On the Table

Story and Spirito di contraddizione was one of the epithets my mother would use in reference to me. I tend to do the opposite of what I am told. I refuse to buy red things and chocolates on Valentine’s Day, but this year I spent the days leading to the celebration of the patron saint […]

When I was 16 and had my learner’s permit, my father conscripted me to drive him to a mine site several hours into the Chiricahua Mountains. We left Tucson at 5 a.m. and had breakfast around 7 at a truck stop in Wilcox. For the first time in my life, I could order anything I […]

Fish has always had one problem in American cuisine: Americans don’t much like it, except battered and fried. Prior to the Age Of Sushi, you pretty much had to go to a fish restaurant to get anything except fish and chips. Not counting shrimp, which we adore (the longest lines in Vegas buffets are for […]

I immediately recognize myself in the little girl dressed as Snow White. I also identify my best friend, in an elegant kimono. I can actually recognize all our costumed classmates. A bit to my surprise, their first names and almost all of their last names travel effortlessly from a remote corner of my memory to […]

For nine weeks during the summer of 1962 I was in northern New Mexico, on a fellowship to the Santa Fe Opera. In Santa Fe I was introduced to a new kind of Mexican-American food; it was the first since my childhood in Southern Arizona, which had been limited to the tapatio cuisine of Sonora. […]

Back in June, Journal publisher Judy Hodgson took a stroll down cookbook memory lane in this space. Her story about a meal she’d made for her husband’s birthday touched on favorite recipes and their sources, in particular her worn-out copy of The Silver Palate Cookbook (held together with rubber bands) and The Playboy Gourmet, a […]

I open my eyes, smell onion cooking in olive oil and immediately know two things: I am awake and it is Sunday morning. It is the day and time when my mother makes the tomato and meat sauce that she will then use to season pasta for several days. I know this sounds like a […]

A pox on all your damned pasteurized cheeses! There, I’ve said it! I am now the enemy of American cheesemakers, and you will doubtless hear from them in response to this column. Well, after all, they are colleagues and friends. But just as significantly, they profit from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s delusion that […]

"There is no ‘American cuisine’?" inquired Nero Wolfe. "Have you eaten Maryland terrapin stewed with butter and chicken broth and Bourbon?" "No." "Have you eaten a planked porterhouse steak, two inches thick, charred on the outside, but surrendering hot > red juice under the knife, escorted by thick slices of fresh King Bolete mushrooms faintly […]

"Never eat chocolate without bread, young lady!…" And in two minutes my mouth was full of fresh bread, and melting chocolate… one of the most satisfying things I have ever eaten. — MFK Fisher, Serve It Forth Bread and chocolate is one of the most satisfying things I have ever eaten. However, unlike Ms. Fisher, […]

When Brad Bird’s Pixar/Disney animated film Ratatouille was released last summer, we were overwhelmed with buzz. Seldom has any movie gotten so unanimous a lovefest: The online movie review site Rotten Tomatoes gave it a critical 97 percent, with an audience rating of 100 percent. Even in the food world, there was a passionate response. […]