Sweet, Sour and Ready to Top Toast

My introduction to caponata, when I was a teenager, was a supermarket version from a shelf somewhere near the tinned sardines and anchovies. It came in a distinctive disc-shaped glass jar, about 4 inches in diameter and an inch deep. The clamped-on lid was imprinted with an ornate logo, and somewhere it said “product of…

Could This Be the End of Frankincense?

For thousands of years, cultures around the world have revered the sweet aroma of frankincense. In Ancient Egypt, embalmers stuffed it inside the bodies and tombs of pharaohs and queens and its ashes were ground into eyeliner. Religious texts say rabbis burned it as offerings in Jerusalem’s temples, the three biblical Magi gifted it to…

Make It Easy

Hello and welcome to Five Weeknight Dishes, where we are always about simple cooking, but especially so this week. The holiday has passed, the days are getting hot, school is off, work is somehow still on — sometimes you just need dinner to be easier than easy, the culinary equivalent of screwing the cap off…

Make This Pie!

Good morning. I’ll be on the road this weekend, driving north toward black flies and shooting stars. There’ll be yeasted doughnuts along the way, a lobster roll, an egg-and-white-cheese on an English muffin, a tub of poutine, ice-cold Cokes, lots of water, rinse and repeat into the depths of New England. I’ve got a three-ton…

Drink a Pint, Waste Less Food

In all his years in the beer industry, Keith McAvoy had never taken much professional interest in Coco Pops. From time to time, Mr. McAvoy, who runs the craft brewery Seven Brothers in Manchester, England, would raid his children’s supply of the chocolate-flavored breakfast cereal for “a cheeky bowl” or two — though only, he…

A Cake for America

Good morning. I was on an adventure with one of my kids. We’d eaten a lot of cheese pupusas at El Nopal in Patchogue, the hot masa slathered in salsa roja and washed down with mango purée, then driven sleepily into Blue Point and west along Middle Road to Meadow Croft, the former summer estate…