Recent Features

All about Vanilla
— and then some... history, curing, varieties, vanilla extract, essence, powder – even vanilla salt. How to cook with vanilla. including top 10 vanilla recipes!

Cooking with Chestnuts
In our guide to cooking with chestnuts we cover chestnut varieties, selection and preparation, how to roast chestnuts, how to make maron glacés and our Top 10 Recipes Using Chestnuts!

Eggplant
Wonderfully versatile, eggplant becomes as redolent and tasty as the spices cooked with it. Our primer includes: varieties of eggplant and suggestions for choosing, preparing and how to freeze eggplant, how to remove the bitterness from eggplant and our Top 10 Eggplant Recipes!

Pumpkin Seeds – Pepitas
Roasted as a snack or used in traditional Mexican cuisine, the pumpkin seed can be a star or add character in a supporting role. Learn how to roast pumpkin seeds or what to do with pumpkin seed oil. See our Top 10 Recipes Using Pumpkin Seeds!

Dulce de Leche
Three foolproof methods for making luscious, silky-smooth dulce de leche that won't explode all over your kitchen. Also instructions for coconut dulce de leche and a rum version plus our Top 10 Recipes Featuring Dulce de Leche.

Crème fraîche — is a slightly sour, thickened cream. It's tangy and nutty, more politely rounded than sour cream, and without so much bite. Learn how to make crème fraîche.

Cooking with Tamarind
This tart tropical fruit, also known as Indian date, brings an appealing pucker to many of the world's equatorial cuisines. Explore the various forms and preparations of tamarind, how it's flavor profile works with other ingredients, tips on using tamarind, how to make tamarind extract and our Top 10 Recipes Using Tamarind.

Italian Wines—There are over 2,000 traditional, indigenous grape varieties thriving in Italy. We know most of these wines by place names - Chianti, Barolo, Amarone, Valpolicella - but perhaps it's time to introduce the grapes behind the wines.

Riesling - A Perfect Pick for Thanksgiving Dinner - The off-dry to semi-sweet Rieslings have great acidity, helpful with cranberry sauce; light sweetness, great with yams; deep mineral flavors are perfect with turkey and gorgeous fruit notes clean the palate of all those other flavors and get you ready for the next bite.

Fortified Wines – Sherry, Port, Madeira & Marsala — Whether they're served as apéritifs, as dessert wines, or in cooking, fortified wines are back in style once again. Sherry, Port, Madeira and Marsala are the most common categories of fortified wines.

Anise Liqueurs - Sambuca, Ouzo, Absinthe, Arak, Raki & Pastis - Anise liqueurs and spirits have a subtle to not-so-subtle licorice flavor. Usually derived from aniseed, these drinks rim the Mediterranean Sea and are imbued into local cultures with deep flavor and a heady sweet fragrance