In this issue
Issue #134
by Tamasin Day-Lewis
My friends and I are standing on the doorstep looking out at the corona haloing the moon, a blue moon, which means it's the second full one this month; more than that, it's only the second New Year's Eve blue moon in two decades. There isn't a sound until a firework zooms up into the black yonder, and in the distance, over the Quantock Hills, there are fountains of pink and gold and green. We pop the champagne corks and bay at the moon.
Every year I throw a New Year's Eve party at my house in rural Somerset, in the southwest of England. Usually I have no idea what I am going to cook until just before the day arrives; I'm too busy with the planning and executing of Christmas and the feasting days following it. One year I reserved the Christmas ham for the New Year's meal and served it with the customary Cumberland sauce made with red currant jelly and port — a jolly old British tradition, but, really, my competitive desire to surprise and delight even the most jaded of palates after a whole week's feasting knows no bounds. I have served everything from a Moroccan tagging to chicken Savoyarde bathed in cream from local Jersey cows, white wine, Comté cheese, Dijon mustard, and tarragon. This season starts and ends with feasting. Keep reading »
by Gabriella Gershenson
Of all the starters that kicked off my Russian Jewish family's most festive meals, I would always reach for the hard-boiled egg whites filled with red caviar. The treat primed my palate for all types of fish roe. I remember the first time I tasted true caviar (the term for salted sturgeon eggs), an inky constellation on a cracker. That mouthful embodied everything I liked about salmon roe, intensified: the beads were more pungent; they imparted astounding flavor for their tiny size. Keep reading »
by Amy Ma
Lao Zheng was a gambler and a crank. But at his popular hawker stall near Taipei's Yong Kang Park, he cooked bouncy noodles in a fragrant stock with beef so tender that it could be cut with chopsticks. It was there, in 1974, that my mother met the man she would marry five years later. Keep reading »
by Ana X. Ceron
From truffles inspired by the needs in Darfur, to pink salt that aims to help the environment, these eight gourmet bites turn out to be good gifts that do good too. Whether your foodie likes to heat things up in the kitchen, or simply rip apart a pretty package to munch on some cookies, this guide has something for their tastes, and your conscience. See the full photo gallery »
By Rebecca Saletan
Of course high-wire walker Philippe Petit would christen his home Cable House. In 1974, at the age of 24, Petit famously (and illegally) walked a tightrope stretched between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, a heart-stopping 1,350 feet above the ground. Petit, now 61, still stages tightrope walks, and his trade is very much in evidence at his home in the Catskills. To the left of the front porch, suspended several feet off the ground, there is the galvanized-steel cable, just under an inch in diameter, on which Petit practices daily. Nearby is the small barn where there's another wire (for tightrope walking in bad weather) and a small stage where he practices juggling for the street performances, lectures, teaching gigs, and high-wire performances that take him all over world. But it's in a room directly inside the front door of the main house that Petit performs some of his most daring feats: the kitchen. Keep reading »
"Fruitcake is December's biggest mystery," writes reader Penny Baron from Los Osos, California. "Can you explain it?" We sure can.
History: Ancient Egyptians left fruit-and-nut cakes in graves, and Roman mixed raisins, pine nuts, pomegranate seeds, and honeyed wine into barley cake called satura to feed soldiers. Starting in the 1400s, much-prized dried fruits and nuts were traded westward to England, where they were baked into cakes for special occasions—particularly Christmas.Keep reading »
I'm a good Italian girl: no matter where I am when I wake up on December 22—and, since I work as a food and travel writer, I might be very far away—I catch a flight back to my mother's house to help her prepare Christmas lunch. Mom still lives in the town where I was born, in the Alpine village of Oulx, nearly 50 miles west of Turin. Oulx is technically in Italy (specifically, in the region of Piedmont), but it's only eight miles from the French border, and until the late 19th century the area belonged to France. As a result, the local culture is a mix of Gallic and Italian influences. When it comes to food, you're as likely to find fantastic crepes as you are lovely handmade pastas. Keep reading »
In our December issue, the SAVEUR Editors review five of their favorite books from this year: Pushpesh Pant's India Cookbook, The Food, Folklore, and Art of Lowcountry Cooking by Joseph E. Dabney, Harold McGee's Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes, Molly O'Neill's One Big Table, and High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America by SAVEUR contributing editor Jessica B. Harris. Keep reading »I saw my first nutmeg tree in Trinidad, from the window of a moving car. I immediately told my boyfriend, who was driving, to hit the brakes. The tree was spectacular, maybe 20 feet tall, with a canopy of glossy leaves and a riot of pale-yellow fruits bending the branches. More of those fruits lay all over the ground, and most of them had burst open to reveal a seed the size of a walnut, encased in a web of red fibers. Our friend Nigel, who grew up on the island, was with us, and he laughed as I snatched up one of the fruits and held it to my nose. "It's nutmeg," he said. Keep reading »
As a teenager growing up in Geneva, Switzerland, I loved spending Friday nights at my friend Michelle's house. Following the Catholic tradition of meatless Fridays, Michelle's father joined the multitudes of Swiss families who prepared cheese fondue. At home, we never ate the dish; my dad was on orders to avoid rich, fatty foods. While the rest of Switzerland happily stirred the gooey mix, our family lit the Shabbat candles and sat down to my Parisian mother's boeuf à la mode. Perhaps that's why, as I entered my rebellious teens, I set out to rectify this gap in my Swiss education and try as many types of fondue as I could. Keep reading »
One of my favorite lunches on earth is a plate of Cantonese roast meats served over rice. And my favorite part of that lunch is siew yoke, roast pork belly with layers of lambent fat, juicy meat, and skin that has bubbled and popped all over like Rice Krispies—hence the name crackling—to produce a puffed and crunchy counterpoint to the meat's succulent interior. In Singapore, where I live, Cantonese restaurants take pride in their siew yoke, and recently I've become somewhat obsessed with perfecting the dish myself. Keep Reading »
