How the Air Fryer Crisped Its Way Into America’s Heart Though the device is sold as a way to make foods crunchy without deep-frying, home cooks have put it to countless other uses — and fed a billion-dollar business. By CHRISTINA MORALES
Tomato and White Bean Soup With Lots of Garlic By Emily Weinstein
COOKING CLASS A Soup That Roxane Gay Actually Enjoys Soups aren’t always the author’s thing. But this tomato one, especially when paired with a grilled cheese sandwich, is just that good.
Mayonnaise on one side of the sandwich gives it “that really nice golden, toasted look,” Gay says. By NANCY COLEMAN
Vegetable Soups for the Soul These three vegetable-dense soups are the perfect antidote to January’s dreariness. By TEJAL RAO
A French 75 for Everyone Thanks to a deeply flavored citrus shrub, this classic cocktail can be adapted for those who are drinking, want something lighter, or who are fully abstaining from alcohol.
Let these no-A.B.V., low-A.B.V. and classic takes on French 75s be the stars of your next cocktail hour. By Rebekah Peppler
CULINARY ARTS The Coffee Maker James Hoffmann is one of the most followed men in caffeine. Here’s an illustrated look at how he became an expert. By Rachel WhartonIllustrations by Koren Shadmi
FRONT BURNER A Biography About Argentina’s Most Famous Red Grape “Malbec Mon Amour,” written by two directors at the Bodega Catena Zapata winery in Mendoza, tells the story of a grape that likes to travel.
“Malbec Mon Amour” by Laura Catena and Alejandro Vigil (Catapulta Editores, $24.99). By FLORENCE FABRICANT
Ed Schoenfeld in 2012. In New York in the 1970s and ’80s, he became a highly visible interpreter and spokesman for the food culture of China, terra incognita for most Americans at the time. By William Grimes
In Nikiski, Alaska, an educational moose hunt brought students of Jesse Bjorkman’s outdoor-explorations class face to face with their food. By Victoria Petersen
Wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano being stored near Parma, Italy. By Alexis Benveniste
A GOOD APPETITE Chili, Biscuits and All, in One Pan This dish, spicy and studded with ground turkey, doesn’t need hours of simmering. It’s weeknight fast.
Golden cornmeal biscuits stay tender on the bottom and crisp on the top in this easy one-pot chili recipe. By Melissa Clark
Thomas Keller Insignia series, sets ($249.95 to $1,199.95) or by the piece ($99.95 to $310), hestanculinary.com. By Florence Fabricant
FRONT BURNER The Big Cheeses From the Vineyard Prufrock, a washed-rind cheese from Grey Barn on Martha’s Vineyard, took honors at the recent World Cheese Awards.
Prufrock, right, with some of its Grey Barn cheese siblings. Prufrock, $20, dibruno.com, thegreybarnandfarm.com. By Florence Fabricant
In New Orleans, King Cake Is a Way to Make Joy The colorful cake is more than a dessert — it’s the flavor of the city. And a diverse community of bakers are adapting the Carnival specialty to their own tastes.
This king cake, from the chef Dominick Lee, has a caramelized apple filling. By KAYLA STEWART
Milk Companies Look West, Pressuring Northeast Dairy Farmers Organic milk has been a lifeline for small farms in Maine and other New England states. Now those farms are facing trouble as milk processors look to huge dairies in Western states. By MURRAY CARPENTER
Chicken Soup for the Weary Soul After another difficult year, finding joyful moments in cooking can feel impossible. But for our columnist Eric Kim, it’s a worthy resolution for the new year.
This simple golden elixir, a real panacea for life’s ailments, starts with the leftover carcass of a roasted chicken. By Eric Kim
A GOOD APPETITE Crisp-Edged Tofu Straight From Your Oven A coating of cornstarch and oil plus a long stint in a hot oven mimics the deep fryer for this tofu sheet-pan dinner.
The cornstarch draws out moisture, resulting in a crunchy, crispy tofu without frying. By MELISSA CLARK
THE POUR No-Sweat Answers to Some Basic Wine Questions Don’t let fussy protocol interfere with the pleasure of enjoying a bottle. Best practices can help, but they should never inhibit. “The first and most important thing to know about drinking wine is this: There are no rules.” By Eric Asimov
Dishes like black-eyed peas, served here with rice and salt pork, are among the foods thought to bring good luck, health and abundance. By KAYLA STEWART
Several Chicago restaurants now serve their own takes on the Italian beef sandwich, like this vegan version from Can’t Believe It’s Not Meat. By PRIYA KRISHNA
FRONT BURNER A Year of Shabbats in One Cookbook A new book from Faith Kramer looks at Jewish food around the world through the lens of the Friday night dinner.
“52 Shabbats: Friday Night Dinners Inspired by a Global Jewish Kitchen” by Faith Kramer (The Collective Book Studio, $32.50). By FLORENCE FABRICANT
WINE SCHOOL California Cabernet Beyond the Stereotypes Any wine can be legitimately criticized, but lazy generalizations obscure significant differences among places and styles. By ERIC ASIMOV
WINE SCHOOL The What and Why of Orange Wines It’s a recently popular style made with ancient techniques: whites produced using the methods for reds. Is it a passing fancy, or will it endure?
Montenidoli Vernaccia di San Gimignano Tradizionale 2019 (Artisan Wines, Norwalk, Conn.) $25
A Holiday Feast, Cooked in the Cab of a Truck Long-haul drivers are under intense pressure this season, but many will carve out the time (and the onboard space) to make steaks, turkeys and charcuterie boards. Margie Gilles has been cooking in her truck more since the start of the pandemic, and plans to do so for the holidays. Credit…Annie Mulligan for The New York Times By Priya Krishna
To Eat Oysters Better, Treat Them Like Wine The bivalves’ merroir — yes, merroir — is much like grapes’ terroir, telling a much deeper story about the place they were grown, Melissa Clark writes.
To get the best sense of oysters’ individual flavors, it’s best to eat them unadorned before adding garnishes like mignonette or cocktail sauce. By Melissa Clark
Paul and Linda McCartney with their three daughters in Rye, England, in 1976. As young parents, the couple came to believe that eating animals was unethical, and eventually reimagined the Christmas feast. By Julia Moskin
FRONT BURNER Two New Sources for Food News Whetstone, from the writer and television host Stephen Satterfield, has started a podcast and John McDonald, a co-founder of Tasting Table, has a newsletter, Broken Palate. By FLORENCE FABRICANT
THE POUR Seeing 2021 Out With a Pop, a Pour and a Fizz Nothing says “Happy New Year” quite like a bottle of bubbly. Here are six Champagnes and six sparkling wines to help you toast 2022.
Roman Kaplan at his West Side restaurant, the Russian Samovar. The writer Anatoly Naiman said encountering Russian exiles there was like having friends come back from the dead. By DAVID MARGOLICK
THE WORLD THROUGH A LENS Cultivating Olives on the Slopes of Mount Etna For millenniums, farmers and vintners in northeastern Sicily have benefited from the area’s mineral-rich soil, a result of volcanic eruptions. By MARTA GIACCONE
The Best Cookbooks of 2021 A deep dive into the world of grains, a collection of new cookie classics, unforgettable recipes from Shanghai and more, as tested by New York Cooking and the Food desk. By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Mikio Shinagawa in an undated photo outside his SoHo restaurant, Omen. As fashionable haunts in New York go, it was an unlikely candidate. By ALEX VADUKUL
Foods for Yalda include, clockwise from top: pomegranates; hogweed to sprinkle on pomegranate seeds; baslogh (soft and chewy rosewater-infused walnut sweets); ajeel (mixed nuts, seeds and dried fruit); rice cookies and watermelon. By NAZ DERAVIAN
This Seafood Stew Is Endlessly Riffable No matter what ingredients you use, this bold, briny stew from David Tanis sings alongside a radicchio-fennel salad and a grapefruit granita.
This adaptable stew takes well to a range of seafood. By DAVID TANIS
By Becky Krystal https://www.youtube.com/embed/40uw6VkWpaI
In the Mountain West, the ‘Dirty’ Soda Rush Is On With locations now numbering in the hundreds, regional soda-shop chains are spreading far beyond Utah, where they first found popularity. By VICTORIA PETERSEN
FOOD MATTERS The Humble Beginnings of Today’s Culinary Delicacies Many of our most revered dishes were perfected by those in need, then co-opted by the affluent. Is that populism at play, or just the abuse of power? By LIGAYA MISHAN, PATRICIA HEAL and MARTIN BOURNE
Sylvia Weinstock at a wine and food festival in Miami in 2014. Her clientele included Whitney Houston, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, LeBron James, Robert De Niro, Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart and various Kennedys and Kardashians. By Katharine Q. Seelye
TRILOBITES A Tool Kit to Help Scientists Find the Ultimate Chickpea A major plant genome sequencing effort may offer a path to breeding more climate-resilient chickpeas, while also revealing clues to the legume’s origins. By VERONIQUE GREENWOOD
The chef Arnold Myint, in his Nashville home, making preparations for a Friendsgiving dinner. By Eric Kim
CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK A Thanksgiving History Lesson in a Handful of Corn The cornmeal that has become a staple of the holiday table reflects millenniums of work by Native Americans — a legacy that Indigenous people are trying to keep alive.
The Native people who came to the Pilgrims’ harvest feast in 1621 were Wampanoags, and the corn served was Wampanoag corn. By Pete Wells
Tola Spatula, $30 ($27 for members); One-Handed Cake Server (after Dec. 10), $12, ($10.80 for members), store.moma.org. By FLORENCE FABRICANT
Yotam Ottolenghi’s Rules for Brunch When it comes to planning a festive meal, the chef has certain specifications. This custardy butternut squash meets them all.
This meal is seasonal and comforting. By YOTAM OTTOLENGHI
A Superb Shrimp Stew Vallery Lomas’s spicy shrimp Creole delivers weekend depth of flavor in a fraction of the time.
For an untraditional binder, crushed-up rice cakes are mixed in with the shrimp for an ethereal, especially crisp result. By Melissa Clark
A GOOD APPETITE Three Hanukkah Desserts That Skip the Fryer Melissa Clark’s oil-imbued recipes, for lemon curd, chocolate cake and Greek honey cookies, are a sweet way to celebrate the holiday.
This olive oil lemon curd can be served with scones or berries, piled into a Pavlova or mounded into a tart shell. By Melissa Clark
Felicity Cloake’s festive shortbread would make an ideal gift. Christmas shortbread as made by our resident perfectionist, with a few choices of festive flavourings Felicity Cloake
Peter Buck in an undated photograph. The idea behind what became Subway stemmed from his fond memories of an Italian sandwich shop his family had patronized when he was growing up in Maine. By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
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