The Global Story of Beer International Beer Day celebrates one of humanity’s oldest and most widely shared beverages. Beer predates written language and organized agriculture, emerging alongside early human settlements. Archaeological evidence suggests that fermented grain drinks were being produced more than 7,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and ancient China. In these early societies, beer […]
Frozen custard is ice cream’s rich cousin. It’s smoother, silkier and seems to melt on the tongue in a luxurious way. The secret is egg yolks. Traditional ice cream uses cream, milk and sugar; when you add egg yolks and churn the mixture with less air, you get a dense, creamy texture that resists melting. […]
In many gardens, zucchinis seem to appear overnight, their dark green or golden bodies hiding beneath broad leaves until suddenly they’re the length of baseball bats. This prolific squash, also known as courgette, is actually a relatively young cultivar. While its ancestors — the gourds and squashes of the Cucurbita genus — were cultivated in […]
Soft, chewy and slightly sweet, mochi seems almost otherworldly. Bite into it and the texture resists before yielding, a pleasurable contrast to the creamy ice cream or red bean paste often hidden inside. Mochi’s roots lie deep in Japanese history. Pounded rice cakes are mentioned in texts from the Yayoi period (around 300 BCE), and […]
Walk into a convenience store in Honolulu and you’ll see neat rectangles of rice topped with a slice of Spam, wrapped snugly in a band of nori. This is SPAM musubi, a beloved snack born from the blending of Japanese and American food cultures in Hawaii. Its story begins in the 1930s and 1940s, when […]
Close your eyes and imagine the perfume of a perfectly ripe melon: sweet, heady and slightly floral, it fills a market stall with the scent of summer. Slice through the green-striped rind and the flesh glows apricot‑orange, dripping with juice. In Turkmenistan, melons are not just a fruit but a national treasure. The Central Asian […]
Apples are so ingrained in our culture that they have inspired proverbs, fairy tales and national symbols. National Apple Week celebrates the fruit during the second full week of August, just as early varieties start to ripen in orchards. Apples originated in the mountains of Kazakhstan and spread along trade routes to Europe and Asia. […]
There’s something inherently comforting about rice pudding. Perhaps it’s because its ingredients are so modest — rice, milk, sugar, sometimes eggs or cream and spices — yet when simmered slowly they create a dessert that is creamy, fragrant and soothing. The history of rice pudding is as old as rice cultivation itself. Sweetened rice dishes […]
A crackling campfire, the smell of pine and smoke, and a circle of friends and family passing a bag of marshmallows and a bar of chocolate — these are the ingredients for s’mores. Roasting marshmallows over an open flame is a rite of summer. The perfect marshmallow is held over glowing embers until its outside […]
Afternoon tea is a ritual of pause and pleasure. National Afternoon Tea Week, held during the second full week of August, celebrates the tradition of sitting down mid‑afternoon to sip tea and nibble delicate treats. The custom is credited to Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, who in the 1840s began taking tea with bread […]
Close your eyes and imagine the perfume of a perfectly ripe melon: sweet, heady and slightly floral, it fills a market stall with the scent of summer. Slice through the green-striped rind and the flesh glows apricot‑orange, dripping with juice. In Turkmenistan, melons are not just a fruit but a national treasure. The Central Asian […]
A bombe glacée is a showstopper dessert: layers of ice cream, sherbet or custard frozen in a domed mold and unmolded to reveal concentric bands of color and flavor. The dessert originated in France in the late nineteenth century, when molded frozen desserts were the height of culinary fashion and elaborate molds filled with ice […]