If it’s April, I’m eating broccoli rage. Drat—Wordpress autocorrect did it again—I mean broccoli rabe. Despite its name (the last bit is pronounced rahb), it’s more closely related to turnips (Brassica rapa) than to regular broccoli (Brassica oleracea), and although it’s commonly described as a bitter green, I happen to think it has more of […]

The shallot is a workhorse of the restaurant kitchen. It’s reliable and available year-round, and its flavor—delicate, nuanced, and intense all at the same time—gives finesse to dishes that range from classic French sauces (beurre blanc, bordelaise, mignonette) to the seasoning pastes and hành phi, the crisp caramelized shallots that add depth and richness to many […]

You can never go overboard when buying sour cherries—what my grandmothers would have called pie cherries. Their season is ephemeral, and when they’re gone, they’re gone. So this July, I’ve been buying quarts and quarts. (Quick market tip: Cherries are always sold ripe; green, pliable stems signify freshness.) We’ve enjoyed some of my haul in […]

The most efficient pantry I’ve ever had was in the smallest apartment I’ve ever lived in—a studio on the top floor of a brownstone on Berkeley Place, in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The kitchen, which was teensy but shipshape, boasted an old-fashioned porcelain double sink (luxurious suds up to my elbows was how a dinner party […]

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 […]

About six years ago, I’d heard that a couple of farmers, two brothers, from the Catskills region had started making sorghum syrup, a tangy, deep-flavored sweetener better known south of the Mason-Dixon Line. I filed the information away, then forgot about it; I always seem to have a jar of the stuff, lugged back from […]

As much as I love the idea of New Orleans pralines (pronounced prah-leens), the creamy, fudgelike patties are far too sweet for me. I’ll take praline powder any day. The pulverized mixture of caramel and nuts is nothing new, but there’s a reason it should have a place in your “quick fix” file. It sends […]

Better than a box of chocolates. That’s what I thought, at any rate, when I found the dried egg fettuccine in the kitchen cupboard. DeCecco smartly packages theirs in a box, which protects the nests of delicate golden noodles from getting crushed in the pantry supplies. Tucked away in the back of the cabinet, this […]

Stewed tomatoes are delicious hot, cold, or at room temperature. This makes them convenient to have on hand during a hurricane—or whenever you’ve been too greedy at a farm stand and consequently find yourself on the home front with lots (and lots) of tomatoes turning soft-ripe at precisely the same moment. Botanically speaking, tomatoes are […]

  It’s easy enough to get into an olive oil rut. We all find brands we’re comfortable with—an inexpensive one for cooking, a fancier option for vinaigrettes or drizzling—and then stick with them for years. Decades, even. But given the extraordinary array of olive oils available in fancy-food shops and many supermarkets today, it’s a […]