Mamoru Tsuchiya is worried about the future of Japanese whisky. Sales are booming, but there’s a problem: A large amount of the liquor isn’t actually made in Japan, said Mr. Tsuchiya, one of that country’s leading whiskey experts. Some of it isn’t whiskey at all. “There are a lot of situations where you call it…
Details
I don’t have a Pink Book, though I wish I did, both for the repository that it would be and the sheer sight of a pink binder on my kitchen shelf. But like all home cooks I do have keeper recipes, the ones I always come back to. They tend to fall into two categories:…
Details
TOKYO — As the world tries to get a handle on the coronavirus and emerge from paralyzing lockdowns, public health officials have repeated a mantra: “test, test, test.” But Japan went its own way, limiting tests to only the most severe cases as other countries raced to screen as many people as possible. Medical experts…
Details
I generally prefer my salmon raw or cured rather than cooked. But grilled salmon, still dark pink at the center and a little charred at the edges, is a soft, silky exception. Grilling salmon to this degree of perfection isn’t easy, though. First of all, salmon has a tendency to stick. If you don’t have…
Details
More than 100 scientists and clinicians have questioned the authenticity of a massive hospital database that was the basis for an influential study published last week that concluded the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat people with Covid-19 did not help and may have increased the risk of abnormal heart rhythms and death. Use…
Details
Magdalena Owczarska learned two lessons on her wedding day. One was that wedding vendors are underappreciated. The other was that when life seems to be conspiring against you, a person you never expected to fall for can restore your sense of equanimity. Ms. Owczarska married Brett Day on May 5 on the grounds of the…
Details
In the middle of March, as Americans retreated to their homes to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, Rachael Quinn Egan discovered how long her family could live without a functioning washing machine. When the family’s 6-year-old machine broke down, Ms. Egan, a writer in Montclair, N.J., did what any reasonable person would do in…
Details
Patrick Kingsley, an international correspondent, and Laetitia Vancon, a photojournalist, are driving more than 3,700 miles to explore the reopening of the European continent after coronavirus lockdowns. Read their first dispatch here. BERLIN — Clad in masks, the waiters were nervous. How would the diners see their smiles? The sommelier wondered: How would he smell…
Details
In early March, when Ethan Rasiel read that Italy was going into a nationwide lockdown because of the coronavirus, he had one overriding response: envy. When, in-mid March, Mr. Rasiel, the owner of a public relations firm in Maplewood, N.J., learned that the Bay Area had issued a similar directive, California started looking very good…
Details
It’s the smell of line-dried laundry. Some atmospheric chemists like that scent, too. In a paper published this year in Environmental Chemistry, researchers examined line-dried towels at the molecular level, to try to pinpoint the source of their specific fragrance. Silvia Pugliese led the research while she was a master’s student at the University of…
Details