Writer and Director Nora Ephron, author of the best-seller I Feel Bad About My Neck, joins us this week with observations on life and the American food scene, including a provocative take on how the duo of the birth control pill and Julia Child shaped the social history of the late 20th Century.
When our guest, Saveur magazine executive editor James Oseland, was 19, he spent a summer in Indonesia. He returned home but his heart and appetite stayed behind. After 23 years of exploring the region, James has written Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. He joins us for a look at an enchanting cuisine and a world of new flavors and traditions. The recipe for Beef Rendang is from his new book.
This week it's our annual Thanksgiving show. We're bringing you a line up of experts for a look at why we eat what we eat on this day. Chef Jonathan Waxman, author of A Great American Cook, tells how he and his little daughter lay out the feast. His recipe for Apple and Chicken Liver Mousse is to die for and guaranteed to keep hungry relatives at bay while the turkey cooks.
This week it's the story of an illegal fish and two ships stalking each other in the waters off Antarctica. Our guest, Bruce Knecht, author of Hooked: Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish, shares the saga of one of the longest and most dangerous sea chases in history.
This week we're off to Santa Fe for a visit at a destination restaurant that never lost its heart. After 20 years Café Pasqual still shines, the food is still dynamite, and the service is still a hoot. Our guide is the woman who makes it all happen: restaurateur Katharine Kagel. She shares a seasonal recipe—Sugar Pumpkins Filled with Vegetable Stew in Chipotle Cream Sauce—from her book, Cooking with Café Pasqual's: Recipes from Santa Fe's Renowned Corner Café.
This week it's everything sushi—the things you didn't know you need to know, like what should not be in your soy sauce, and the big clue to whether the sushi maker is a master or not. Our guide is Dave Lowry, author of The Connoisseur's Guide to Sushi: Everything You Need to Know About Sushi Varieties and Accompaniments, Etiquette and Dining Tips and More. It's burgoo and mutton barbecue for Jane and Michael Stern. They're dining at George's in Owensboro, Kentucky.
Food historian John T. Edge joins us this week with a dissertation on the little ring of dough that became a patriot, a movie star, and stirred up some good old American ingenuity. The recipe for Zingerman's Roadhouse Donuts is from John's new book, Donuts: An American Passion.
It's back-to-school time and the question facing every parent in America: the lunch box issue. How do you pack healthy food that the kids will actually eat? Consumer rights warrior and mom Marion Nestle has answers. Marion's new book is What to Eat: An Aisle-by-Aisle Guide to Savvy Food Choices and Good Eating.
This week we're grilling with all-American ingenuity, or what our guest, Dan Huntley, calls "contraption cooking." It's all about a special league of cooks who have cobbled together brilliant and often wacky cooking rigs. Dan leaves us his recipe forPyro's Burnt Endsfrom his bookExtreme Barbecue: Smokin'Rigs and Real Good Recipes.
We're off to Italy this week with Italian food and culture authority Fred Plotkin. He takes us to the luscious and evocative region of Marche, an area little known to Americans where the charm rivals Tuscany but you aren't likely to run into your neighbor. The recipe for Scampi al Prosciutto is from Fred's book, Italy for the Gourmet Traveler.
This week it's the wonder and biology of honey and the bees that make it. Journalist and beekeeper Holley Bishop, a woman who fell for bees the way one might fall for a puppy, tells the story. Holley is the author of Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey, the Sweet Liquid Gold that Seduced the World. Her Berry Striped Pops are the perfect icy snack for these dog days of summer.
This week it's contemporary food's most friendly wine: Riesling. We're in Germany on the fruity, classy little gem's home turf with our guest, award-winning Riesling master Dr. Ernst Loosen.
This week we journey to Monterey, California for an in-depth look at one of the culinary world's biggest issues: healthy and sustainable seafood. It's politics at the grass roots level as we examine how the fishing industry is influenced by what chefs choose to serve in their restaurants. The show was recorded live at the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Cooking for Solutions weekend.
Can you remember the last time you ate a peach so perfectly sweet, juicy and delicious it knocked your socks off? Probably not. In fact, why does most of our produce have so little flavor? For answers we turn to Russ Parsons, award-winning food and wine journalist for theLos Angeles Times. Russ has been tracking American agriculture for 20 years and explains what it means to farm for flavor. He leaves us a recipe forSugar Snap Peas and Shrimp with Chive Mayonnaisefrom his latest book,How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table.
This week it's a scholarly look at junk food and fast food through the eyes of American food historian Andrew Smith. He tells how it all started and claims that between the Erie Canal and Ben Franklin our destiny had nowhere else to go. Mr. Smith is the author ofThe Junk Food Encyclopedia.
"Hunger is a country we enter every day, like a commuter across a friendly border," says nature writer Sharman Apt Russell. She joins us this week with a look at the subject through a new prism—hunger as art, hunger as power, and hunger as revelation. Ms. Russell's book is Hunger: An Unnatural History. The Sterns dine on succulent Italian roast pork sandwiches at Tony Luke's in Philadelphia.
This week it's vegetable gardening for the horticulturally challenged. Gardening expert Katherine Whiteside, author of The Way We Garden Now, stops by with short cuts to instant gratification (hard labor is not for her) and a recipe for Rhubarbaritas.
She's sensual, iconoclastic, and hungry. In the late 1960's she blew the lid off stuffy food writing with her restaurant reviews for New York, the smartest magazine in town. She's Gael Green, a critic like no other and the woman who led the pack in a dining revolution. Gael joins us this week to share memories from her new autobiography, Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess. The recipe for Danish Meat Loaf is from the book.
Fred Kirschenmann of The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture joins us this week to talk why America lost touch with her food source—the farm—and looks at the resurrection taking place, right now, on farms across the land. The Sterns are at the final stretch of the famed Route 66 in Stroud, Oklahoma.
This week we're going inside the process of how exceptional cookbooks are brought to life. Our guide is Judith Jones, often called the cookbook editor's editor. Forty-some years ago she discovered Julia Child. In the ensuing decades Judith's influence changed the American cookbook forever and her authors became a "who's who of food."
This week it's a look at how the pros decide what to drink with nearly every food you can imagine. Our guest, Karen Page, author of What to Drink With What You Eat, talked with expert chefs and sommeliers to find out what goes with everything from apples to veggie burgers. She takes us beyond wines and waters to coffee, soda and even vinegar!
This week Mary Ewing-Mulligan puts wine where she thinks it belongs: it's all about taste. Mary claims quality is second to flavor, geography is more important than the grape, and a number on the bottle can help us match a wine to a menu. Mary's new book is Wine Style: Earthy Whites to Powerful Reds: Using Your Senses to Explore and Enjoy Wine.
Imagine Mexico without tacos or tamales. Imagine Mexican intellectuals trying to eliminate corn from the country where it was born. History professor Jeffrey Pilcher, author of Que Vivan Los Tamales: Food and the Making of Mexican Identity, joins us this week for a look at a national identity crisis.
Natural scent expert Mandy Aftel, co-author with Chef Daniel Patterson of Aroma, The Magic of Essential Oils in Food and Fragrance, joins us this week to talk about perfuming our food. With scent accounting for most of what we taste, the idea seems logical. A delicious example of scent meets taste is Rose and Ginger Soufflé.
Japanese culinary scholar Elizabeth Andoh talks washoku, the philosophical and spiritual heart of traditional Japanese home cooking. It's a concept of possibilities and transformations and a side of Japanese food few outsiders know. Elizabeth leaves us her recipe for Fried Eggplant with Crushed Green Soybeans from her book Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen.
Check out the grocery meat case these days and there's rarely a bone in sight. We're talking flavor-enhancing bones that give cuts of meat ambrosial succulence. Food writer Jennifer McLagan wants to change this trend of boneless everything so she wrote Bones: Recipes, History & Lore. Her recipe for Beer-Glazed Beef Ribs is serious and delicious finger food.