Soon into developing recipes for Sheet Pan Chicken, I realized that so many recipes’ ingredients could be interchangeable, and their procedures could lend themselves to endless iterations. Case in point: I developed a recipe loosely based on a hearty, French Dijon chicken stew. It was a pan full of mustard-rubbed chicken roasting alongside chopped bacon, potatoes and heaps of sliced onions and mushrooms, which sizzled as they cooked and shrank in size. A glug of heavy cream added to the pan for the last 20 minutes of roasting married all the flavors while making the chicken’s skin gleam a toa ..read more

To every cooking obsession, there should be a cookbook that speaks to it, and it alone. These are often called single-subject cookbooks, a genre that I adore. They can be pocket-sized or gargantuan, cheap or expensive, dusty-old or shiny-new and I’ll find it hard to not keep flipping the pages, nodding, appreciating its tight focus and unique perspective on the food genre in question. From exploring the historical underpinnings of an iconic dish like Pho (as masterfully told by Andrea Nguyen, author of several cookbooks on Vietnamese cuisine) to learning the finer points of The Art of Cooking ..read more

I had so much fun making and eating this bowl of warm, homemade hummus that even though I’m far from an authority on the Middle Eastern spread—and even though there are many acclaimed recipes for it online—I just had to share this journey and recipe with you. Why hummus? It’s something I had been dropping into my shopping cart a lot lately, and eating up the tubs far too quickly for my once-or-twice-a-week grocery-shopping routine. It had been several years since I’d made hummus from scratch but I knew from those experiences it was essentially chickpeas, tahini, garlic, lemon juice and olive ..read more

Whenever I travel somewhere, I like to geek out on its food and then, immediately upon returning home, try to relive some of those flavors in my own kitchen, while they’re fresh in my memory. Often, this culminates in a dinner party on the theme of the place I had last visited. I recently traveled to Jamaica for my friend Karol’s 40th birthday, where we spent a languid 4-day weekend with a handful of friends. I didn’t expect it to be enough time to absorb much of the island’s food culture—but it was far too good not to. But then, each fall, I like to throw a salmon-themed dinner party, to cel ..read more

I have long wanted to make gefilte fish from scratch. This is not a refrain I have heard too many people repeat. Something else I have not heard too often (or ever?) is, “I really want to eat gefilte fish sometime!” Maybe because of this, I just have never gotten around to homemade gefilte fish before. I am so glad to have finally done so, prompted by a great recipe from a Russian-American co-worker. Does anyone else have a wish list of world dishes that they would just love to spend a leisurely weekend making, flitting from one small, specialty market to another to procure just the right in ..read more

The holiday season has arrived, and that means a lot of dumpling-making from November through February to my family and friends. Although no time of the year is spared of this tradition, we really bring it on the nights before Thanksgiving and Christmas: at least two types of fillings, stacks of round wrappers, and often, square, yellow wonton wrappers for boiled wontons and their filling are brought out onto the table and everyone gets busy folding. The inevitable chatter over how to do this best ensues. I tried my hand at making dumplings not from my Chinese heritage this fall, too. In the ..read more

Beans, greens and grains: Remember this formula, and you will be fed for a lifetime in a very healthy, inexpensive and earth-friendly way. And it’ll never get old. You simply cannot exhaust the shapes, sizes and varieties of beans, grains and green vegetables alone (but have fun geeking out over heirloom beans and trying!). And there’s no limit to how you can prepare these—from black beans and rice to daal to minestrone, to new creations that are somewhere in between these various classics of many cultures. So today’s version came to me by way of Chitra Agrawal, who recently launched a new l ..read more

Call me a culinary thief, but I love cooking passed-down family recipes from other peoples’ families. I say that with a bit of mischievousness because usually, the recipe-writer—the nonna, auntie, etc.—had shared their recipe with someone whom they love, but they probably never imagined that it would one day be used by a total stranger, me. It’s kind of thrilling. Furthermore, we tend to think of family recipes as something sacred, something not to mess with so as to fully respect and cherish the recipe-writer. But when that person has almost no connection to us, it’s easier to deviate from ..read more

Say you want something savory, crispy, and fried—to start out a dinner, perhaps. Or to round out a more wholesome meal. Or to bring to a party, instead of a bag of chips (which I’ve done many times out of sheer enthusiasm for good potato chips and its place and purpose, and find no shame in). But let’s say you have time to roll up your sleeves in something a bit more involved than grabbing bodega potato chips. And it’s winter, when not too many vegetables are in season. Whether or not people in your group have vegetarian or gluten-free dietary restrictions for a moment, these squash fritters ..read more