As a general rule, I don’t take requests for recipes — not at home when I’m cooking for others, and not for this column. Sure, the temptation to give people exactly what they want is always there, but ultimately I’m not sure that does anyone any favors. If I just wrote recipes by request, this…
There’s a lot of ocean out there, and boats engaging in illegal fishing or human trafficking have good reason to hide. But even the stealthiest vessels — the ones that turn off their transponders — aren’t completely invisible: Albatrosses, outfitted with radar detectors, can spot them, new research has shown. And a lot of ships…
Moo shu pork is a Northern Chinese dish from Shandong, popularized in the United States in the mid-20th century. My parents were introduced to it at Joyce Chen’s restaurant in Cambridge, Mass., where it had been served since 1958, alongside now-ubiquitous dishes like Peking duck, pan-fried dumplings (which she called “Peking ravioli” — a term…
Good morning. Gabrielle Hamilton has a beautiful recipe in The Times this week, for cold candied oranges (above). It’s accompanied by an essay that’s a glittery, perfect jewel. I think it might get you to make the dish even on a weeknight, just so you can have it the next night after dinner, a perfect…
In 2011, the designer Phillip Lim built his dream kitchen in his SoHo home: With the help of the architect Joe Nix, he installed a marble island, concrete pendant lighting from Aplomb and cabinets that open with just a tap of the elbow, ideal for when your hands are covered in sauce. But the room…
Frieda Rapoport Caplan, a food distributor who changed the look of American produce aisles and made palates more adventurous by championing kiwifruit, enoki mushrooms, Jerusalem artichokes and countless other once-exotic items, died on Jan. 18 at her home in Los Alamitos, Calif., southeast of Los Angeles. She was 96. Cindy Sherman, head of marketing at…
Hello and welcome to Five Weeknight Dishes. We all know September is back-to-school time, but this late-January repeat after the last gasp of winter holidays needs a name. Again, we are settling into weekly routines — except with more darkness and lesser holidays to look forward to (Presidents’ Day feast, anyone?). So I am craving…
Most chefs will tell you that if you have a pristine piece of fish, you don’t need to do a lot to it. A little oil, a little salt, a squeeze of lemon and a brief stint on the heat are all it needs to blossom and shine. Most of the time, I agree. Truly…
Some smugglers drive it across the border from Canada. Others sneak it through airports or send it in the mail, wrapping the contraband in T-shirts and towels to deceive the authorities. A few even make it at home. But this is no international drug ring. It is the black market for Scottish haggis, a savory…
If you took a slow-motion video of yourself biting into a Haitian patty at Kafe Louverture in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, it would look like this: The outer layer of pastry would shatter dramatically, like powdery snow blasting off a pair of skis. Then your teeth would sink into the gently simmered filling — beef or lamb,…