BASQUE CHICKEN HAS LONG had its Nashville hot chicken moment. To get it, you no longer have to go to its place of origin, the Pays Basque in the southwest corner of France. It is a beloved national dish, so commonplace that it’s easy to find as a convenient, grab-and-go food in grocery stores all over France.

Last winter, my husband and I ate a lot of the stuff. We were living in France, in the Loire Valley, some 560 kilometers northeast of the Basque region. We spent much of our time redoing the kitchen in a sixteenth-century house my husband bought more than twenty years ago. To eat, we set up a makeshift kitchen in a small, unused room on the top floor, equal in (more…)

photo by Heath Robbins

I wasn’t going to share this recipe with you. I’d already blown my wad on three permission requests for Jap Chae, Pork Ribs with Fresh Ginger, and Tofu and Clam Hot Pot, all equally good but in very different ways, and all from The Korean Table. But then I tried these wings, and I got greedy. Oh Tuttle Publishing, would you please grant me permission to use yet another recipe on the blog? Because of their generosity, I present you with the best-ever chicken wings. They are hot and (more…)

There is no Prince Pilpelchuma, at least not as far as I know. (Any resemblance to an actual person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.)

Though fictional, Prince Pilpelchuma’s name is taken from two very real foods: a fiery hot condiment called pilpelchuma, a recipe for which can be found in the cookbook Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi; and hot chicken, a type of spicy fried chicken found in  (more…)

A cookbook devoted to all of the great rice dishes of the world. Now that would be a dream project: Traveling from country to country researching the most authentic versions along with the myriad regional variations, traditional and contemporary, that would surely exist. Such rice dishes, where every biteful (more…)

The Indians have turmeric, the Europeans, beets, and the Africans, palm oil—an intensely colored oil extracted from the fruits of the oil palm that adds a shot of deep orange-red color to whatever food it touches, including this (more…)

Earlier this month, over Labor Day weekend, I took a rewarding and inspiring writing workshop lead by Crescent Dragonwagon, a warm and nuanced, broadly talented, and gifted writer who has been thinking about, writing about, and teaching about the process of writing for a lifetime.

The workshop, called “Fearless Writing,” takes a holistic view: There is the thing of writing—involving objective realities such as craft, process, and habit—and there is the life of the writer, or simply life, often unpredictable, (more…)

This recipe, from Global Grilling by Jay Solomon, was inspired by the cuisine of the Yucatán, the land of Mayan culture. The marinade features some key, commonly used ingredients from that cuisine: citrus, in particular the bitter orange; chili pepper; and achiote oil, which is made from simmering annatto seeds in oil. The annatto seed is used for the brilliant, dark red color it adds to food and even beverages. (Historically, the Mayans added ground annatto seeds (more…)

After writing Global Grilling, published in 1994, Jay Solomon went on to publish several more cookbooks, but he still makes a number of recipes from GG, this sandwich among them.

When I mentioned to my neighbor and DCCC club member Sam Heffernan that the Chicken Teriyaki and Avocado Sandwich is one of the author’s favorites from the book, she decided to try it. Though Sam has long been a fan of Global Grilling—in fact, she’s the club member responsible for getting us to cook from this great book—and has made several recipes from the book over the years, she’d overlooked this one.

After a Q & A with Sam, (more…)

I first learned of this dish, and the concept of layering tortillas with sauce, cheese, poblano chile strips, and chicken, a Mexican lasagna of sorts, from Carla Muñoz, a roommate from my Brooklyn days. (I owe a lot to Carla—she broadened my tequila drinking experience from just silver to reposado (rested) and añejo (aged), and introduced me to the joys of freezing homemade mole, which can be resuscitated with a little water for an instant sauce beyond compare.)

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This is Georgia Cone’s family recipe for Spanakorizo me Kotopoulo, a hearty one-pot chicken-and-rice dish evolved from the simpler, vegetarian Spanakorizo, or Spinach and Rice Pilaf. To make this version, you begin by browning chicken pieces and then proceed with the recipe as if making Spinach and Rice Pilaf, swapping the water or vegetable broth out for chicken broth for a richer pilaf.

Georgia’s family likes to use converted rice for pilafs; she says that it holds up better after longer cooking times. For many years I’d thought converted rice was some sort of instant rice. Far from it. Converted rice has been parboiled and then toasted, which, despite it being partially precooked, makes it very hard—making it take longer to cook than regular rice, and hold its shape. (more…)