A tuna fish sandwich is a classic lunch choice, but for a variety of reasons some people are staying away from tuna these days. Here’s a vegetarian (and vegan) alternative version for those who miss that tangy, creamy lunchtime treat. Ask any mermaid you happen to see, this version is a winner!
Alice Waters’ latest cookbook seeks to teach basic, ‘learn by heart’ cooking techniques to encourage us to approach the kitchen instinctively and to find pleasure in cooking good food. Does she succeed? Read on for my review.
Apparently we were a little late to the party last month when we predicted that Bento was a coming trend. We get it now: Bento is already a popular way to pack your lunch (or any meal), get your kids to eat, have some fun and express yourself, and help save the planet with a little less waste.
One of the most popular and comprehensive bento websites is Lunch in a Box, where you’ll find photos, top-tips and recipes, an online store for bento gear and an amazing list of bento links. We stopped by recently to visit Lunch in a Box’s Biggie for a mini-kitchen tour.
In a recent post, I casually dropped a reference to the classic childhood memory of being told to clean your plate because children are starving in _____ (fill in with the typical, not-always-accurate-but-usually-far-away, place.) By the way, do parents still say this these days?
I realized after reading the comments in that post that I didn’t fully express my thoughts about this tactic to get kids to eat their dinner. Like most of the commenters, I’m not in favor of it, and have had to work at undoing the habit of cleaning my plate in my own life.
We’re not alone in The Kitchn when we proclaim our love for Fibroxed-handled Victorinox Forschner knives. Far from their fancier looking and much, much more expensive German-made cousins, Victorinox knives have a loyal following among professional chefs and serious cooks everywhere. They’re basically the punk rock of kitchen knives: lean, mean, bad-ass blades that don’t put on flashy airs. But now Victorinox is just about to release a new, fancier line of ceramic knives. Read on for our review.
Since breakfast is the theme this week, I thought I’d dust off an old favorite cookbook to share with you: Marion Cunningham’s The Breakfast Cookbook. This book has been on my bookshelf for years and has never failed me when it comes to authentic, fool-proof breakfast recipes.
Even though I hate it, the truth is I throw food away. Usually it’s something that has gone bad in my fridge or is suspect enough that I don’t feel comfortable eating it. My city collects food scraps for compost now, so there’s a small bit of relief that the food is going towards something good, but really, if I were to take that up in anyway as a justification, I would be fooling myself.
It’s always fun to discover a solution for a dreary kitchen task that’s also a new use for a beloved, but uni-tasker, kitchen implement. Question: What do you think I’m doing in the photo above that uses my old potato ricer in a new and helpful way?
Ardent cook and cookbook lover Andrew Gray was frustrated with trying to locate favorite recipes in his vast cookbook and magazine collection. He enjoyed using sites like epicurious.com and he wanted the same handy reference for his print media, too. Where is that amazing recipe for chicken briyani? Which recipes are keepers and which are duds? What variations, substitutions and tweaks worked? Enter Cookbooker, a new online cookbook/recipe review database and community site.
A few mornings ago, I wandered into a small apple orchard that was just beginning to bloom. It had been raining all night and the sun was starting to come out here and there, a most magical combination. Everything was washed clean and enlivened by the rain. The green grass beneath my feet vibrated, lit up and awake, and the air hummed with the cracked-open, wild potentiality that is spring. Plus, there were a fair amount of pollinating bees flying about, a happy and good thing to see.
Slowly, because they’re a little expensive, I’ve been adding Weck jars to my pantry to hold things like candied ginger, special sugars and salts. I love their clean lines and how neatly they stack. But sometimes I would lose track of what was in them — is that whole wheat flour or whole wheat pastry flour? Things were starting to look a little tatty as I added masking tape labels until I discovered the white pen!
The new Winter/Spring Canal House Cooking is out and like the previous editions, it’s a winner! Read on for a quick review and the recipe for their utterly delicious Lemon and Sea Salt Focaccia, pictured above.
The great thing about life is that we are constantly being taught, or given the opportunity to be taught, even when the lesson is not necessarily what we signed up for. Volunteering to plant trees, for example, can teach us as much about neighborhood politics and working in a group as it does about digging holes and watering methods. Last weekend, I got some lessons on how to cook, and live my life, from a photography workshop.
There are many versions of prepared vegan ‘mayonnaise’ out there on the grocery shelves. But they’re also quite simple to make at home where you can adjust the sweetness/tang ratio to your taste. Read on for two versions, one made with tofu and another made with almonds.
Food themed TED talks are always inspiring, but a TED talk by Dan Barber is a special treat. Mr. Barber tells a terrific tale, in this case a love story about a farm, two fish, and the future of humanity. Definitely worth watching on your next coffee break! Pour yourself a cuppa and settle in for a Tale of Two Fish, below the jump.
Thomas Keller, on starting out as a dishwasher in his mother’s restaurant:
“What resonated with me was rituals and repetition…So many of the things that I learned as a dishwasher you do as a cook. The idea of being efficient, being organized, the rituals of being a cook, the repetition…and of course the more you do something, the better you become. That’s why I became a good cook, because I enjoy the repetition, I wasn’t always trying to seek something new…You tend to always want to do something new in the kitchen, but there really isn’t anything new.”
I wasn’t at all shocked by Hellman’s runaway win in our Great Mayo Debate survey earlier this week. But I was surprised by how many people voted for ‘Yuck!’. I know mayo can be polarizing, but I didn’t realize that so many people find it revolting. I wondered if it had to do with the raw egg, which then reminded me of an egg-free mayo recipe I’d recently seen on the web. So off I went to investigate…
One of the more passionate debates in the food world is Hellman’s mayonnaise (a.k.a. “Best Foods” west of the Rockies) versus Miracle Whip salad dressing. It’s been going on for decades, perhaps ever since Miracle Whip was introduced by Kraft in the 1930’s as a less expensive alternative to mayonnaise.
Main Entry: in_spire
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French inspirer, from Latin inspirare, from in + spirare: to breathe
transitive verb
1 a: to exert an animating, enlivening, or exalting influence b: to spur on c: to draw forth or bring out d: to affect
2 a archaic: to breathe or blow into or upon b archaic: infuse (as life) by breathing
When I received a set of Mario Batali’s prep bowls as a gift last year, my response was mild. I thought they were attractive and practical but I wondered how often I would really use them. Fast forward to the present day and they are in constant use in my kitchen, one of the most useful tools I own. But it turns out they have a dark secret. Read on for my full review.
