Mexican food is deeply complex, rich food that employs unusual pairings and exotic flavors, and, for me, it is profoundly, almost spiritually, satisfying. When I was in college, I studied for a semester in Puebla, where the specialty was mole poblano, a chocolate and chili sauce that is often served on poultry. I thought it would be disgusting, but it was startlingly different from anything I had ever eaten before, like food from another planet. I loved the experience of […]
Thanks to all of you who sent in questions to America’s Table this month – there were hundreds! Many of the questions were about apples, and I’d like to try to briefly answer as many of those as I can. The best apples for baking are those that don’t disintegrate during cooking, and that have a balance of sweetness and tartness. My favorite eating apple is a McIntosh, with its white interior and shiny red-and-green peel, but it is not […]
One of my favorite foods has always been a perfect caramel apple. The crunch of a tart apple underneath velvety caramel, studded with crushed peanuts – it’s a flavor combination for the ages. Another thing I love is little food. Any entrée-sized portion that can be served in a single mouthful is always preferable to me for some strange reason – perhaps from my days playing with my girls’ dollhouses and having American Girl Doll-sized tea parties, when anything in […]
I grew up on a grape farm in northeastern Ohio. It was an idyllic place with orchards and vineyards, green woods to play in, and a fishing pond ringed with wild roses. We lived on the farm with my grandmother until I was five, while my parents saved up to build their own house down the road. My grandmother used to make this soup whenever we had fresh dill in the garden. It was her variation on potato soup, which […]
Sending kids off to college can be a big wrench for parents, even when they’ve been heading off to school on their own for some time. I would get so accustomed to our girls being home during the summer that it was hard to re-adjust to the empty house every September. My way of coping with missing them, until my husband and I got used to being a couple again, was to send packages of goodies from home. This started […]
