Cook's Country April/May 2022

THEY SAY THE kitchen is the hearth of the home. It’s the place where everyone gathers during your dinner party no matter where you station the buffet table; the place where new neighbors get to know one another over a cup of tea and a sweet, decadent slice of chocolate cake. In San Francisco, La Cocina (“the kitchen” in Spanish) is also the hearth of the city. This nonprofit business incubator is a commercial kitchen that provides immigrant, working class, and low-income women a place to work, to find access to business consulting, and to create connections to capital. It’s a place for them to fulfill their dreams. La Cocina’s vision is “to give everyone the opportunity to make a living doing something that they love to do.” In this…

THEY SAY THE kitchen is the hearth of the home. It’s the place where everyone gathers during your dinner party no matter where you station the buffet table; the place where new neighbors get to know one another over a cup of tea and a sweet, decadent slice of chocolate cake. In San Francisco, La Cocina (“the kitchen” in Spanish) is also the hearth of the city. This nonprofit business incubator is a commercial kitchen that provides immigrant, working class, and low-income women a place to work, to find access to business consulting, and to create connections to capital. It’s a place for them to fulfill their dreams. La Cocina’s vision is “to give everyone the opportunity to make a living doing something that they love to do.” In this case,…

MEET THE TEAM: SENIOR EDITOR MATTHEW FAIRMAN Q: Favorite food as a child? A: Easy. A tomato sandwich: cakey white bread, a slathering of Duke’s Mayonnaise, salt and pepper, and thick slices of ripe Edisto Island, South Carolina, tomatoes. During a one-week vacation on Edisto Beach, my family would eat through bushels of those juicy, softball-size tomatoes. Biting into a tomato sandwich still makes me feel like a kid who just got done playing in the surf. Q: What was your best New Orleans food find? A: Since my wife and I moved to her hometown of New Orleans just over a year ago, we’ve had some fantastic meals. If I had to choose one, it would be the Viet-Cajun crawfish boil (huge crawfish tossed in a spicy lemongrass-and-chile-infused garlic…

MEET THE TEAM: SENIOR EDITOR MATTHEW FAIRMAN Q: Favorite food as a child? A: Easy. A tomato sandwich: cakey white bread, a slathering of Duke’s Mayonnaise, salt and pepper, and thick slices of ripe Edisto Island, South Carolina, tomatoes. During a one-week vacation on Edisto Beach, my family would eat through bushels of those juicy, softball-size tomatoes. Biting into a tomato sandwich still makes me feel like a kid who just got done playing in the surf. Q: What was your best New Orleans food find? A: Since my wife and I moved to her hometown of New Orleans just over a year ago, we’ve had some fantastic meals. If I had to choose one, it would be the Viet-Cajun crawfish boil (huge crawfish tossed in a spicy lemongrass-and-chile-infused garlic butter) from Big EZ…

JUICING AT HOME saves money, allows more control over juice ingredients, and can be more convenient than buying premade juice—if you invest in the right juicer. To find the best one, we assembled a lineup of nine models, priced from about $69 to about $450, and put them to the test, juicing more than 95 pounds of carrots, kale, and grapes. We evaluated how easy they were to assemble and operate, their speed and efficiency, the quality of their juice, and how simple they were to clean and maintain. We were looking for a speedy, efficient model that produced great-tasting juice. All juicers work in roughly the same way: They process fruits and vegetables into pulp and then force the pulp through a fine filtration screen, leaving the solids behind…

Sour cherries (also known as tart cherries or pie cherries), which have been cultivated for centuries throughout Europe and the Middle East, were brought to the United States by European settlers in the 1600s. Today, Michigan is the United States’ top producer of sour cherries, most of them Montmorency, a French variety. Unless they are grown locally, sour cherries are not commonly found fresh because their delicate skin is easily damaged in transport. Most are frozen whole or processed into jams; baked goods; or, my favorite, syrup. Sour cherry syrup is enjoyed in many cultures and regions worldwide, often mixed with water for a refreshing drink. I came across a sour cherry syrup in Michigan and have enjoyed it drizzled on ice cream; poured over pancakes and waffles; and mixed…