Cooking

I’m not much of a coffee drinker, so when I suggest to someone that we “go out for coffee,” what that usually translates to in my head is grabbing a pastry, ordering something sugary that bears little resemblance to actual coffee or, ideally, getting a nice cup of tea.

I first encountered angel food dream cake in an old Swans Down cake flour recipe booklet. At its core, it is nothing more than a traditional angel food cake with the “dreamy” addition of a whipped cream frosting that elevates it into something celebration-worthy.

With the arrival of spring comes many reasons to celebrate: more hours of sunlight, the first signs of warmer weather, all of the holidays, my birthday (okay, that one might just be me) and a new crop of produce to enjoy. Let’s honor the season with a meal of pan-seared lamb chops, a luscious pea and mint puree, and tart-sweet pomegranate.

By Dick Sellers

Here’s a flavorful vegetable one-pot dinner that takes only minutes to make. One secret to the flavor is escarole. It is part of the chicory family. When escarole is raw it has a slightly bitter flavor and when cooked it adds a mellow touch to the dish. Toasted pecans add a crunchy texture. I use dried thyme and oregano for the dish.

For a chef who owns dozens of restaurants in multiple cities, José Andrés venerates nothing more than home cooking.

In 1974, Iris Hill and her husband, Rod, bought season passes to Expo ’74.

When St. Patrick’s Day comes around, I start to think about an Irish-inspired dinner. Here’s a quick festive one that includes sausage, potatoes, eggs and the secret ingredient that brings out the flavors – beer.

There is nothing unusual about grabbing a couple of cans of tomatoes off the shelf to make a pasta sauce, particularly in the winter when tomatoes are offseason. That’s where this recipe starts. But it quickly veers into uncommonly good territory as these canned tomatoes are roasted. Canned tomatoes are already cooked, so their flavor is somewhat concentrated, but roasting them doubles down on that, further intensifying their umami and imparting a fire-cooked essence. That deep, complex, savoriness anchors this mouthwatering pesto.

Mary Buckingham makes frequent trips to her local post office, where she mails sourdough starter kits to anyone who requests them. But a recent phone call from a postal worker shocked her – she had received more than 1,000 letters in a week.

Lately, in these waning days of winter, I’ve been daydreaming about my favorite comfort meals. Baked potato soup, macaroni and cheese, kashk-o bademjan, lasagna – food that makes you go mmm. New to my list is this bowl of warm, saucy, garlicky, buttery chickpeas. Known as dango in Oman, this version was adapted from the recipe in Rose Previte’s “Maydan: Recipes From Lebanon and Beyond.”

There’s a wide world of chorizo out there. The first sausage is believed to have been made “around 500 years ago on the Iberian Peninsula, where the chiles arrived after the Columbian Exchange,” food writer Rachel Wharton wrote for TASTE. From there, it spread with the people of that region. “Think of any place Spain or Portugal once brutally colonized – the southernmost stretch of the United States, Mexico, much of Central and South America, several islands in the Caribbean – and you can bet all of them now have proud chorizo traditions of their own.”

Theodor S. Geisel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on March 2, 1904. He graduated from Dartmouth College and attended Oxford but left before graduating. He is widely known for his prolific work as a children’s book author and illustrator. Most of us know him by his pen name, Dr. Seuss.

A reader asked: “Grocery stores are now selling extra large eggs. Do I have to worry about equivalencies in recipes?”

Paprika is among the pantry staples that don’t get the respect they deserve. Like bay leaves and turmeric, it has been maligned as one note – or worse. The sentiment goes something like this: Is paprika anything more than a flavorless red dust? Does it actually taste like anything?

Baking is science, we’re often told – and I love science. So much so that there was a period in college when I flirted with going into medicine. (I’m the daughter of a doctor, I couldn’t help it!) Alas, it was short-lived.

The condiment world is feeling extra-spicy these days, and the added heat has nothing to do with Scoville units.

When my husband told me the other day that he loves me more than peanut butter, I knew that after 26 years, our marriage remained on solid footing.