Month: December 2017

Strip Champagne down to its basics: Take out the glitzy marketing, the additives, and the pesticides, and make the farmer the producer—that’s grower Champagne. “Farmers’ fizz,” as it’s been called, is Champagne that’s made by the farmers who use their own grapes to make it. “I would only drink grower Champagne,” said sommelier Doreen Winkler. “It’s an honest product; it’s ...

Some hotels around the country are taking a page out of “Hansel & Gretel,” designing gingerbread houses and villages that look inviting enough to nibble on. No doubt, though, that the hospitality is notches above that in the Grimm Brothers’ tale. Here are some of the sweet creations. (Courtesy of Chateau on the Lake)   Candy and Cookie Village The ...

British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver was thinking big for his new Christmas cookbook. This massive compendium of recipes assembled over 17 years is hefty, at over 400 pages. The British food personality is only going to write a Christmas cookbook once, and his ambition here is to make sure you have the best Christmas ever. “Jamie Oliver’s Christmas Cookbook” ($35) ...

If you were to peer into old family notebooks in which your relatives wrote down their recipes, what would you find? What culinary treasures long lost to the past would emerge? A few years ago, Halifax-based journalist Simon Thibault discovered the repository of recipes that Rosalie, his maternal grandmother, had kept. The recipes became a connection to his Acadian roots, ...

The name of the traditional Feast of Seven Fishes may prescribe the number of fish (though families are known to make less or more), but as to the kind of fish, that’s open to interpretation. Chefs around town are putting their creative stamp on the Italian-American Christmas Eve tradition. For the first time in its five-year history, Ai Fiori will ...

Why This Recipe Works In her 1989 cookbook, “The Way to Cook,” Julia Child’s turkey recipe involved separating a raw turkey into legs and breast to ensure that both white and dark meat were roasted to perfection. Other benefits included a quicker cooking time and a small mound of rich sausage stuffing that tasted as though it had been roasted ...

Cheese Galore Front: Rush Creek Reserve; center: Fromager d’Affinois; back (L to R): Malvarosa, Stockinghall Cheddar, and Alp Blossom.(Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times) Great as a gift for cheese lovers, or on a cheese plate: creamy, buttery Fromager d’Affinois from France’s Rhône-Alpes region; Alp Blossom, a pungent, flower-studded beauty made in Austria; Malvarosa, a mild, firm sheep’s milk cheese from Spain; ...

Our favorite picks from this year’s food-related books range from the appliance-specific (slow cooker, Instant Pot) to classic cocktails to a compilation of favorite recipes from across America. “The Chef and The Slow Cooker” by Hugh Acheson. The chef and restaurateur goes old-school with his ode to the slow cooker, while promising to buy you more free time. It’s hard ...