Remember when you were little and you went to your friend’s birthday party and before you left their mom pulled out those sweet swag bags that involved trivial stuff that you didn’t really need, but you loved anyway? The Oscars are totally like that, but their swag bags are, well, incredible. Also, they are worth over $100,000. So, there’s that.
Calzones are a favorite in my house — not only for a relaxed weekend dinner, but also for wrapping up, freezing, and eating for lunches all week long. Whether you enjoy them for lunch or dinner, they’re the perfect little “hot pockets” (ahem!) of cheese, veggies, and leftover meat. Here’s how to make them.
I am sitting here, cooking this recipe for fragrant chicken curry scented with an intoxicating mixture of toasted fennel and coriander seeds and a warming combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper. The temperature outside is –34°C. Sometimes I jokingly wonder why I live in a place where the air hurts my face. Then I grit my teeth and dream about tropical beaches and the warm swaying coconut palms of my childhood, and hope that summer gets here as fast as it can.
Welcome to a column from The Financial Diet, one of our very favorite sites, dedicated to money and everything it touches. One of the best ways to take charge of your financial life is through food and cooking.
After I graduated college and moved to New York City, buying most of my food out became my norm. I wasn’t getting myself into astronomical debt, but I certainly wasn’t budgeting. After paying off my credit card bill each month, I essentially had nothing left over. Yet it took me forever to realize the biggest reason I had nothing left over was because I was hyper-dependent on one specific habit: buying my lunch out, every single weekday.
Happy Valentine’s Day! I thought we should make this for a date night in… erm, three weeks ago. It was on my editorial calendar and everything! (Okay I don’t have one, but it was definitely something I would have put on one.) The fact is, I’ve always been a slow cook but I’ve gotten so much worse in the last year or so, and I think I’m just getting fussier. I can’t sleep well until I know I am not making you use even one more bowl or egg yolk than the recipe requires and I wish I was joking because it sounds more quirky and charming that way.
Take this. For years, I’d be hearing about the wonder that is Nancy Silverton’s Butterscotch Budino, one of Los Angeles’s most famous desserts. Think of it like a classic, homey butterscotch pudding (kinda like this) made as luxe as possible with more butter, a deeper caramel, egg yolks, cream, salted caramel, whipped creme fraiche, yes, I too would be on a flight to Los Angeles right now after reading that if they weren’t all grounded.
While many Korean ingredients can only be found in large Asian grocery stores, their popularity is making them increasingly easier to find in the Asian food aisles of more mainstream markets. But oh, what to get? You can always decide by using a recipe as your guide, but if you want to strike out on your own, here are five ingredients to experiment with that you’ll want to add to your shopping list permanently.
What would the world be without chocolate pudding? Chocolate and cream, licked off a spoon, is one of the greatest desserts I know, ranked with fresh strawberry shortcake and warm chocolate chip cookies. But pudding has become a lost art as baking books proliferate; it only shows up in Snack Packs or on restaurant dessert plates.
This is a secret opportunity for you as a cook, because pudding is special and unusual, and yet a snap to make. Knowing how to make pudding from scratch is like having the golden key to winning dessert.
The Instant Pot is one of the biggest food trends of the past few years, and it is only getting bigger. People are obsessed with it because it does the work of seven other appliances and takes up less space in the kitchen. It can pressure cook, slow cook, cook rice, steam food, make yogurt, warm food, and sauté food. And now it looks like the Instant Pot is actually an eight-in-one machine, because you can even use it to make wine.
Yes, wine!
A new month means new movies and TV shows to watch on Netflix. This March there are a handful of food shows to consider, including a British comedy about a secret cooking club and a Pinterest-inspired show about baking. And Gordon Ramsay’s Masterchef Junior returns to TV!
Every grocery store has its own strengths and weaknesses: Whole Foods is fancy, Aldi is super inexpensive, and Costco will sell you four-and-a-half pounds of its Kirkland-branded version of Nutella for $7.99. But according to a report on customer satisfaction in the U.S., the highest-ranked grocery store in the country is Publix.