It's our annual holiday show, and we've assembled a team of experts on cooking, entertaining, and gift giving. Sally Schneider, author of A New Way to Cook, has entertaining wrapped up with three easy menus and recipes guaranteed to wow your guests. Sally's food tastes great, it's stylish, it's healthy—it's how we want to eat now.
Diana Kennedy, the British woman who introduced America to authentic Mexican cooking and started our love affair with the chile pepper, joins us this week to share the Mexico she knows so well. Diana's latest book,The Essential Cuisines of Mexico, is a treasure. So is her recipe for tortillas filled with mushrooms Empanadas De Hongos.
It's our annual Thanksgiving show and we're celebrating with one of America's most beloved authors: poet, novelist, and screenwriter Jim Harrison. You may remember him from Legends of the Fall. We'll be talking with Jim about food and its role in our lives, a subject he covers with passion and wit in his book, The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand.
This week we'll meet the family responsible for the modern-day espresso machine. Dr. Ernesto Illy, head of the family's coffee dynasty in Italy, explains Italy's coffee culture and tells us what a really fine cup of espresso should taste like.
We're traveling and eating in Spain this week with journalist Anya Von Bremzen. Anya says Spain is the most exciting place in Europe to eat these days. The chefs there are rethinking the very foundations of food and a culinary revolution is happening. Along the way we'll stop off in Bilbao to visit the new Guggenheim Museum, the site of an architectural revolution.
This week we meet Bob Giraldi, producer and director of the new film Dinner Rush. This movie, about a night in a happening New York City restaurant of the moment, captures the frantic trendiness and atrocious pressure that drives so many places these days. It's no warm and fuzzy Babette's Feast. Bob leaves us with his mother Minnie's recipe for Baked Ziti with Ricotta, perfect for Sunday dinner.
This week it's high drama and intrigue from the candy aisle as our guest, Joel Glenn Brenner, former Washington Post reporter and author of The Emperors of Chocolate, takes us into the highly secretive and cutthroat world of America's corporate candy giants, Mars, Inc. and Hershey Foods. It's a revealing expose that may leave you looking at Kit-Kat's and M & M's in a different light.
Do you ever wonder whom Lynne, Julia Child, and other pros in the food business turn to when they're stumped with a culinary question? They call our guest, food scientist Shirley Corriher, author of CookWise. Shirley's unique ability to translate complex food chemistry into simple language, combined with her natural warmth and sense of humor, make her a favorite with our listeners. Try her wonderful recipe for Mixed Greens with Walnuts—it's no ordinary salad.
We say, forget martinis—what we want now is a summery American vermouth, perfectly chilled, straight up and just right for lazy-day sipping. California winemaker Andrew Quady, one of the country's vermouth pioneers, introduces us to Vya Extra-Dry Vermouth, a fresh and vibrant wine, delicious solo or paired with spicy-sweet foods.
It's a bargain hunter's guide to the Napa Valley wine country this week with valley insider Antonia Allegra, author of Napa Valley: The Ultimate Winery Guide. Antonia assures us we don't have to cash in the IRA and take out a bank loan to visit this pricey destination. She takes us where the locals go for superb budget dining, to a winery offering free classes, and shares her sources for good wines at reasonable prices. Would you believe bottles for less than $7? Tune in and we'll tell you where to find them.