American distillers have been turning their attention to single malts, defined in Scotland as whisky produced in one distillery from 100 percent malted barley. In the United States these rules are usually followed, but have yet to be mandated by government regulators; it should happen soon. In Wassaic, N.Y., in the Hudson Valley, John Dyson…
What makes a wine “good”? The answer seems self-evident: If it tastes good, it must be good. But as with so many things involving wine, it’s never that simple, starting with the word “good.” Good can be a complicated idea. Does it mean, as I suggested, a wine that tastes good? Or maybe a wine…
In my column this week I wrote about my quest to eat more plant-based meals, with the goal to become as fluent in tofu as I am in chicken thighs. Turns out, those proteins have a lot in common, including an affinity for pungent marinades and a tendency to become their tastiest selves when laid…
At the restaurant ILIS in Brooklyn, your smoked tomato and clam dashi arrives in a giant clamshell, sealed with beeswax and roped shut. At Naks in the East Village, bites of beef tartare on crisped beef fat are ferried to your table on a cow horn. The post-plate era of fine dining is in full…
Good morning. I’m just spitballing here, but I bet the use of the word “spatchcocking” — which describes the business of cutting the backbone out of a bird and flattening the remaining body into a pan so that it roasts more quickly and evenly — peaks around Thanksgiving, at least in America. A spatchcocked turkey…
January is a great time for basics. After the excess and glamour of the holiday season (read: prime rib roast and rainbow rave cookies), the simplest no-fuss recipes can feel downright refreshing. Which is why we’re particularly excited to share Sohla El-Waylly’s recipe for roasted salmon, the sort of basic recipe you can turn to…
After months of brainstorming how to have the most delicious wedding cake possible, Rachel Karten and Roxanne Rosensteel, a pastry chef based in Santa Barbara, Calif., concluded that only one kind of wedding cake could fit the bill: a big sheet cake. The original plan was to have four of them, but when Ms. Karten,…
The chef Margot Henderson was 10 when she catered her first party, a birthday celebration for her younger brother Robin, then 5, in their hometown, Wellington, New Zealand. “Our mother was a complete health nut who would feed us apple cider vinegar and honey,” recalls Henderson. “I wasn’t going to let my brother suffer like…
The Boston chef Barbara Lynch, whom more than 20 employees accused of multiple forms of workplace abuse in a New York Times report last year, announced Friday that most of her restaurants had closed at the end of 2023. Those include her fine-dining restaurant Menton, one of the city’s most prestigious destinations since it opened…
There are plenty of practical reasons for learning how to cook: saving money, controlling what you eat, knowing precisely what’s in your food. I’m in it for the impractical. I love making a 27-ingredient mole negro when a craving strikes, hosting half a dozen friends on the fly on a weeknight, transforming peanut butter into…