Sublime

In the university program where I was supposed to be emancipating myself from the kitchen, preparing myself to go back to New York having at least answered the question of my own potential, the novelty and thrill had thoroughly worn off. I could not find the fun or the urgency in the eventless and physically idle academic life. It was so lethargic

Rule: Avoid sweet, starchy desserts, as well as fruits, after large meals of protein or carbohydrates.

wok-frying remains the basic Chinese cooking technique, a cuisine born of fuel poverty. Every meal had to be founded on frugal calculations about how to extract the maximum taste from the minimum input of energy. ‘Les Rosbifs’ had no such worries. The roast beef of England reflected our densely wooded landscape, and the fact that we had plenty of g

For half my life I never stopped to wonder, how much was magic? How much was plunder?

The Michelin stars, stylized rosettes that are called “macaroons” by the pros of the industry, are the gold medals of kitchen Olympics. They are awarded, confirmed, or withdrawn every year. Winning a star can lift a young chef from obscurity overnight, giving him (or, less frequently, her) a reputation that extends to wherever the guide is sold and

The DIY food movement that swept America, à la Brooklyn and Portland, never made it to Paris, because Parisians are content to leave making sausages, cheese, and beer; raising chickens; and even baking macarons to the pros. Traditionally in France, people who became bread bakers or worked in butcher shops started working in their trades when they w

cooking is probably the most important piece of cultural know-how that has shaped our digestive system. The primatologist Richard Wrangham has persuasively argued that cooking (and therefore fire) has played a crucial role in human evolution. Richard and his collaborators laid out how cooking, if done properly, does an immense amount of digestion f

Color: the vibrant red, the shades of green. Texture: the crunchy vegetable, the soft sponge of the lobster, the pudding-ness of the panna cotta. And volume: the undeniable three-dimensionality of a lobster barge with a mast and a crow’s nest.