This Week's Episode

Hosted by Lynne Rossetto Kasper

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Andrea's Turnip Soup - Andrea Reusing's Key 3, Claudia Kolker on monthly rice, Elaine Sciolino on peas, Sandor Katz on kombucha.

Lynne Rossetto Kasper

Lynne Rossetto Kasper has won numerous awards as host of "The Splendid Table," including two James Beard Foundation Awards (1998, 2008) for Best National Radio Show on Food, three Clarion Awards (2007, 2008, 2009) from Women in Communication and a Gracie Allen Award in 2000 for Best Syndicated Talk Show. Lynne is a respected authority on food, having published three bestselling books: The Splendid Table, The Italian Country Table and The Splendid Table's How To Eat Supper, which was co-authored with producer Sally Swift in 2008. Lynne's syndicated column, "How To Eat Supper," appears in 700 newspapers. "The Splendid Table" can be heard on more than 200 public radio stations nationwide.

Content By This Author

Farming as a business: It's as much about marketing as growing

The Intervale Center is a school for potential farmers -- and far more. Based in Burlington, Vt.., Intervale prepares farmers to thrive on and off the fields.

Mario Batali guest-edits Food & Wine, ends up in bathtub

Mario Batali served as Food & Wine’s first-ever guest editor for the April 2013 issue. Batali and Dana Cowin, editor in chief of Food & Wine, reveal what goes on behind the scenes at the magazine.

What to do with the radish?

One vegetable in particular never gets used up in the refrigerator: the radish. Deborah Madison, author of Vegetable Literacy, shares some new ideas for the often overlooked vegetable.

Beans: Adding nitrogen in your garden, options in your marriage

Author Crescent Dragonwagon praises the nutrient value that beans bring to soil, and she brings us a melting recipe that she says earned her a marriage proposal.

Versatile Madeira is dry or sweet, young or old, always unspoilable

Madeira is a forgotten gem of a wine: overlooked, maybe under-priced. Wine critic Patrick Comiskey, a writer for Wine & Spirits Magazine, recently returned from a trip to the island of Madeira.

The roots of Southern flavor run deep in Chicago

During the Great Migration in the 1920s, many African american families left the Mississippi River delta in search of a better life further north. When they settled in Chicago, they also brought a love of great Southern food.

Buckwheat not dead: Healthy grain can make earthy dessert

People have a tendency to assume that just because something is good for you, it has to taste bad. But every now and then a blast from the past can bring a bland dish full circle.

Five Flavor China Noodles

Branching out: Wildcrafters use pine, firs to spruce up old recipes

Have you had any pine meringue pie lately? Nova Kim is one of the people who’s supplying chefs with -- and training them on -- wildcrafted ingredients such as pine and spruce.

DIY rice wine needs one enigmatic ingredient. Good luck finding it

Harold McGee, the author of Keys to Good Cooking, is an expert on the chemistry behind food and cooking. McGee recently made his first trip to China, where he learned more about rice wine.

Why do we eat meat? Tracing the evolutionary history

Briana Pobiner questions meat eating, but not in the way that you may think. She is a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History who travels the globe investigating how and what our cavemen ancestors ate.

Documenting Jiro Ono's quest for the perfect sushi

A quiet and fascinating documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi follows Jiro Ono, considered to be the finest sushi maker in the world. Filmmaker David Gelb shadowed Ono as he worked with his son and talked about finding perfection in sushi above everything else.

Follow your nose: Discovering a city’s smellscape

Have you ever sniffed your way around town on a smell tour? Victoria Henshaw, a research associate at the University of Manchester, researches the role of smell in urban design and leads smell tours of cities.

Don't judge tofu by the vacuum-packed variety. Make it fresh

Tofu is a versatile ingredient. As a protein substitute it can make a dish explode with umami. Andrea Nguyen, author of Asian Tofu, guides us through the process of making tofu from scratch in your very own kitchen, which isn't so different from homemade cheese.

Ten picks for spring seeds

This may be the year for you to start a small garden of your own, be it on a windowsill or in a shared plot. Renee Shepherd, creator of Renee’s Garden and a pioneer in finding the choicest produce from around the world, shares her picks for spring seeds.

Blind taste-testing soy sauces: Lynne picks a winner

Soy sauce is one of the things you've got to have in your kitchen arsenal. It provides the flavor of umami, an essential component of many Asian dishes. But not all soy sauces are created equal. So we decided to put five national brands to the test.

The clever cook keeps the broth for herself when poaching beef

Eggs, chicken, salmon, these are all things that come to mind when one thinks of the technique of poaching. But, as Dorie Greenspan sees it, the most elegant way to enjoy a nice cut of red meat is to infuse the beef with the flavors of a broth by using this very method.

Polenta Hiding Greens and Mozzarella

Photographer takes voyeuristic peek inside refrigerators

Would you let someone come into your house and photograph your refrigerator? Weird, right? But also pretty engaging. I mean, talk about feeling like you're peeping at something you shouldn't. Photographer Mark Menjivar takes those shots.

Garlic Red Wine Pan Sauce

The politics of food on the campaign trail

A candidate running for the White House sneezes and CNN brings in a handkerchief analyst. One area of campaigning has been blithely unanalyzed until now -- food. Every politician uses food to stump. Frederick Douglass Opie, professor of history and foodways at Babson College, digs in.

The lowdown on low-alcohol wines

Low-alcohol wines are making a comeback in the U.S., and wine and food writer Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl suggests some of these "quieter" wines to try.

Why the high menu price? Many farmhands touch each oyster

Erin Byers Murray quit her job writing about food to farm oysters in Massachusetts. She shares her experience in Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farm.

Simple seduction in three courses

Forget what your mother told you about eating with your fingers. If romance is your intent, this is the only way to go. In the best of all possible worlds, you'll prime all your senses from the first moment the two of you come together.

Homemade Greek Yogurt

Nigella Lawson dishes on ABC’s cooking show, The Taste

Nigella Lawson is a judge on and a producer of ABC’s primetime cooking competition show, The Taste. She shares why she champions home cooking, what she likes about blind tasting, and more about the show’s “shouty” boys.

Not another teen romance: Nigella Lawson on falling in love with Italy

At 17, Nigella Lawson fell in love -- with Italy. The love affair turned out to be more than a just another teen romance. Decades later, the author of Nigellissima shares her stories about the country and its food.

How to make Southern biscuits

The Southern biscuit is a separating-the-men-from-the-boys achievement. Nathalie Dupree, one of the queens of Southern cooking and co-author of Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking, shares her secrets.

Answering the question, 'Where do chefs eat?'

Have you ever wondered where chefs eat when they aren’t in their own kitchen? From cheap to expensive, from breakfast to late night, from neighborhood joints to one-of-a-kind restaurants, Where Chefs Eat by Joe Warwick lists more than 2,500 places from 400 chefs around the world.

Nigella Lawson refuses to be airbrushed into a 'plastic creation'

After a promotional photoshoot for ABC's primetime cooking show The Taste, Nigella Lawson blogged about a minor spat with the program's marketing department, in which she refused to allow her body shape to be altered in post-production.