Does the world really need another aloo gobi recipe? Not really. Does it need one from a 40-something white man from the American South? Definitely not. Why write this up then? Because I’ve just been completely disappointed by every recipe I’ve seen for this beautiful potato and cauliflower dish. For…

Cumin seeds appear frequently in my kitchen. They are essential to much Indian cuisine as well as Hispanic foods. Black bean soup benefits from a healthy dose of the ground seeds and chili is positively insipid without them. I am a proponent of using toasted cumin in heartier foods as…

This is a reprint of a reprint of an article I wrote years ago on the book Tartine Bread. I keep returning to it because it reminds me of the prehistoric nature of bread baking. It has not been surprising to me that so many have returned to baking bread…

I have long been fascinated by the hugely important yet largely unsung process of nixtamalization. It looms large in culinary history and has immense anthropological significance. With the recent COVID-19 quarantine I’ve finally had some time to experiment with it. Nixtamalization is the process of treating corn (maize) with hydroxide…