The Austrian Canned-Peach Cake I Ate When I Was Snowed In

In Alpine Cooking, Meredith Erickson captures the experience of eating and traveling through the Alps—Gstaad, Verbier, St. Moritz, Courmayeur—not “as all high-end glitz and glamour” nor as “a backpacker’s dream ski vacation,” but as a cultural foray in…

In Alpine Cooking, Meredith Erickson captures the experience of eating and traveling through the Alps—Gstaad, Verbier, St. Moritz, Courmayeur—not "as all high-end glitz and glamour" nor as "a backpacker's dream ski vacation," but as a cultural foray into the nuances of Alpine cuisine and how to eat it at home. Today, she shares with us a special cake recipe that calls specifically for canned peaches, not fresh.


In all the years I spent researching this book, the only time I was really snowed in was in the Stubai Alps, southwest of Innsbruck and north of the Ötztal Alps. I was staying at a Jagdschloss (hunting lodge) in the small, compact, yet very dramatic village of Kühtai.

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Our 13 Favorite Cookbooks of 2019

When we’re looking for ideas on the perfect recipe to make for dinner tonight, or to comfort a loved one this weekend, or to impress guests at that gathering in a couple weeks, books always lead the way. Discovering new cookbooks always means discoveri…

When we're looking for ideas on the perfect recipe to make for dinner tonight, or to comfort a loved one this weekend, or to impress guests at that gathering in a couple weeks, books always lead the way. Discovering new cookbooks always means discovering new techniques, new flavor combinations we'd have never thought to put together, and new discourses for considering food. It also means awakening new cooking inspiration within ourselves.

2019 saw no shortage of cookbooks to discover, whether they changed the way we grocery shopped or made us look at our dinner mainstays a little differently. With so much greatness, how could we conceive of which ones were best?

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Home Alone for Christmas? You’re Not the Only One.

Table for One is a column by Senior Editor Eric Kim, who loves cooking for himself—and only himself—and seeks to celebrate the beauty of solitude in its many forms.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Cooking for one is on the rise. Especiall…

Table for One is a column by Senior Editor Eric Kim, who loves cooking for himself—and only himself—and seeks to celebrate the beauty of solitude in its many forms.


I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Cooking for one is on the rise. Especially at this time of year.

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The Best (& Worst) Food Trends From the Past Decade

I went to college in New York City during the first decade of the millennium. It was just after smoking was banned inside bars and restaurants (though you could still sneak one sometimes). Sex and the City was still on television and it was kind of thr…

I went to college in New York City during the first decade of the millennium. It was just after smoking was banned inside bars and restaurants (though you could still sneak one sometimes). Sex and the City was still on television and it was kind of thrilling to know that Carrie’s haunts were just a subway ride away.

On Wednesdays, I had a ritual: I would swipe a free copy of the Times from the student center, cozy up on an armchair, and tuck into Frank Bruni’s weekly restaurant reviews. I lived through those articles. Bruni’s words, by turns decadent and biting, provided a window into the white-table-clothed restaurants that were otherwise inaccessible, what with my $8 an hour work-study gig.

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The Absolute Best Way to Minimize a Hangover, According to a Doctor

According to a study that recently made me very jealous, roughly 23 percent of people may be resistant to hangovers. For the other 77 percent of us, well, at least there’s black coffee, next-day bagel sandwiches, and lots of aspirin.
But maybe there’s…

According to a study that recently made me very jealous, roughly 23 percent of people may be resistant to hangovers. For the other 77 percent of us, well, at least there's black coffee, next-day bagel sandwiches, and lots of aspirin.

But maybe there's a better way, I thought to myself last Saturday, as I awoke later than I wanted to, the edges of a headache creeping in while I sluggishly made my way—all 15 feet—to my kitchen, for a pot of coffee. (This, from 2 glasses of red wine.)

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Is ‘Rice Beer’ the New Natural Wine?

“I used to explain it as ‘nigori beer.’ But that’s not even really right. Makgeolli isn’t rice wine, nor is it sake, nor is it beer. It’s its own thing,” says Carol Pak, founder of Makku, America’s first canned craft makgeolli.
Brewed with the type of…

"I used to explain it as 'nigori beer.' But that’s not even really right. Makgeolli isn’t rice wine, nor is it sake, nor is it beer. It’s its own thing," says Carol Pak, founder of Makku, America’s first canned craft makgeolli.

Brewed with the type of rice typically reserved for royal meals, rich with live cultures that keep it fermenting in the bottle, and clocking in at around 6 percent A.B.V., makgeolli feels primed to become the craft-beverage trend’s new cloudy and delicately fizzy poster child. But, just as 21st-century producers didn’t invent the piquette, rosé spritzers, and batched cocktails now so ubiquitously found in cans (though, spiked seltzer is definitely a product of our time), makgeolli has been around since 1 B.C.E.

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The 10 Most Legendary Cookbooks of the Last Decade

The Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks has a long and storied past. There are illustrious judges, controversial decisions and upsets, comment squabbles galore, and really solid books. If you’re with us for your very first Piglet (which starts next Tuesday,…

The Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks has a long and storied past. There are illustrious judges, controversial decisions and upsets, comment squabbles galore, and really solid books. If you're with us for your very first Piglet (which starts next Tuesday, on March 5—huzzah!), you can read all about how it works here.

But seriously...about those books. Each year, the title that takes home the prized Piglet trophy (yeah, there's actually a trophy) is the best of the best, the crème de la crème, the cookbook we couldn't live without. Collectively, they're the books we turn to time and again, the ones that have changed the way we cook and bake. They're the stuff of legends.

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My Family Hadn’t Been Kosher for 76 Years. Then My Brother Came Along.

My older brother, Jake, was called to the Torah almost 19 years ago to the day. As he chanted in Hebrew to our congregation, he wore a yarmulke on his head and a tallit around his shoulders, while a photographer snap-snap-snapped photos, which we can n…

My older brother, Jake, was called to the Torah almost 19 years ago to the day. As he chanted in Hebrew to our congregation, he wore a yarmulke on his head and a tallit around his shoulders, while a photographer snap-snap-snapped photos, which we can no longer find.

I still remember the bagels: everything, sesame, pumpernickel, onion, poppy seed—but not blueberry, which we didn’t believe in—piled as high as the clouds. Cream cheese, scallion–cream cheese, more cream cheese, more scallion–cream cheese. Lox, herring, whitefish salad. Oh, the whitefish salad!

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The Whirlwind History of Food52’s First 10 Years

Food52 turned 10 this year (ICYMI), which got us to reflecting on the past—how we started, how far we’ve come, and everything we’ve done with our community along the way. In our first 10 years, we grew from two employees (see above—hi, A&M!) to 92,…

Food52 turned 10 this year (ICYMI), which got us to reflecting on the past—how we started, how far we've come, and everything we've done with our community along the way. In our first 10 years, we grew from two employees (see above—hi, A&M!) to 92, collected over 50,000 recipes, moved five times, won quite a few awards, and even baked with Cookie Monster. Below are some of our very favorite moments. If the next decade is this good, we sure have a lot to look forward to.


2004

Amanda meets Merrill.

The two team up for The Essential New York Times Cookbook, the 1,000-plus recipe project that inspires them to launch a startup called Food52.

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The Hallmark History of Christmas in Korea

In South Korea, as Christmas nears, the nation’s many singletons have been known to lament, “I want to go to sleep on the 22nd and wake up on the 26th.” It’s not to avoid trite family probing about nonexistent wedding bells around a roast ham. Rather, …

In South Korea, as Christmas nears, the nation’s many singletons have been known to lament, “I want to go to sleep on the 22nd and wake up on the 26th.” It’s not to avoid trite family probing about nonexistent wedding bells around a roast ham. Rather, it’s because Christmas is a couples holiday, one more romantic than even Valentine’s Day in the States.

For Christmas, couples dine out at fancy restaurants with prix fixe menus and share sweet treats. Hotels promote special romantic package deals to the more amorous (and moneyed), while cheaper “love motels” will book up months in advance. There’s even a Galentine’s-style backlash to the heavily promoted romanticism—small circles of young single friends will gather in cramped studio apartments to throw “home parties” featuring finger foods, cream cakes from the bakery, and lots of group selfies.

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