Photo by Naomi Bishop

While most American families got up early on Easter morning to hunt about their lawns for eggs, my friend (and partner-in-foraging) Leslie, trusty canine companion Roger, and I were combing Grayland beach, on the southwest Washington coast, for razor clams (OK, Roger mostly just ran in circles). There were no bunnies or pastel plastic eggs to be found on this shoreline, just a rainbow of gray, with little definition between the muted-steel sky and the faint slate of the ocean. My eyes were trained on the muddy taupe of the sand most of the day, scanning for “tells,” the tiny, dime-size indents that indicate a clam lurking just below the surface.

It was late...

We’re a little obsessed with Georgian food lately. In Brooklyn, we nearly split our pants eating the simple, rich cuisine, in meals bookmarked by addictive soupy meat dumplings (khinkali) and buttery cheese-stuffed bread (khachapuri). While cruising Turkey’s Black Sea coastline last fall for hazelnuts and pide, we were tempted to just keep on driving to Tbilisi, to conduct our own taste tests of the two countries’ various dolmas (stuffed  vegetables), one of several dishes reflecting the countries’ shared Ottoman heritage. So when Anna, a Georgian friend in New Jersey, offered to cook us a homemade Georgian feast last month, we naturally accepted without hesitation.

The spread...

For this guest post, Tim and Nat Harris of food and travel blog A Cook Not Mad share with us the recipe for caillette (“ky-YET”), a pork-and-greens meatball dish from south-central France that dates to the 16th century.

The first time we visited Les Vans, a small town in the Ardèche department of France, we fell in love with it. It was quaint, and because it was 15 years ago and during the off-season, we shared the village with only its 2,660 inhabitants. We had rented an apartment from a family friend for a month and spent our time exploring the nearby mountains and villages extensively, foraging for wild mushrooms and chestnuts, making soups and confiture. 

The couple who...

Every summer, Cape Cod is among our favorite go-to escapes, a long weekend with local friends for which we’re always in for lots of boating, clamming, lobstering, swimming, and, of course, eating. (As we’ve previously admitted, however, we are pretty bad about working when we’re in this area.) New Year’s weekend marked our first winter trip to the Cape, and it proved a long-overdue visit with its snowy conservation lands and starkly beautiful shores, transformed by snowdrifts and the absence of tourists. Of course, we spent a lot of time indoors, and when we weren’t in front of the fireplace, we were in the kitchen.

Wintry Wellfleet, Cape Cod

Hiking the woods in East...

It’s so simple, yet so easy to screw up: Making rice is at the heart of Japanese cuisine, and our friend Megumi recently shared with us exactly how it should be done, as well as instructions for making vinegared sushi rice and temaki, or hand-rolled sushi. All photos by Trix Rosen, copyright 2012.

A basic salmon temaki

The Japanese are rice eaters. Traditionally we eat cooked, short-grain rice almost every day.  So we are very fussy about rice: its freshness, texture, firmness, softness, flavor, moisture, size, and shininess. Good rice is grown in the areas where the water is fresh and clean. Of course, the fresher, the better! The new crop that arrives in the market every fall...

My introduction to Portuguese cataplana stew couldn’t have been in a more traditional and idyllic setting. Facing the coast on the Algarve, in southern Portugal, in great company and the light of a beautiful sunset, I sat awaiting a dish I’d seen on almost every blackboard menu during my time in this region. Having been assured of the freshest, tastiest ingredients by the enthusiastic waiters, my expectations were high for this local dish. My group of four opted to share two large cataplanas so we could try both the meat and seafood variations.

The Algarve, where cataplana is most popular. Photo: Alexandra Jackson

While we sipped red wine and picked at a basket of bread and warm...

In this guest post, Sukanya of the food and travel blog Saffronstreaks shares with us the recipe for a favorite Bengali milk-based sweet from Kolkata (Calcutta): aam sandesh, or Indian fudge infused with mango. Of course, this “fudge” is not made with chocolate but with cottage-cheese-like chhana (also spelled chenna); the translation stems more from the dish’s texture. For more on milk-based treats from India, check out our Delhi sweets section.

Bengalis’ love for sweets is a well-known affair, and sandesh (“fudge”) is one they particularly adore. The great Bengali luncheon always ends on a sweet note,
and it doesn’t stop there; it continues with late-afternoon tea and dinner as...

A few months ago, we published a Q&A with a saunier, or sea salt harvester, from Île de Ré, a small island off the west coast of France. In it, our subject mentions two can’t-miss dishes from the island, both of which make good use of its famous salt: sea bass baked in a salt crust and fava beans à la croque en sel. EYW contributor Cristina Sciarra, who’s just returned from the area—see our new Charente-Maritime food section—notes that these dishes are not as commonly offered in restaurants as prepared at home. Here she tells us how to make them. 

Sea bass baked in a salt crust

Buying (and cooking) whole fish is not only more economical than buying filets, but it’s also a lot...

We recently had the pleasure of cooking one evening with our friend Megumi, who shared with us these favorite warm-weather recipes from Japan. Both are very simple and fresh-tasting, perfect for the dog days of summer. Below she describes each in her own words.

Hiyayakko (Cold Tofu)

Tofu was one of the foods we ate almost every day when I was a child. Back then it was not mass-produced, and there were many local tofu makers. My mother bought fresh tofu every morning from a neighborhood grocery store, often using it for miso soup. But on a hot summer day, we had hiyayakko as a side dish for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. This remains one of the most popular tofu side dishes enjoyed...

Before I met my French boyfriend and his family, my culinary repertoire was sadly devoid of small sea creatures. Sure, I might occasionally have ordered mussels when out to dinner, but let’s face it—those mussels tasted only of what they were sauced with. I had never tried a clam or oyster, nor did I particularly care to. Scallops made me cringe. I was also fairly certain that sardines and anchovies were probably the
same thing.

But my shellfish ignorance was not to last. When I moved to Paris three years ago, my boyfriend and I started making regular excursions to his familial home in Angoulins sur Mer, a fishing village nestled into the western coast of France, famous for its...

A few summers ago, I conducted my graduate-school research at a health clinic in a batey, or rural community, about an hour north of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Punta Cana’s high-end resorts and all-you-can-eat buffets are a stark contrast to the impoverished former sugarcane plantations that make up the bateys in the island’s interior. Electricity is rare and subject to apagaones (blackouts) that can last an entire day, which has serious consequences for rural health clinics trying to operate blood labs and store vaccines—and severely limits the menu dished up for clinic staff.

During my 10-week stay, I slept on the floor of an empty clinic room with a handful of...

If you’re still hungry for North Indian food after our post on papri chaat and butter paneer masala, check out this post on Foodists.ca, in which we expound on our discovery of, and love for, chole bhature (curried chickpeas with fried bread). Recipe included, of course.

Related: Recipes From Afar: Papri Chaat & Butter Paneer Masala, North India

A half-year after returning home from a few weeks in North India, I thought it would be a good idea to cook some Indian dishes for friends. Twelve friends, to be exact.

It wasn’t long after I emailed said friends that I began questioning the wisdom of this decision.

Indian food is notoriously difficult for a non-Indian to pull off. Sure, having access to the right spices is half the battle, but in past experiments with an Indian cookbook, I’ve found that the spice ratio often seems off. For all the toasting and grinding of seeds called for, there’s never anywhere near the amount of flavor one expects, certainly nothing like the richness radiating from most Indian-restaurant dishes....

In this new EYW Blog series, our writers will feature recipes of dishes they’ve encountered while away and re-created at home. 

A few gluttonous days in New Orleans are hard to beat, but while you can’t bring home the city’s soulful live music or lighthearted survivor spirit, you can at least attempt to make some of its classic foods in the daiquiri-free confines of your own kitchen. After my last trip to NOLA, I spent a week back in New York dreaming about beignets and BBQ shrimp before my husband and I got our acts together, invited some friends over, and set up a Sazerac bar. We were having a NOLA dinner party, damn it!

My mind wandered to what’s quick and delicious, and...