Food & Drink

New Year’s Eve is one of those holidays that I’ve always had a hard time getting right. My better judgment has steered me away from participating in activities that would require driving around on a night when the sobriety of the other drivers is questionable. The years that we decided to have a quiet celebration […]

As a kid I never understood why grown-ups would talk about “getting through the holidays” like it was some sort of difficult trial. What could be difficult about a time filled with presents and snow days and candy canes? A lot, as it turns out. Pressure to keep the whole family happy, pressure to create […]

Cookbooks are some of the best gifts to give your food-minded friends and relatives for the holidays. Among this year’s new releases are two wildly different books that share a surprisingly common theme.Joe Beef: Surviving the Apocalypse: Another Cookbook of Sorts by David McMillan, Frederic Morin and Meredith Erickson (Alfred A. Knopf, $45). Montreal’s restaurant […]

In my last Illinois Times column I reviewed the recently published The Noma Guide to Fermentation. During the past month I have been working my way through several of its recipes. However, I’ve discovered that fermentation is more than merely following a recipe. It’s also about being a good shepherd, providing optimal conditions for microbial […]

It’s not hard to create festive party platters and gorgeous cheeseboards that will impress your guests or make you the most popular person at the office potluck. This is how I prefer to entertain whether I’m hosting just a few friends or a large group. The last time I had a dinner party it was […]

I first learned of the Danish restaurant Noma five years ago from an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown.” Bourdain had visited the restaurant and spent time hanging out with its head chef and founder Rene Redzepi. Noma was considered to be the best restaurant in the world, according to the panel of 800 international […]

Growing up, my family didn’t play around with Thanksgiving dinner. Other holidays were open to interpretation, but every year on the fourth Thursday of November we ate the exact same meal consisting of turkey roasted with butter and sage stuffed with sausage and onion dressing alongside garlicky mashed potatoes, giblet gravy, creamed spinach, succotash and […]

This past summer I received a Facebook message from my old musician friend Eric. He wrote: “You will have to meet my girlfriend Cathy … she works for a company called NuWave doing infomercials … she works with a lot of cooks and is always looking to film. I told her to send you a […]

Now that cool fall temperatures have finally arrived, my soup pot will be in regular use. We eat soup several nights a week in my house, and I honestly wouldn’t be able to feed my family made-from-scratch meals so consistently were it not for the arsenal of soups I’ve stashed away in the freezer. Most […]

For a long time, an old jar of tahini has resided in a lonely corner in the back of the fridge. It was one of those ingredients that I had purchased for one purpose only – making homemade hummus, which I rarely made. I’ve always felt that the appeal of grocery store hummus was due […]

With the onset of crisp autumn weather, I’ve been eager to retreat into my kitchen and bake. Displays of ripe autumn fruit, stacked high on tables at the market, make me want to run home and turn off the news, turn on my oven and work myself into an apple and cinnamon-fueled oblivion. At times […]