My daughter, Grace, will turn 13 this year. She doesn’t remember the taste of her jiddo’s mansaf. His cooking and storytelling were central to his identity, and I want her to know who he was. I begin to wonder if there wasn’t some restaurant version that she and my husband, Scott, could share with me…
We were on our way to the Sahel Center, an outpost of AfricaRice, the Pan-African research organization that began operations in 1971 to help meet the rising consumption of rice in West Africa, with an emphasis on increasing self-sufficiency. It now has 28 member countries across the continent, including Madagascar, who participate in research exchanges…
IT TAKES NERVE to scorch rice, to get a proper crust at the bottom of the pot, that layer of grains cooked past their time, bronzed and crisped but stopped just shy of burning; to go almost too far. You can’t see what’s happening. All that’s visible if you lift the lid is the soft,…
Before there was bread or pasta, much less meat or fish, there was rice. Growing up in Hawaii, Texas and Maryland, I ate rice three times a day: with fish for breakfast; with Spam and nori for lunch; with hamburger or more fish or tofu for dinner. In my childhood, Thanksgiving turkey was served not…
I don’t know about you, but predicting my children’s culinary tastes from day to day is a nearly impossible task that often ends in tears. (Mine or theirs.) Those granola bars they loved last week that I bought in bulk? They hate them now. The same goes for the Bolognese I made several batches of…
Good morning. Genevieve Ko has a lovely story in The Times this morning about cooking Thanksgiving turkey with Padma Lakshmi, whose second season of “Taste the Nation” is streaming on Hulu. Lakshmi’s turkey (above) offers a riot of delicious savory-sweet flavors and incredibly moist meat: buttermilk-brined, then roasted slowly over seasonal fruits and vegetables. The…
The salad leaves used at Gage & Tollner come from local farms and change every week. Sometimes it’s beautiful radicchio, other times it’s frisée; mustard greens are often featured. “Each leaf has its own integrity and flavor and composition,” Kim says, which is why when you’re making a salad, you should taste the leaves as…
Home Kitchen 84 Peter Philis, whose great-grandfather founded Lexington Candy Shop in 1925, has teamed up with another restaurant industry veteran, Paul Modica, to open this neighborhood-style spot where easygoing American fare rules. 155 East 84th Street, 646-838-5102, homekitchennyc.com. Sofreh Café A brick-walled tearoom, owned by Ali Saboor and Nasim Alikhani, serves sweets like traditional…
On a brisk October morning, a crowd of 30 artists, designers and curators gathered in downtown Oaxaca, Mexico, to toast a new public art space. The curator and writer Su Wu, who has lived in Mexico City, some 280 miles northwest, since 2017, had brought the group together to celebrate, too, the boundary-breaking Cuban-born artist…
There are two doors, nearly identical, that open into the downtown Manhattan penthouse of Padma Lakshmi. One leads to her office and staff work spaces and the other to her yipping Chihuahua and the living areas. Ms. Lakshmi, the television host and producer, author and activist, moves between the two wings (and upstairs to the…