Food Features

Picture an enormous Pop-Tart, bursting with juicy summer berries and encased in a flaky scratch-made crust. Perhaps it has a drizzle of lemon laced icing if you’re feeling fancy. This is slab pie at its finest – a rustic and ever-changeable creation that feeds a crowd with minimal fuss. Baked in a rimmed 10-inch by […]

Juneteenth, a commemoration of the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the U.S., is a day rich in traditions. This celebration provides opportunities for community bonding, education and remembrance, ensuring that the spirit and significance of Juneteenth are passed on to future generations. Central to these celebrations are elaborate feasts where families and communities gather […]

Hooray for picnic season! From impromptu backyard lunches to outdoor concert series, excuses to stretch out on a grassy lawn abound. Enter what I affectionately refer to as “picnic salads” – that adaptable category of recipes that, while they contain little to no lettuce, yet are still included in the salad realm. Think pasta salad, […]

Having spent the past winter in semi-hibernation, I’ve returned to my job as a chef at Caprae Restaurant at Prairie Fruits Farm and Creamery in Champaign. I am once again living in my converted school bus next to the goat barn. I hadn’t planned on being here again. Last fall, I declared, as I have […]

There are many things that I grow well on my rambling little homestead but sadly, rhubarb just isn’t one of them. Even my green-thumbed great-grandfather who lived here before me had trouble getting a rhubarb plant to take hold. It’s not that rhubarb is a particularly difficult plant to cultivate – I know many people […]

On the reality TV show Kitchen Nightmares, renowned British chef Gordon Ramsay visited struggling restaurants as a troubleshooter and tried to turn them around. Ramsay would often order crabcakes because they are a simple dish that could be a reliable indicator of a restaurant’s food quality and cooking standards. He could tell if the restaurant […]

It seems like only days ago that I was gingerly plucking a single leaf from each little lettuce seedling in my garden, hoping to gather enough to put a salad on the dinner table. Since then they’ve rapidly grown into generous, lush plants, each large enough to make a meal on its own. I don’t […]

Our little house has a smallish kitchen, but thankfully it has a door that opens to a staircase leading to a dry basement, which I’ve turned into a giant pantry. My wife recently questioned why I keep the baking soda in the cabinet next to the stove instead of in the basement pantry with the […]

Erbazzone is essentially a rustic tart filled with savory greens and cheese, with variations found throughout the gastronomically rich region of Emilio-Romagna in northern Italy. A celebration of early spring produce, similar dishes such as Greece’s famous spanakopita can be found throughout Italy and the Mediterranean with varying types of vegetables and herbs, cheese and […]

Miso has been on my mind a lot lately. I just taught a fermentation class at Lincoln Land Community College and demonstrated how to make miso. Then, this week, I read that astronauts aboard the International Space Station successfully made miso in space. So today’s column will be all about miso and its most well-known […]

For better or worse, travel and snacking seem inextricably linked, at least in my family. The selection and preparation of munchies for the road is its own sort of fun. Normal dietary standards are effectively abandoned in favor of everyone’s favorite “sometimes foods” such as sugary cereals and spicy chips. In the past these have […]

In the American South, there’s an old saying: “We go together like shrimp and grits.” Shrimp and grits is a classic Southern dish now found on many menus across the U.S. Its origins are rooted in the Gullah Geechee culture of the coastal Carolinas. The Gullah are descendants of enslaved Africans. Shrimp and grits was […]