Carla Hall, the vivacious television celebrity and restaurateur, covers all bases in her latest book, showcasing Southern-inflected recipes pegged for “everyday” or “celebration” with plenty of overlap. For those seeking New Year’s inspiration, her book has plenty to offer, like black-eyed peas (considered lucky) in hummus, in a salad and in a vinaigrette sauce for…
With his oven-baked black olives, the chef and restaurateur Scott Conant has picked up a Mediterranean tradition in his new line of Sprezza products, made in Italy. His meaty olives are excellent to serve with drinks or to use in salads and other dishes, pitted or not. The chef’s well-seasoned pomodoro sauce for pasta and…
Good morning. I wrote you last when I was en route to Miami for work, and it wasn’t until that evening when I was walking south on the beach, heading toward a sublime meal at 27, that I realized I neglected to give you a no-recipe recipe to cook on Wednesday, as is my usual…
TLAXIACO, Mexico — Petra Cruz González wakes at 6 every morning to make some 400 tortillas by hand. Despite a few modern advancements, like an electric flour mill and a metal hand press, she still cooks them over a wood fire as she learned to do when she was 8 years old. Ms. González, 49,…
A few years ago my father arranged to send me a mail-order fruitcake at Christmastime. Although I had a good job and owned an apartment in Manhattan, he feared my cupboards and refrigerator might be bare. I had recently moved from California, where my parents still lived in their suburban bungalow of 50 years, the…
MARLOW, England — Even though Henry Laithwaite was born into a prominent family of English wine merchants, he never imagined he would be selling English wine. His ambition was to make wine, which in the 1990s meant leaving England. By age 17, he was apprenticing in France, and soon was working two harvests a year,…
In the lead-up to Christmas 2012, while living in Los Angeles, I set my heart on plum pudding. For once, I was going to eat the hot steamed dessert in the winter (admittedly a warm winter), when it made sense, rather than in Australia’s sweltering summer. Australia has adopted plum pudding, like so many things,…
The blustery, freezing December weather is bad for many things — my hair, my commute, my morning run. But it’s awfully good for baking a cheesy pasta in a skillet. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t make this cozy, gooey Cheddar-rich casserole in nicer weather. But the colder, darker and gloomier the day, the…
When Diana Tandia makes jollof rice, she lets it burn a little at the bottom of the pot, just enough so that smoke rises to possess every grain. At Berber Street Food, the tiny restaurant she opened in the West Village in September, the rice arrives stained reddish-orange, with smoke still in its soul. After…
You’re in a diner from yesteryear, sliding onto a stool at a long Formica counter. On the back bar are glass pots of brewed coffee perched on hot plates and a bank of heavy-duty waffle irons, ready and waiting. You’ve come expressly for a breakfast waffle, but not just for the waffle. It’s the whole…