Pepper Soups for Chilly Nights

Egunsi Foods, a line of chilled ready-to-heat and eat West African foods from a company based in Harlem, has added three hearty pepper soups. Lemongrass-chicken, crayfish-chicken and vegan lemongrass-mushroom — thick with ingredients like chunks of succulent chicken and big sliced mushrooms — are richly haloed with spice. While satisfying on their own, they also take…

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The Impermanence of Beauty

Has vegan food ever been so beautiful? “Kajitsu,” a cookbook explaining the Zen Buddhist Shojin cuisine of Japan, offers page after page of magnificent seasonal dishes, with recipes. The book’s all based on the Murray Hill restaurant Kajitsu (now closed because of the pandemic), which moved to its present location from the East Village in…

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Cocktails Delivered Straight to Your Door

You’ve heard of ghost kitchens, where chefs without brick-and-mortar restaurants work on food for delivery? Now, welcome Ghost Bar, an online cocktail service. Its menu of well-made premixed drinks, in 6- to 10-ounce portions ($12 to $24), ranges from classics like Negroni and Sazerac, to inventive libations, like the delicious Old Money with spiced rum,…

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Cook for Yourself

Good morning. I was flying solo there for a couple of days, cooking only for myself. This was not as simple as I’d thought it might be, as many over the years have pointed out to me in letters and messages, at cocktail parties, at the end of news meetings, once at a funeral. The…

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