Good morning. Gabrielle Hamilton is leaving us, she writes in her farewell column for The New York Times Magazine this week, closing her laptop on a column she’s written since 2016 and returning to the restaurant she was forced to shutter by the pandemic. That’s a boon to diners in New York but a sad…
Everyone here remembers the story of stone soup. It starts with just a pot of water, and it ends with a flavorful, mighty caldron of soup. There is always a stranger — the one who has nothing but a stone — and some manner of village, with villagers who at first refuse the stranger but…
Even those of us who enjoy cooking go through periods where we feel uninspired by our usual rotation of recipes. But nothing snaps you out of a cooking funk quite like the thrill of a brand-new cookbook. Hundreds of cooking guides hit bookshelves this year, each of them a testament to the exciting-if-you-let-it-be art of…
When she moved back to Lagos in 2010 after living and working abroad, Affiong Osuchukwu noticed that a lot of the Nigerian food she cherished had become meat-centric. Although the essence of the dishes hadn’t changed, they seemed, to her, to be meatier. “I never recalled a pot of soup as having as much meat…
Headliner Casa Dani New York first met the Spanish chef Dani Garcia at Manzanilla on Park Avenue South. That was eight years ago. Since then, Dani Garcia, his restaurant in Marbella, Spain, picked up a third Michelin star (it’s now closed), and the chef formed his own company, Grupo Dani Garcia. Now, he has returned…
“Eat every meal as if it were your last,” Nora Ephron once said, “because when the last one comes you probably won’t be hungry.” I’ve always appreciated the gallows humor of that remark, but its advice struck me as unwise. Every meal? I love you, Nora, but I’ve got school lunches to make in the…
Restaurants began the year in darkness. Dining rooms in New York had been closed, again, by order of the governor. Is it any wonder that some of my strongest memories of the year in eating are takeout and delivery dishes? Or that, once restaurants were allowed to serve indoors again in February, the things that…
When Viridiana Padilla Johnson was a little girl in the Mexican state of Sonora, Christmastime celebrations radiated out from her grandmother’s kitchen. That’s where she’d watch her prepare buñuelos, learning how to make the disks herself along the way. An accompanying piloncillo syrup, made with unrefined sugar, perfumed the space with the warm smells of…
Christmas is coming for those who celebrate — and the holiday season is already here. For many of us, there’s a drumming urge to welcome it all back emphatically. Stringing fence lights and staging trees earlier and earlier, we hope to be swept away into something larger than ourselves. One of the best ways to…
Even if you’ve already filled your gift tins with cookies from your oven, you might tack in a savory direction with homemade chile crisp for friends who cook, or for yourself. The Mala Market, a fine source for Chinese ingredients based in Nashville, Tenn., has assembled a kit including harder-to-find components like da hong pao…