In this column, Ask Kenji, the cookbook author Kenji López-Alt answers your questions. This week, he tackles tough questions about yielding tender meat. Q. I struggle to make good, fall-apart-tender stewed or braised beef. No matter how well I follow the recipe, it ends up tough. So how can you tell when your beef is…
If the overabundance of root vegetables like sunchokes, black radishes and kohlrabies the size of my head is the late-winter scourge of my C.S.A., the steady supply of braising greens is its redemption. No matter how many bunches of curly kale, sturdy collard greens and steely chard arrive each week, there’s always a place on…
My parents’ initiation into elevated home cooking came by way of Julia Child’s soufflés and coq au vin, but for me the gateway was phyllo triangles and carrot cake from “The Silver Palate Cookbook.” That milestone book, by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, made cooking seem easy, playful and fun, with a lighthearted tone and…
The act of triple-dipping goes back to my early years. Three shallow bowls: one with flour, another with beaten egg, the third with breadcrumbs. It’s as familiar as the 1970s brown Formica kitchen counter and the avocado-green fridge doors, with their faux-wood handles that would inevitably be smudged with sticky flour paste as I reached…
The New York-based private chef Yann Nury has a simple strategy for transforming unadorned produce into showstopping canapés. “It’s all about finding the most unique vegetable,” says the 40-year-old Frenchman, “and making it a star.” At the events he caters for clients, shiny orange Sungold tomatoes masquerade as gumballs in Austrian crystal candy dishes; vivid…
Headliner San Sabino With this new venture, the married chefs Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli, and their partner Michael Stillman’s Quality Branded, aren’t fretting about driving business from their high-profile Italian American restaurant, Don Angie, which opened six years ago just a few doors south. “It’s different, there’s more seafood and we’re being creative with…
Spring is so close I can taste it — or at least I’m trying to taste it, as I load up my grocery list with green things like arugula, scallions and leafy herbs. We’re still weeks away from peak spring produce, but you can hustle winter out the door if you lean heavily on ingredients…
Like them or not, the outdoor dining sheds that have been an upshot of the pandemic are more or less here to stay. Last week, City Hall and the Department of Transportation issued new guidelines for Dining Out NYC, its official program, and the largest such program in the country. “It’s been a priority for…
About 1,500 years ago, in the mountains of northern China, you might have found bamboo mats lined with slabs of tofu, resting in the snow overnight. Once frozen solid, “the structure and basic character of the tofu underwent a radical transformation,” William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi wrote in “The Book of Tofu” (1975). Like the…
I became a regular at Sofreh the minute Nasim Alikhani first flung open the doors to the chic Persian restaurant in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. I was irresistibly pulled in by her fragrant platters of duck fesenjan and fish with herbs and tamarind. No matter my order, though, I had to include adas polo ba khorma…