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| FOOD ACROSS AMERICA: Salt Lake City is a sweet town—friendly, easygoing and fiercely fond of sugar. Food & Wine SUPERCHEFS' BEST WINE BAR RECIPES The next step in the evolution of the American wine bar: star chefs making great food. Three big international talents—Daniel Boulud, Tony Mantuano and Luke Mangan—divulge their tastiest recipes. Food & Wine MASTER COOK: Easy, Elegant Party Desserts Michel Richard of Washington, DC’s Citronelle is heartbroken when diners don’t leave room for dessert. Food & Wine WELL-BEING: Healthy Dishes That Won’t Weigh You Down Heavy meals and trapeze workouts don’t go so well together. Amateur aerialist Stéphane Vivier, a Napa winemaker, has mastered light, healthy cooking. Food & Wine MASTER COOK: Chefs' $30 Challenge Many chefs would sooner part with their sharpest knife than share the names of their suppliers; the first secret to good cooking, after all, is securing the finest ingredients. But during the past year, there’s been a surge of new market-restaurants, in which chefs sell the very ingredients they serve. The one drawback: These epicurean markets can be expensive. Food & Wine GIFTS WE LOVE TO GIVE: Meyer Lemon Marmalade F&W editors share their favorite recipes for irresistible homemade holiday gifts— and promise these presents won’t sit untouched on the shelf until next year Food & Wine BEST RESTAURANT DISHES OF 2007 Duck with Mustard Spaetzle, Hen of the Wood; Waterbury, VT. Food & Wine MASTER COOK: How to Cook with Wine Jean-Georges Vongerichten is talking to me on his iPhone. He's about to take off for Tokyo or Mexico City, it's not entirely clear which; he's speaking softly and the background noise makes it hard to hear him. But the chef's voice comes through clearly when he gets to the subject of cooking with wine. Food & Wine F&W ECO-EPICUREAN AWARDS: Revolution Foods Joining a growing movement led by Alice Waters and other culinary luminaries to bring healthier lunches to schools, California-based Revolution Foods is proving that better food does not have to cost more. Food & Wine F&W ECO-EPICUREAN AWARDS: Vivavi Furniture From a project that's converting lawns into vegetable gardens to a venture aimed at improving the quality of public-school lunches, the winners of F&W's first-ever Eco-Epicurean Awards are all busy making the world a better—and more delicious—place. Food & Wine CHEF'S PALETTE Graham Elliot Bowles—F&W Best New Chef, art lover and idea omnivore—reveals how his favorite paintings translate to the plate. Food & Wine FOOD ACROSS AMERICA: In the past five years, there’s been a thrilling change in the American culinary landscape. Major metropolitan areas like New York and San Francisco no longer have a monopoly on innovative chefs, food artisans, mixologists and other talents. Now these men and women are as likely to turn up in smaller cities like Portland, Maine; Providence, Rhode Island; and Burlington, Vermont. Food & Wine NEW WINE SHOPS FOR FOODIES If I was looking for a cool party in L.A. where I didn't need an invitation, I'd go straight to Silverlake Wine. Food & Wine GO WITH THE GRAIN CSA members can scratch another item off their grocery lists: grains. Gourmet FLOUR POWERS Meet Kazuma Azuma, protagonist of Yakitate!! Japan, one of that country's most popular comic book series. In the opening panels, young Kazuma prepares to leave his family's rice farm to study baking in Tokyo, where he auditions for a job at a prestigious bakery. Struggling to further the cause of good bread in a country of rice lovers, Kazuma deploys his secret weapons: Hands of the Sun, preternaturally warm palms which create breads of superlative flavor and crumb. Saveur I LEFT MY FRIDGE IN SAN FRANCISCO: VERSE 2
Talking snacks with legendary baseball broadcaster Jon Miller, Voice of the San Francisco Giants.
Edible San Francisco GOOD NOSE At Cliff Lede Vineyards in the Napa Valley, winemaker Michelle Edwards can’t stop talking about her new apprentice, Louisa Belle. Edwards and Belle are collaborating on an unlikely experiment to eliminate “corked” wine. Belle—a native Californian with a sophisticated and highly acute sense of smell—can sniff out TCA-afflicted corks. She can’t say much about them, though: Louisa Belle is a dog. Saveur I LEFT MY FRIDGE IN SAN FRANCISCO
What better way to get acquainted with some of the beloved
residents of the City by the Bay than through the contents of their
refrigerators? San Francisco Ballet star Muriel Maffre talks about how she savors the city's gustatory offerings.
Edible San Francisco READING, WRITING & WINNOWING WHEAT Thanks to world-renowned chef Alice Waters, the kids in one California school went from eating fast-food lunches on a crumbling blacktop to growing and preparing their own fresh-food feasts. Could this idea help stave off a national obesity epidemic? Diabetes Forecast GOOGLE GRUB GOES LOCAL Their company may be known for its wide-reaching internet searches, but the employees at Google are going local for lunch. Gourmet GREENLEAF PRODUCE
You’ll never see the name GreenLeaf on Bay Area menus. But for a surprising number of local chefs in search of the freshest produce and most exotic ingredients, seasonal cuisine would be impossible without the efforts of GreenLeaf Produce, one of the region’s preeminent produce distributors.
Edible San Francisco ALLSTAR ORGANICS
Forget Indiana Jones. Lewis and Clark? Could’ve been the name of a department store. If it’s adventurous explorers you’re after, you need to see Brown and Jacobson. The tomatoes, squash, melons and pumpkins the couple grow on just under 11 acres of farmland in Marin County are the fruits of true daring.
Edible San Francisco THE RAW BAR Café Gratitude in San Francisco could well be Cheers for the raw food set. Belly up to the sizeable bar and drown your sorrows in an organic beer, or a raw chocolate and almond milk smoothie. After you've come a few times, everybody may well know your name. Edible San Francisco NO STARVING ARTISTS Through tortoiseshell glasses, Regina Maksutova's blue eyes focused on an orange shell filled with cranberry preserves as she positioned it next to a roast duckling, just so. "Tak, Emilechka, take it to the table," she instructed me in her lilting Russian accent. Saveur BUILDING A BETTER BREAD In a Hyattsville warehouse with tall ceilings and plenty of light, an experiment has been quietly underway since April to bring more good bread to Washington. The Washington Post SALMON WITH HIGH MARKS Even salmon have a season, and this is it. Beginning in late April, wild salmon start trips upstream to lay their eggs, and from now through September, Pacific fishermen will keep busy pursuing the prized coho, king and Copper River varieties. Happily, wild salmon season coincides with Washington's pre-mosquito grilling season. But before condemning such prize catches to possibly rusty grills (and rusty grill cooks), we asked Michel Richard, one of Washington's four-star chefs, for help in kicking off the season. The Washington Post THE CLANDESTINE CHEF: Fred DeFilippo was about to quit the cooking profession altogether when he got the call. After years of working in hotels and restaurants around upstate New York, the chef was tired of the long hours. He had heard of "fantasy 9-to-5 jobs" -- corporate work in which chefs got paid handsomely to cook lunch for top executives. He consulted his alma mater, the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. -- known in culinary circles as "the CIA" -- about such a position. Alumni office staff members thought DeFilippo would be perfect for a corporate job in Northern Virginia. They just didn't say which corporation. The Washington Post CHEF'S CHALLENGE: It's 1 a.m. at the 24-hour Giant in White Oak. The only customers: a construction crew, a few stragglers and Frank Morales, head chef of Zola in Washington's Penn Quarter. The Washington Post FERIAL FEASTING It was the end of a long Sunday. The morning had gone to housecleaning, the afternoon to laundry. I was dogtired and shiftless about cooking dinner. It was nearing six, and all we had in the fridge were two bits of cooked chicken breast. And I was in no mood for cold chicken.December 2004 THE COUNT & I She was just out of college, with a vague fantasy about one day becoming a chef. Suddenly, this young American was living in a grand chateau, preparing just-killed duck for a bunch of French aristocrats. Gourmet Magazine LIFE OF THE PARTY: Washingtonian Magazine COOK SMARTER: When I was little, I so loved tuna noodles -- that comforting combination of macaroni, tuna and cheddar cheese -- that my mother taught me the recipe. Her first rule of cooking, besides no little fingers on the chopping boards, was to assemble everything ahead of time. That way, we wouldn't be halfway through a recipe before discovering we were out of a key ingredient. The Washington Post GOING PLACES: Sure, the label on that roaster at your supermarket says free-roaming, but how can you be sure your chick lived 100 percent uncooped? By going straight to the source -- and we don't mean a roadside stand. Less than an hour outside the District, you'll find small farms that will sell you eggs from hens pecking at the grass by your feet, berries only yards from where they grew, or even fresh, exotic meats like bison. The Washington Post THE EXPERT: A DC Maitre d' on the art of getting a reservation: "I started hosting in 1988, at the Occidental Restaurant. I'm a country girl from Ohio, so I was intimidated by the restaurant itself, not to mention all the famous customers. Sometimes I had trouble getting my work done, I was so starstruck. Now I have pictures on my wall at home of Quincy Jones and LL Cool J. I know people from all over D.C., and when I go home, I always have good stories." The Washington Post CHEFS WHO SALT EARLY IF NOT OFTEN
Restaurant chefs and home cooks alike can now choose from a world of salt, including Hawaiian black lava salt, gray fleur de sel de Guérande from Brittany, Peruvian pink salt and a host of other varieties that have become available in the last few years.
"Salt is the new olive oil," said Thomas Keller, the chef of the French Laundry in Yountville, Calif., and the new Per Se in the Time Warner Center in Manhattan.
The New York Times THE CHEF'S CHALLENGE: Susan McCreight Lindeborg
Professional chefs are the world's greatest control freaks. Confronted with the hurdles of every restaurant day, chefs require exacting standards and an indefatigable will to get their way. But when they are taken out of their native environment, can their wills overcome the limits of normal life? Can they make something good yet cheap for a family dinner?
"To do simple, straightforward food is the most difficult thing in the world," Susan McCreight Lindeborg said. "It's very hard for me to do home cooking. I don't ever give up on it, but I end up cooking in a restaurant style all the time."
The Washington Post GATHERINGS: Decorate Your Own Doughnuts
Mmm, doughnuts. Krispy Kreme is just down Route 1, but homemade ones are even closer. So surprise your friends with a little doughnut-decorating party.
The Washington Post THE CHEF'S CHALLENGE: Kazuhiro Okochi In his quest to spend only $10 on a meal for a family of four, Kaz Okochi has found Virginia's least expensive celery. The Washington Post THE EXPERT: Kazuhiro Okochi Washington's premier sushi chef on how to judge the quality of supermarket sushi. The Washington Post THE EXPERT: Esther Lee Meet Washington's Asian-market super snack shopper: "They provide a nice change from your standard American junk food. Most of the stuff was inspired by American exports but tweaked to suit Asian tastes -- so the cuttlefish crackers taste a lot like Doritos, and the Yan Yan choco snacks are sort of like American cheese-and-cracker kits, only with sesame sticks and a chocolate spread that reminds me of Nutella." The Washington Post THE CHEF'S CHALLENGE: Mark Furstenberg The glazed carrots rest in the skillet on the stovetop, browned, sweet, soft. Individual apple tarts bake in the oven, heaps of buttered Granny Smith apples sliced and nested on flaky rounds of dough. But all is not well in the home kitchen of Mark Furstenberg.
The Washington Post LIFE ON THE LINE  On any given night in the kitchens of Washington's finer restaurants, a half-dozen bodies in white will be scurrying with sizzling hot pans from the stove to the counter and back. But neither the head chef -- whose name is on the menu -- nor his second in command, the sous chef, will be counted among them.These are the line cooks. When you go out to eat, these are the people who actually cook your food. "It doesn't matter what the chef does. It doesn't matter what the waiter does. When it comes to a restaurant's success," Joe Raffa, the sous-chef at Alexandria's Majestic Cafe, says bluntly. "Everything comes down to the line cook." The Washington Post GIZMOS, GADGETS, TOOLS AND TONGS Looking for the perfect gift for the cook in your life? Or a stocking stuffer for the culinary-minded colleague in your office? Wherever you turn, there are racks of tools and gadgets, perfect devices to whip up a sauce or zest a lemon. Which are the best? Seven local chefs share with us some of their favorite tools.The Washington Post
WHERE TO BUY FRESH FISH How a home cook can find fish as good as that served by the best restaurants. Plus a guide to the best fish stores and advice on buying the freshest fish.
Washingtonian September 2002 EATING IN COMFORT A historic restaurant shuttered for more than twenty years, the Majestic Cafe in Alexandria, Virginia, is buzzing once again. Thanks to a $1 million renovation, the fifty-three-year-old establishment presents a hearty dose of Americana at its best.
Town & Country TAKING THE CHEF'S CHALLENGE: Peter Pastan  Restaurant chefs compete for all sorts of honors: James Beard awards, prized reviews, national ratings. When we dine out, we pay them many times more than what a home meal might cost, to enjoy food cooked by the best staffs using the best ingredients.Could these chefs make something great on a mere mortal budget? Alone, at home, with grocery store ingredients? Peter Pastan thinks so; Pastan has had it in his head that the only way to test a chef's ability is to see how he works at home. I have cooked at Pastan's restaurant, Obelisk at Dupont Circle, for two years. So I decided to take him up on his challenge. I gave him $10 to cook a meal for a family of four.
The Washington Post BETTER BUTTER So the only way to have butter is to make it yourself.Where I work, we make about seven pounds of butter every day from fresh cream, two gallons of it, which we buy from a dairy in Delaware. Every morning, the first cook to arrive, as soon as she's got her apron on, puts two aprons over the Hobart mixer as a shroud to protect the rest of the kitchen from the showers of buttermilk which she is about to unleash.
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