Remember the last time you bit into a chocolate-covered strawberry? If the shell snapped audibly, pooling on your tongue as it melted, then chances are that chocolate was tempered. Tempering, essentially melting and cooling chocolate, is why that thin shell of chocolate yielding to a juicy berry cracks with such a crisp, satisfying sharpness. No…
An academic journal publisher this week retracted two studies that were cited by a federal judge in Texas last year when he ruled that the abortion pill mifepristone should be taken off the market. Most of the authors of the studies are doctors and researchers affiliated with anti-abortion groups, and their reports suggested that medication…
“Hideous,” said Willy Chavarria, talking about the fashion business, celebrity entitlement, late-stage capitalism, his current state of mind. It was a Thursday morning at a workroom in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, and the designer was putting last-minute touches on his fall 2024 collection of the men’s wear that, in recent years, has been taken…
No sooner, it seems, had Zac Posen whipped up a series of ball gowns for a TV miniseries than he was named to top creative positions at brands better known for cargo pants and pajama sets. On Monday Mr. Posen, 43, whose namesake brand ceased operations in 2019, was announced as the new creative director…
The Stanley Tumbler, this year’s smash hit, is, at first glance, a win for the planet. It’s durable. It’s reusable. Unlike the throwaway plastic bottles it’s meant to replace, it doesn’t generate mountains of plastic trash. But the craze has sparked some less-than-sustainable behavior. People boast about owning dozens of them. When Target released special…
Winsome and delicate with an intense perfume, pistachio is having a moment, adding its pale green charm to cream puffs and croissants, lattes and cocktails. But how, I wondered, would it fare in a cheesecake, that timeless queen of rich and plush desserts? To find out, I made pistachio cheesecakes the subject of the latest…
While Rome’s charms may be, as they say, eternal, it’s never been a city particularly prized for its hotels. Until recently, upmarket lodging in the Italian capital usually meant an ostentatiously decorated pile meant to evoke the city’s 16th- and 17th-century palazzi, stuffed with gilded furniture and vague nostalgia. Over the past year or so,…
At the Los Angeles premiere of the filmmaker Harmony Korine’s “Aggro Dr1ft,” which was held on Wednesday night at Hollywood’s Crazy Girls strip club, scantily clad dancers shimmied on three small stages. Mr. Korine, a 51-year-old experimental artist known for directing 2012’s “Spring Breakers,” has been seeking to understand and capitalize on youth culture since…
At the Malaysian pastry shop Kuih Cafe in downtown Manhattan, the baker Veronica Gan, who’s in her mid-50s, sells ang ku kueh, a piece of pliant, toothsome ruby red mochi molded in the shape of a tortoiseshell. Mochi itself has little flavor — its pleasures are textural — but bite into the confection and you…
Linda Hennis was checking her Medicare statement in January when she noticed something strange: It said a company she had never heard of had been paid about $12,000 for sending her 2,000 urinary catheters. But she had never needed, or received, any catheters. Ms. Hennis, a retired nurse who lives in a suburb of Chicago,…