Go to Video Who was the first inspired person to combine air-cured ham and melon? Well, it might be the Italian in the room who would raise her or his hand, yet it appears it was a Spaniard. We don’t know who but it’s easy enough to imagine the personality. It was a woman, of …
Go to Recipe Go to Video All I have to do is see a radish and my mood improves. If my mood is already good, then I’m over the moon at a radish sighting. I’m not sure what it is about the cheery little red and white orbs or ovals that inspire such good feelings. …
Go to Video BURRATA is written on the window of every fromagerie in Paris, it seems, enticing customers inside with its luscious siren call. For burrata, a tender milky cheese wrapped around cream, is the height of decadence. Response to a Crisis What is decadent today, though, was a response to crisis on a farm …
Go to Video Pesto, or Pistou? They’re almost, but not quite, the same,. To Pound Pesto, the green sauce we all know and love, originated in Genoa, in the seaside region of Italy’s Liguria. There, basil grows with abandon, and it is said that cooks in the Middle Ages were the first to grind it …
Go to Recipe Go to Video Though the French love eggplant (see ratatouille) it is so much a southern vegetable that in my northern French life when I ate at friends’ homes I didn’t see it on the table much. I would say everyone I know loves it, as I witnessed when they came to …
Go to Video I have a large hazelnut tree in my back courtyard, it’s tender leaves turning what would be an unbearable hotspot into an oasis. We have had countless meals under its branches, my children climbed up its smooth, bent trunk for years, my daughter’s best treasure hunt was collecting hazelnuts, prying them out …
Go to Recipe Go to Video I love Paris in August. The streets are calm but not empty; the cafes the same. The rhythm on the street is a few steps slower than at other times of year and, in the case of this year, the temperatures couldn’t be better. Cool in the morning, warm …
Go to Recipe Go to Video Part 1 of our Four Part Mini Series: Do you love it, or do you hate it? There isn’t any middle ground when it comes to eggplant. And I’m here to convince you to love it. Because eggplant is one of the most universal, loveable, delicious vegetables ever invented! …
Go to Recipe Go to Video Even when you cook for a living as I do, there are those evenings where everyone is hungry and there’s no menu plan at all. And you cannot raise a family on nuts, seeds, and dried fruit no matter how good they are for you! “Go To” Ease So, …
Go to Recipe Go to Video From the minute I had the first bite of this cake, on a farm in the hills of Montana, I was in love. There was the setting, of course, which was a an old-fashioned, light-filled kitchen on the farm of Aili and Bill Takala, who had raised animals and …