In 1848, the British East India Company gave the botanist Robert Fortune a mission: smuggle live tea bushes out of China against the emperor’s strict edicts and plant them in the Himalayan foothills of West Bengal, to propagate a new tea industry under British control. The heist took years. The plants struggled to flourish in…
BEIJING — In all likelihood, the enduring physical legacy of China’s internet boom will not be the glass-and-steel office complexes or the fancy apartments for tech elites. It will be the plastic. The astronomical growth of food delivery apps in China is flooding the country with takeout containers, utensils and bags. And the country’s patchy…
Good morning. It’s Memorial Day, a holiday that honors those who have given their lives in military service to the United States. That is a not inconsiderable number. More than a million Americans have been killed in combat since the birth of the nation, and nearly 7,000 have perished over the course of the past…
For Sam Calagione, a founder of the craft brewery Dogfish Head, his company’s efforts to get healthier had a selfish origin. “I started to notice that I was getting an everything bagel on my midriff,” said Mr. Calagione, attributing the weight gain to the multiple beers he drinks daily for work. “So I was like,…
A delicious dish, prepared by analogy of Italian Parmigiana, only here instead of eggplant, is a potatoes. Bake at 356F about 40-50 min/ or until golden brown and soft potatoes. [embedded content]
Never in the annals of American barbecue has brisket — great brisket — been so widely available. Once the province of Texas and Kansas City, world-class brisket now turns up at Hometown Bar-B-Que in Brooklyn; at Lewis Barbecue in Charleston, S.C.; and at Smoque BBQ and Green Street Smoked Meats in Chicago. Once deemed a…
Hi and welcome to Five Weeknight Dishes, food for busy people who still want something good to eat — like pesto, which now that I think of it may be the best thing you can eat. I made a very large batch on Monday to toss with spaghetti, using up mint and parsley that was…
BOSTON — The celebrity chef Mario Batali stepped into a courtroom crowded with reporters on Friday morning and entered a plea of not guilty to indecent assault and battery of a woman he met in a bar here two years ago. The woman, who had long been a fan of Mr. Batali’s, told the Boston…
I first ate rhubarb at the tender age of 5. It came in a Mason jar and was called rhubarb sauce, the rhubarb equivalent of applesauce. It wasn’t my mother who made it — that simply wasn’t in her repertoire — but our neighbor Gaga. She and her husband, whom we called More Gaga, were…
Grilling season sneaked up on me. Usually, if I haven’t uncovered the grill by April, I’m counting down to the first sunny day, fantasizing about the all the rare burgers, bronzed chickens and charred eggplants my near future will hold. But this spring has been so bleak and damp that I was still making lentil…