On cooking for someone new, and the vulnerability that makes us whole I am daydreaming about a menu for a bachelor party in the Fall, let’s say October. Ten guys, all traveling from far, arriving the same day for a weekend-long celebration. For…
Continue Reading First Date Kitchen: A Bachelor Party as Marriage Prep
Or, learning to cook without bankrupting yourself one specialty ingredient at a time. There is a moment, standing in the spice aisle with a recipe clutched in one hand, when the absurdity reveals itself. The recipe calls for sumac—just a pinch—and there it…
A Manifesto Wrapped in Butcher Paper If you’ve ever held a raw bone and felt the weight of what came before dinner, then Pipers Farm: The Sustainable Meat Cookbook isn’t just another cookbook cluttering your kitchen counter. It’s a gentle slap in the…
I own a hand-down copy of Craig Claiborne’s 1962 edition of the New York Times Cookbook. It’s one I come back to fairly regularly. The recipes included are a real snapshot of the quality American gastronomy of that time. Some of the recipes…
Continue Reading Craig Claiborne: The Instutituional Voice of Home Cooking
A Deeply Rooted Companion for the Fire-Curious Cook If you’ve ever stood over glowing coals at 11 PM, convinced you could coax just a little more magic from tired embers, Justin Smillie’s Slow Fires will feel like finding your people. This isn’t another…
Continue Reading On Justin Smillie’s Slow Fires: A Love Letter to the Long Game
“To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.” This is a quote by theWelsh author and academic Raymond Williams, and it’s printed in bold red letters on the cover of oneof his essay collections. I see it every…
Continue Reading The Quiet Radicalism of Home Cooking In Times Of Need
I still set the table, even when it’s just me. Fork, knife, glass of water—wine if the day has earned it. Sometimes a candle, though I draw the line at talking to it. This isn’t efficiency. It’s not even habit anymore. It’s a…
Bread was the first thing that taught me patience, though at the time I didn’t think of it in such lofty terms. I thought of it mostly as sticky dough glued to my hands and a grandmother who, without looking up from her…
The first time I handed my daughter a knife, it was a plastic vegetable knife, and she looked at it the way you’d look at a lightsaber. Wide-eyed, reverent, and a little dangerous. She was four, tasked with slicing a banana, which she…
Continue Reading Cooking With Kids: A Messy Act of Resistance
The masa doesn’t announce itself the way other ingredients do. There’s no dramatic entrance, no culinary theater. Just this quiet, patient substance waiting in your palms like a secret someone whispered but didn’t quite finish telling. The experts at Masienda — bless their…
Continue Reading Listen With Your Fingers: The Craft of Corn Tortillas