Food Features

Warm and cozy cocktails are an ideal way to spread holiday cheer even as temperatures drop. Most cocktails were in fact hot drinks until refrigeration became a reality, given how difficult it was to procure ice outside of winter months. What we think of today as a hot toddy likely originated in 16th century Scotland, […]

When my wife dropped me off for my first day of work at The Grey in Savannah, Georgia, and asked “How are ya feeling?” I replied, “Kinda like the first day of kindergarten.” The Grey is one of the South’s top restaurants, and its executive chef, Mashama Bailey, won the coveted James Beard Foundation’s Best […]

I love leftovers. Not simply microwaved on a plate, but as the basis for an entirely new dish. On weekends I’ll often make large batches of side dishes like rice pilaf and mashed potatoes to use later that week in quick dinners like fried rice or potato soup. If you find yourself laden with a […]

It was a cold, windy morning as we took our 40-minute ferry ride from Hilton Head to Daufuskie Island off the South Carolina coast. Daufuskie is a remote and isolated island, inhabited by only 400 people, and accessible only by boat. I was on a mission to learn and write about the culinary traditions of […]

The kitchen at Central Baptist Church will be humming once again this Thanksgiving Day. The historic downtown church has been providing turkey dinners to the Springfield community for over 35 years at its annual Feast of Plenty dinner. “The original intent was to provide a place where people could gather together – we didn’t want […]

When you live in a school bus, without the amenities of central heat or AC, you become closely aligned with the changes of the seasons. When days are long and the weather is hot, I try to keep the heat out of the bus kitchen and plan my meals around what I can cook outdoors. […]

For the past six months one of my jobs at the restaurant has been making pasta from scratch using freshly milled flour from heritage grain, and the taste is really superior. But unfortunately, many of our guests can’t tolerate gluten so I always make gluten-free alternatives using rice flour and chickpea flour. I’ve worked with […]

Humans have likely been making stews for as long as they’ve had the ability to harness fire. By definition “to stew” simply means to cook something slowly in liquid. While similar to another culinary technique called braising, the difference lies in the amount of liquid used. In a braise, just enough liquid is added to […]

The restaurant I’ve been working at serves over 200 guests a day and we go through a lot of vegetables. When the produce orders come in, our prep cook, Alberto, trims off the parts that won’t be used and transfers them into plastic boxes to be put on the shelves of the walk-in cooler. The […]

n the 150 years since the first waffle iron was patented, waffles have become a mainstay on American breakfast tables. Originally introduced to this country in the late 1600s by Dutch colonists, the very first waffle irons were two hinged plates at the end of long handles called reins that facilitated cooking over an open […]