How to Make Pommes Anna
AdvertisementLet Melissa Clark shows you how to make this simple showstopper easily and beautifully.Francesco Tonelli for The New York TimesBy More
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‘No Cake, No Entry’: More Than 1,000 Picnic to Celebrate the Love of Cake
No crumbs were left behind at Cake Picnic in San Francisco on Saturday as attendees gawked, photographed and ultimately ate 1,387 cakes.More than a thousand people gathered for a picnic on Saturday around tables draped with white tablecloths and spread over the lawn of the Legion of Honor art museum in San Francisco.There was just one rule: “No cake, no entry.”Kayla Kane, Mikayla Tencer and Lizzy Giap, left to right, wait to register and set down their cakes.Laura Morton for The New York TimesAttendees — including pastry chefs, home bakers and people with store-bought cakes — walked, drove and flew to bring elaborate cake creations to Cake Picnic, a touring festival where you can have your cake and eat it, too.“It was harder to get than a Taylor Swift concert ticket,” said Elisa Sunga, Cake Picnic’s organizer, noting that the $15 tickets sold out in less than a minute.This Cake Picnic turned out to be the biggest since it started nearly a year ago. Ms. Sunga described the intense interest in the festival as both “exciting” and “terrifying.”A spectacular variety of cakes adorned the tables, including: a light lemon cake with passion fruit filling, a tower made out of smaller spongecakes, Jell-O cake, pink champagne cake, a kid-baked dinosaur pyramid cake, and plenty of desserts with flowery ornaments.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Basic Knife Skills: How to Slice, Cook and Sharpen
AdvertisementSlicing, dicing, chopping and sharpening: Our ultimate guide tells you everything you need to know to level up your skills.Strong knife skills are part of every great home cook’s knowledge.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesBy More
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Easy Dinners That Start With a Can of White Beans
It’s time to spill the beans … literally.Melissa Clark’s white bean salad with crisp cheese is a hearty, delicious no-cook recipe that starts with canned beans.Rachel Vanni for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.By More
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How to Make the Best Baked Potato
A simple trick yields crisp outsides and fluffy insides, ready to be topped in three smart, exciting ways from Eric Kim.Turns out, the baked potato has always been big and great.In 1909, Hazen Titus, the dining car superintendent on the Northern Pacific Railway, had a vision: Having learned of a surplus of oversize spuds, he’d ordered them up and placed them on his menu. His “Great Big Baked Potato” became a hit, to be ordered, appropriately, on a train route of the same name.Recipes:Aglio e Olio Baked Potatoes | Caramelized Kimchi Baked Potatoes | Hot Honey Baked Sweet PotatoesThese days, a long Idaho tuber, split down the middle like a hot dog bun to reveal fluffy white starch, a pat of butter nestled into the left side, is still big and — more important — great, with its perfect creamy-crunchy-fresh combo of sour cream, chives, cheese and bacon.I spent the past year baking pounds and pounds of potatoes to come to a simple conclusion: The baked potato is worth celebration. There may be no better (and easier) way to gather than by building on a reliable but never boring base and delighting in each turn of the flavor wheel.Here are my tips for success:1. Set up a bar (and really load up on toppings)Aglio e olio, the simple yet satisfying combination of garlic and oil, pairs beautifully with a split-open spud.Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.Cooked down with butter and sesame oil, kimchi mellows its sharp, tangy edges in this riff on a classic baked potato.Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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How to Make Dinner Out of Pantry Ingredients
Make those everyday staples anything but boring with these expert tips.It’s coming up on five years since the pandemic lockdown instigated our collective spate of panic-buying groceries. And I’m pleased to report that I’ve finally gotten through my bulk order of canned sardines.I ate those sardines on buttered toast (divine, with a squeeze of lemon, some sliced red onions, loads of black pepper), stirred them into chickpea salads and mashed them with sautéed garlic for quick pasta sauces. And if I wasn’t feeling sardine-ish, I also had a minor sea’s worth of tuna, salmon and anchovies rubbing fins with the canned beans and tomatoes, bags of rice, boxes of pasta and jars of tahini, preserves, pickles and chiles packed tight on every shelf. My pantry is comfortingly and reassuringly filled to the gills (and not just with gills).I know I’m not alone. Because if there’s one thing the pandemic underscored, it’s that having a well-stocked pantry goes beyond the convenience of fast, easy meals. All those pastas and beans bring peace of mind. No matter the havoc raging in the outside world — be it pandemics and hurricanes or just too much work to think about grocery shopping — there’s a grounding calm in knowing you always have something on hand to make into dinner tonight. Also inherent in pantry cooking is thrift. Cooking at home is already a money-saver compared with eating out or ordering in, especially when it’s based on an economical roster of beans, rice and pasta.All that said, pantry cooking is more than merely getting a meal on the table. Now that you’ve assembled all those ingredients, what are the best, most flavorful and appealing ways of using them both quickly and easily? After all, if you already don’t have the time or energy to shop, you might not have much in the reserves for cooking, either.As I’ve worked down my bulk orders, I’ve learned that finding ways to turn everyday staples into meals that sparkle isn’t hard, as long as you have the right ingredients on hand. Here are some of my best strategies, tips and shopping suggestions to making pantry meals with style.Color With CondimentsThink of your pantry staples as blank canvases, waiting for the Abstract Expressionism of your condiments. Stock up on bright, bold items that you know you love, and throw in a couple of new ones to play with. My palette includes chile crisp and chile paste, Dijon and whole-grain mustard, olive tapenade, red curry paste, several hot sauces, Indian pickles (lime, mango and mixed), red and green salsas, and I use them with an open hand. Adding a few spoonfuls of your favorite condiment to classic pantry recipes can transform them from workaday to wonderful.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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A Local’s Guide to Chiang Rai, Thailand
Four insiders on where to stay, eat “micro-seasonal” dishes and shop for handmade pottery and textiles.T’s monthly travel series, Flocking To, highlights places you might already have on your wish list, sharing tips from frequent visitors and locals alike. Sign up here to find us in your inbox once a month, along with our weekly roundup of cultural recommendations, monthly beauty guides and the latest stories from our print issues. Have a question? You can always reach us at tmagazine@nytimes.com.Travelers to the northern provinces of Thailand have long been drawn by two things — elephant camps and campy temples. The most famous examples of each are within or near the 13th-century city of Chiang Rai, where the Wat Rong Khun, or White Temple, stands as an artist’s parable of the world’s ills, as depicted in the form of pop culture villains and other icons of kitsch. (If crossing a sea of grasping arms at the entrance doesn’t terrify you, beware the Freddy Krueger-themed hanging planters.) Chiang Rai is also where the Emerald Buddha, a national treasure now housed in Bangkok’s Grand Palace, was reportedly discovered in 1434. According to legend, a bolt of lightning cracked the stupa in which it had been hidden years prior.Chiang Rai — the city shares its name with the surrounding province — has gained a reputation as something of a tourist trap, thanks to the tour buses that ferry visitors from the White Temple to the equally gaudy Blue Temple and then to the very bleak Black House (which the artist Thawan Duchanee, who died in 2014, decorated with elephant skulls and antlers and a table runner made of snakeskin). But the city, having played second fiddle to the luxe-boho paradise of Chiang Mai ever since King Mang Rai moved the capital of the Lanna Kingdom — which ruled over most of what is now northern Thailand — to the “new city” in 1296, has more recently emerged as an unhurried haven for serious artists and other creative professionals seeking to escape the heat and sprawl of Bangkok.The third edition of Thailand’s roaming Biennale, which brought dozens of international and Thai artists to Chiang Rai this past winter and spring, shed light on an often-overlooked aspect of the city — its long history as a cultural crossroads. Owing both to its proximity to Laos and Myanmar and, to some degree, the Golden Triangle’s uncomfortable past as a center of the global drug trade, Chiang Rai has been the site of intermingling cultures for centuries.“The constant migration of people of different races and religions make this an interesting place both geographically and culturally,” says the Chiang Rai-born artist and gallerist Angkrit Ajchariyasophon. In 2023, Chiang Rai was also recognized by UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network for its sustainable architecture design and landscapes. “My house is near the city’s oldest Christian church, close to an Islamic mosque and a Buddhist temple off the same road,” says Ajchariyasophon. “This is where I grew up and learned about cultural diversity, which I find wonderful.”Today, multigenerational family-run restaurants featuring traditional Thai, Chinese and Myanmarese specialties likewise share a slow-movement sensibility with hipster cafes that serve coffee from beans grown on local farms, and stylish home stays that incorporate teak wood scavenged from nearby forests. Here, Ajchariyasophon and other Chiang Rai enthusiasts offer their recommendations on where to stay, eat, shop and sightsee in and around the city.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Join NYT Cooking for an ‘Easy Weeknight Dinners’ Book Talk in N.Y.C.
Emily Weinstein, Melissa Clark and Eric Kim will discuss the new cookbook, recipe writing, their go-to meals and tips for simple yet delicious cooking in a special event with Taffy Brodesser-Akner on Oct. 7 at the Times Center.Join us in person at the Times Center in New York City to celebrate the publication of New York Times Cooking’s new book, “Easy Weeknight Dinners,” by Emily Weinstein, editor in chief of Cooking and the Food section, with recipes from Cooking’s extraordinary contributing writers. Inspired by one of The New York Times’s most popular newsletters, Emily’s “Five Weeknight Dishes,” this book offers 100 fast and flavorful meals that will satisfy whether you’re seeking a standout dinner for one, crowd pleasers for picky kids or something special for company. Just because you’re busy doesn’t mean that you can’t have something excellent to eat.As a guest of this exclusive event you’ll have an opportunity to hear directly from Emily, who will be joined onstage by Melissa Clark and Eric Kim, two Cooking columnists. They’ll discuss recipe writing, go-to meals and tips for easy excellence in the kitchen, in conversation with Taffy Brodesser-Akner, a New York Times Magazine contributor and the author of “Long Island Compromise.”Come to ask questions, mingle and meet Emily, Melissa and Eric. Stay for a Cooking tasting to enjoy samples of the recipes, buy a copy of the book and get it signed. Click here to register.Doors open at 6 p.m.Event runs from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.Signing and reception until 10 p.m.This invitation is nontransferable, and admits two people. Please indicate on your registration the number of tickets you’re requesting. An ID is required for entrance. More
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An Easy Vegetarian Dinner That Starts With Corn
Seared on a sheet pan with crisp pillows of tofu and green chiles, corn kernels are the center of this summery recipe.Corn on the cob may get all the attention, but I’m here to make the case for corn off the cob, which is superior in so many ways.First of all, it’s egalitarian, suitable for middle-schoolers in braces, seniors in dentures and really anyone who doesn’t carry floss around in their pocket. It’s also faster to prepare, because slicing the kernels off the cob generally takes less time than waiting for a giant pot of water to come to a boil. As a bonus, you don’t have to wash that big awkward pot in the sink afterward.Recipe: Sheet-Pan Tofu With Corn and ChilesThat said, it helps to have a good kernel-removal technique. My favorite is to lay the ears flat on the cutting board to slice off the kernels, rotating as you go. This is not only easy, but also surprisingly tidy, allowing the kernels to fall into a neat pile rather than catapulting them all over my kitchen.In terms of precious summertime fridge space, loose kernels take up less real estate than whole ears, leaving room for the many watermelons I seem to keep lugging home. Packed in a container, the kernels will keep for two or three days, after which, if there’s any left, I’ll stick them in the freezer to brighten my winter. Corn that I freeze myself seems to taste better than the frozen stuff I can buy, perhaps because it feels so virtuously thrifty. Or maybe it just satisfies my summer urge to preserve food as lazily as possible, without the hassle of canning, pickling or jam-making.Once you’ve got your kernels at the ready, corn off the cob is an excellent foundation for a weeknight meal.For this recipe, I go the sheet-pan route and roast the kernels at high heat, which turns them golden at the edges and a little chewy. Sweet corn goes well with bold, spicy flavors, especially chiles, both powder and fresh. Here, I season the corn with chili powder (a mix of ground chiles, black pepper and other spices), and balance it out with the tangier heat of sliced jalapeños and a poblano.Then, for protein, I’ve paired everything with cubed tofu, coated in cornstarch so it becomes browned and crispy on the exterior while staying soft and pillowy on the inside.It all makes for a colorful dish with a lively mix of textures — and no toothpicks required.Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More
