#culinary-exploration

#culinary-exploration

Researching Slate's 25 Most Important Recipes project last year reminded me just how transformative a great cookbook can be. Works like The Silver Palate Cookbook and The Vegetarian Epicure introduced new methods, new ingredients, and new flavors to American home chefs of their eras, helping them think about cooking and eating in ways that felt revolutionary. My kitchen could sure use a revolution, I realized. So I decided to spend 2025 cooking new recipes from new cookbooks and chronicling the results.

The Eater Guide to Mexico City unpacks the sprawling city by breaking it down into seven chapters, delivering locally curated restaurant recommendations alongside histories and glossaries.

Bourdain emphatically called Vietnamese bún bò Huế, a spicy soup of noodles and beef, the "greatest soup in the world," highlighting its rich flavor and delightful complexity.

When visiting Philadelphia, many flock to Pat's and Geno's for cheesesteaks, but the author found them underwhelming compared to the city's diverse offerings.

Food might be the quickest way to understand Southern culture. My first encounter with cheese grits changed everything.

I use a thawed plank of Alaskan king salmon from last summer's harvest, fished out of the deep freezer, along with new asparagus and tender herbs.

Brazil is home to an abundance of ingredients that are relatively unknown, or just plain unavailable, in the United States, but few are as quintessential as caju.