Like Oscar Isaac, I occasionally use chopsticks to eat hot Cheetos, a technique that keeps their red dust from sticking to my fingers. It’s the neatest way to keep pace with a perfectly engineered snack, designed both to satisfy the desire for its prickly heat and violent crunch, its convincing tang and mellow sweetness, and to fuel an immediate…
It has been more than 25 years since Red Bull hit the market and introduced caffeinated energy drinks to the United States. While the company claimed its beverage would “give you wings,” it never said it was actually good for people. Yet as the energy drink market continues to grow rapidly, companies both new and…
If I were to concoct an eau de summer, there are a few must-hit notes: spray-on sunscreen, post-storm petrichor and the sweet smokiness of just-grilled vegetables. But since I have no more than a small fire escape to call outdoor space, my open-air grilling aspirations are limited by building codes and a vigilant super. I…
When the self-taught artist John O’Hara started experimenting with encaustic wax, heating bricks of the material with an electric pancake griddle and then applying it to wood, the glossy, textured surfaces of the resulting works reminded him of a vinyl record. So he followed the thought and used encaustic wax to paint just that. He…
There are few ingredients as synonymous with summer abundance as zucchini. As the season progresses, supermarkets, farm stands and home gardens burst with this summer squash, challenging even the most proficient home cooks to keep thinking of creative ways to use it all up. So to help keep things fresh, here are 11 of New…
One August, when I was 10 years old and vacationing with my family in a village in Provence, we decided to try lemon tarts from all the patisseries within a 20-minute drive. Every day, we’d pick up our sample to rigorously evaluate its merits and flaws. Was the pastry as crisp and crumbly as a…
Hello there! I’m Mia, the newsletter editor here at New York Times Cooking, filling in for Melissa Clark. As you might expect, my job puts me at the center of thousands (and thousands) of excellent recipes, and many of them wedge themselves deeply in my brain, tacky bits of toffee stuck to my subconscious. Right…
The taquito! It’s a tiny dream in a tortilla — simplicity incarnate, endlessly amenable. Hardly as ubiquitous as its sibling the taco, and slightly less elaborate than the sauced enchilada, it can come smothered in queso fresco and lettuce, if that’s how you’d prefer it, or unadorned in a paper wrap, or spread atop smoking…
Ronnie Cummins, a ponytailed activist who became one of the country’s leading advocates for organic food and a leading critic of genetically modified food, died on April 26 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he lived and worked part-time. He was 76. Rose Welch, his wife and partner in starting the Organic Consumers Association,…
Ciao, friends! I’m filling in for our usual host, Nikita. This week, I want to take on what might be the most maligned category in New York dining: the hotel restaurant. Skepticism is valid — by nature, a restaurant in a hotel is designed for tourists, not for residents. But over the past few years…