I am eating my way through October with gusto and greed. It’s the year’s great swing season, after all. The days are still warm and long enough to allow the last of the tomatoes, eggplant, green beans, and corn to sweeten and mature. Short-season cool-weather crops of lettuces and radishes—tender and juicy—are being harvested. And […]

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 […]

I wish you were here, because our apartment smells wonderful. It’s the tomatoes I’m roasting; after five hours in a low oven, they are well on their way to a mellow, deep-flavored sweetness. In another hour, their texture will be meaty, lush, and a little chewy around the caramelized edges. Magical. Slow-roasting is more of […]

Harissa—a blend of hot chiles, garlic, olive oil, and spices—is an essential condiment and flavor base in Tunisia and elsewhere in North Africa. It is is eaten in or alongside couscous, stews, egg dishes, and briks, or “stuffed parcels” made from the crisp, thinner-than-thin pastry called warka. It’s no surprise that there are as many […]

Roast chicken with lemons and sage is in the oven. Just-dug potatoes are simmering on the stovetop. We have had a run of what my mother would call “Champagne days”—cool and crisp, with high, cloudless blue skies. No Pol Roger or Gruet Brut in our fridge, alas, but wedged between a tub of gochujang and […]

One of the great things about having a blog is that sooner or later you can work in a topic that has been gnawing at you for years but has never found a home. Southern ratatooey is an excellent example of what I mean. I have wanted to write about it ever since the masterful Laura Shapiro asked […]

You never know what you will find in a food stylist’s refrigerator. Take that of Rick Ellis, above. I had to ponder the contents for a minute before I figured it out. “You’re weighting a summer pudding!” I exclaimed. “Shh!” Rick replied. “It’s for Simon’s birthday.” Simon Blake, a film and mixed-media director, and his […]

A recent encounter with a restaurant salad drenched in a thin, too-sharp vinaigrette left me pining for richer dressings, those with swagger and substance. Green Goddess is one such treasure: Anchovies give it a deep resonance and tarragon, a bright, joyous peal of flavor. It’s most famously served over avocado, but it is also superb […]

I am extremely fond of beets. What first drew me to them were their handsome, saturated pigments—their drama quotient is off the charts—but then their earthy, equally saturated sweetness took hold, and I was a goner. Luckily, my husband, Sam, is of the same mind, and so we walk around with magenta-stained fingers all summer […]

“Never was a drink more optimistically christened,” my father would say, squinting at his glass. “I don’t know,” my mother would reply, settling into a wicker chair and fanning herself with a copy of Life or the evening paper. “It makes me feel cooler just to look at it.” Pick a summer, any summer, back in […]