cooking | The Smart Set

The Children of Julia Child

A.D. Amorosi — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 12:30:00 +0000

For two streaming seasons at HBO, the vividly colorful life, innovative culinary skills and cultural change-making of the late Julia Child (1912-2004) have been on display for all to enjoy as much as they would a fine bouillabaisse or cassoulet. As an American-born chef and author who taught the world an approachable way into worldly […]

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Putting My Foot In It

Elliott Eglash — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 11:30:00 +0000

How to measure up to my mother’s kitchen? That wood-paneled heart of the house, where the fridge overflowed with vegetables and juices and nourishments of all sorts, and when she heard me open it, she’d tell me not to spoil my appetite.  Dinner was as close as we got to religion. Less the meal than […]

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Measuring Time

Kalyani Iyer — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 11:30:00 +0000

At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, if you had asked me which food or drink I would miss the most in the event of a grocery shortage, I would have guessed something hearty, like rice, lentils, or potatoes. But here I was, ten days into the lockdown, staring at the very last drop of […]

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What We Did with 2020

The Smart Set Staff — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 12:30:04 +0000

I am not one for New Year’s optimism. The past three years have been marked with “Worst Year” ribbons, but like Alex Forrest, 2020 was not to be ignored. In February, I began to see reports of a virus that promised to be a global pandemic, soon after I read Ed Yong’s 2018 Atlantic essay […]

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Make that a Double

Grace Segran — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 11:30:44 +0000

“Your gin and tonic, Chef,” Ray says as he places the glass on the industrial stainless-steel countertop by the stove. “A double with plenty of ice.” I am tossing the pakchoi in the wok, flame snarling up the sides. “Thanks, boss,” I say, without turning. Ray knows I’m very focused when cooking Chinese greens. Every second counts if they are going to be just right on this high heat. I plate the pakchoi, wiping away […]

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The French Toast Wars

Dana Robbins — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 11:30:47 +0000

Whatever I might say about my family, the food was always delicious. My father, Seymour Robbins, “Sim,” grew up in his parents’ Jewish deli in Stamford, Connecticut. They cooked all their own meats; corned beef, pastrami, and tongue, and all the side dishes; kugels, knishes, and salads. In the Army, during WWII, Sim was assigned […]

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Dinnertime and its Discontents

Paula Marantz Cohen — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 11:30:47 +0000

I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, and my mother was a working woman who didn’t like to cook. Although she dutifully made dinner for us every night, these were perfunctory and repetitive meals: meatloaf made with Catalina salad dressing, spaghetti with tomato sauce and occasional meatballs (also made with Catalina salad dressing), roast […]

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Vanilla Mania

Bernd Brunner — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 12:30:05 +0000

Did Montezuma II, the legendary king of the Aztecs, really imbibe 50 cups of a special thick chocolate-vanilla-honey potion every day? We will never know, but we know for sure that vanilla flavoring in any of its many forms is one of the substances that people just cannot get enough of. It can be found in […]

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The Radio Homemaker

Edward Bottone — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 13:04:16 +0000

This piece was originally published in our newly relaunched partner publication, Table Matters: a journal of food, drink, and manners. Long before Garrison Keillor debuted A Prairie Home Companion in 1974, there were prairie home companions on the radio every day. Prairies are vast flat lands populated by shrubs, grasses, and wild herbs, with few trees and […]

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Served Cold

Alyssa Shaw — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 16:12:43 +0000

Imagine yourself as a child, frolicking through your parents’ back yard and digging up worms. Your mother calls you in from the kitchen for dinner and you bound in through the back door, smelling the roast she’s been tending to for the past few hours. At the table your father sits reading the newspaper, your […]

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