Tea, especially mint, is as essential as couscous to the Moroccan table. Mina brand from Casablanca Foods, a reliable source for harissa condiments and sauces for cooking, has just introduced a line of teas. Nana is a type of Moroccan mint with toasty overtones; Atay, a traditional blend of mint with Chinese green tea that’s…
Silan is a Middle Eastern syrup made from steamed, pressed dates. I now keep a container of it in my refrigerator for cocktails. It’s especially suited to whiskey drinks, which benefit from a shot of the dark, musky sweetness. Use it in marinades and sauces for basting roasted meats, over granola and yogurt in the…
Clever cookbooks with a limited number of ingredients per recipe are not new, but this one from the chef Jamie Oliver is notable for its ease and verve. Before he gets to the cooking he names his five “pantry heroes”: red wine vinegar, sea salt, black pepper and two olive oils, everyday and finer for…
In “One Good Meal,” we ask cooking-inclined creative people to share the story behind a favorite dish they actually make and eat at home on a regular basis — and not just when they’re trying to impress. The chef Nina Clemente spent much of her childhood in New York City and southern Italy, but some…
Pre-Tribeca, no-Nolita downtown Manhattan in the mid-1970s was a place of quiet darkness and hidden clubs. Little Italy was still Italian and affordable when I moved to Elizabeth Street. One night I arrived home to find that my apartment had been broken into. My stereo and speakers were gone. More important, also missing was a…
The photographer William Mullan estimates that his obsession with apples began when he was a high schooler in Esher, a small town outside of London. An Egremont apple caught his eye at the local Waitrose, a British chain of upscale grocery stores. “I was really curious as to why such a highly selective supermarket would…
Wun maprao onn — or Coconut Delight, as the Bangkok-born Jess Calvo of Thai Farm Kitchen in Kensington, Brooklyn, calls it — is “the most difficult dessert to make,” he said. “First, you have to find the right young coconut.” This was a slightly easier task when he lived with ready access to coconut trees,…
Happy New Year! We are swan-diving into home-cooking season, one of the best times of year to just stay in. Somehow January has come to mean culinary austerity — it’s about what you can’t eat, rather than what you can — and I sort of hate that. There’s nothing really happening, and you also want…
For most Americans, the word “pie” brings up images of apples (or some other fruit) encased in pastry and baked, cut into wedges and served for dessert, sometimes with a scoop of ice cream or a bit of whipped cream. But in Britain and throughout the Commonwealth, dessert pies are more often called tarts, and…
Most of the grain bowls that happen in my house are serendipitous. Leftovers (last night’s sautéed greens, Thursday’s brown rice, a hunk of poached salmon) scooped into a bowl and garnished with various salty condiments (pickles, kimchi, fermented red chiles) and a sliced vegetable (radishes, carrots or cucumber) make a dish that is easier than…