006. The city, Jerusalem.  I was there to help to help a friend celebrate an important birthday; there were six of us in all, and after days filled with sightseeing, we would order a large, satisfying spread of mezes (from beets puréed with za’atar and yogurt to spiced kofta studded with pine nuts), grilled meats, […]

My former colleague Nichol Nelson departed Gourmet some years ago, skipping town for a new life in Los Angeles. These days, you’ll find her going like gangbusters at TakePart.com, a remarkably energizing website devoted to helping you find a way to make this world a better place. I’d forgotten how Nichol can sweet-talk anybody into […]

Most innovative concepts are really very simple, and this one is no exception: Exploring the intrinsic beauty found in fresh fruits and vegetables encourages children to make smart food choices that also happen to be delicious. That’s what the community of professional artists known as Studio in a School thinks, at any rate. For 35 years, the […]

The death of the great documentary photographer Eve Arnold on January 4 was not exactly unexpected—she was 99, after all—but it caught many people up short, including me. Eve’s outsize stamina and spirit as well as her matchless ability to “record the essence of a subject in the 125th of a second,” as she put […]