extra crispy

Poached eggs are hard. Trust me, I get it. In my culinary program, duck day was no problem. Learning how to make a perfectly rolled French omelet took me many, many tries. And the poached eggs? There were many eggy casualties before I finally got it down. But I learned many crucial things about poaching along the way, and I am here to pass them on to you. 

I’ve said it before: kombucha is one of the best mixers. Add a splash to your gin and tonic or swap it for OJ in your next mimosa and you’ll see what I mean.

December is a time for sweets and going hard on baking. One of the treasured favorites of the holiday season is Hershey's Kisses, what with their long-running commercial with Kisses as a bell choir playing "We Wish You A Merry Christmas." But this year, something is amiss. Something has gone, very, very wrong with Hershey's Kisses.

At a Tel Aviv branch of Tiv Taam, a high-end Israeli grocery chain, a refrigerated shelf brims with packaged deli meats to satisfy the global pork lover: Russian-style servelat, Italian pepperoni, Hungarian salami, and špekáčeky, the stout Ukrainian sausage for summertime grilling. But flip the packages over, and the word “pork” is nowhere to be found on the Hebrew ingredient list. In its place is a curious euphemism: “basar aher,” or simply “other meat.”

Raise a slice of buttered toast: People's Kitchen Collective are Extra Crispy's 2018 Best Breakfast Chefs of the Year. (Read up on 2017 and 2016's honorees.)

The shopping days before Christmas are waning. Your inbox is probably full of urgent pleas from retailers to place that order right now, right this second, if you want it to show up by the 25th. Just in case you don't have all your gifts because time is meaningless and December seems to actually last forever and fly by all at once (who, me?), now's probably the time to nail them down. And if you have someone on your list who cares a lot about their kitchenware and the restaurant scene, here's one gift that's sure to delight them: very fashionable, slightly confusing steak knives.

It’s easy to see how the so-called war on Christmas helped usher in the profound stupidity and divisiveness of our current political moment.

Since we tasted every fancy butter that we could get our hands on, I have been on a quest. You see, there is one fancy butter that is so rare and so fancy that it is nearly impossible to try. It is not a butter that you can smuggle back in a cooler from France, nor one that you can find on a small farm in Ireland. No, this butter is made in Vermont. Orwell, Vermont, to be exact, which is where its literary name comes from.

The best thing I purchased for my culinary and emotional life this year is an object I have named The Stabber.