Order the banh beo chen at the downtown Vietnamese restaurant Saigon Social and six will show up, arranged in a circle around a dish of seasoned fish sauce. This is as it should be. Like Mormon missionaries, banh beo chen never travel alone. Typically, each of these soft disks of steamed rice flour is the…
Good morning. I remember a Fourth of July a few years ago when I flew into New York in the evening, and I could see fireworks all over the surrounding counties on the approach to the airport: soundless explosions of twinkling lights, beautiful and maybe even moving. (Emotions are heightened on planes.) When I got…
Wes Avila made his name popping up around Los Angeles selling wildly expressive tacos, his improbable mission in the name: Guerrilla Tacos. There were carnitas sometimes, under a green ripple of salsa, but what really got people’s attention at this teeny street cart was more unexpected: crisp-edged pork belly, duck confit, seared vegetables, fresh sardines,…
I didn’t fully understand the appeal of chocolate mousse until a decade ago, when I had it at the home of my friends Cecile and Tom Renna. They hosted brunch on a July afternoon so oppressively humid, I couldn’t imagine eating much at all. But then Cecile brought out two big metal bowls — one…
2. Double-Tomato Pasta Salad I appreciate this pasta dish from Ali Slagle because it uses an ingredient that should make a comeback: the sun-dried tomato. (My colleagues in Food and Cooking have never entirely agreed with me on this.) Ali combines it with fresh tomatoes for an effect she describes as “full-spectrum tomato flavor.” This…
For her birthday, my friend Audrey wanted one thing: a lentil soup from Yerevan Market and Cafe, an Armenian spot in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Ethereal yet somehow earthy, it was unlike any lentil soup we’d ever had — orange and slightly tangy. We were left curious about its flavor. It turned…
When cooking fresh sweet corn for one, nothing beats the microwave: A single ear, in its husk, goes in at full power for three minutes. The husk traps steam, giving the kernels such an intense corn flavor and juiciness that butter becomes nearly superfluous (nearly). But for a crowd? You have more options. Take, for…
MALIHABAD, India — Theirs is a friendship of over half a century, the old man and his mango tree. His days, spent with a monk-like contentment knowing that each could be his last, are now largely reduced to the tree’s shade and the tree’s care. The tree, at least 120 years old, was there long…
At his home in Washington, D.C., Charlie McBride often bakes his mother’s recipe for peach cobbler. As he pours the topping over the fruit, he remembers how his mother, aunts and grandmother sat under a tree in Louisiana, cackling at one another’s stories as they peeled peaches to can for the winter. Mr. McBride loved…
ANNAPOLIS, Calif. — At Peay Vineyards, 53 acres of vines on a ridge near this tiny town just 3.5 miles from the Pacific Ocean, the fog generally burns off by around 9 a.m. and the air begins to warm up, at least for a little while. By midday, a breeze starts to blow, ruffling the…