Reviewing restaurants for 17 years taught me a lot about cooking—including how to make good Corned Beef Hash.

The table is the great altar of life.

Asparagus Vichyssoise, inspired by the chef Yotam Ottolenghi.

Peeps are a Communist plot.

Every recipe is a story, whether one from the past or a new posting on a cooking site. It always tells us about itself.

Got a great chuckle one day when a patron at a supermarket deli counter said to the clerk, “Man, I need to go on a diet. Give me some of that anti-pasta,” the “anti” said as in “anti-aging.” . . .

Of all the foods that the New World gave to the Old World as part of what we call The Colombian Exchange—maize, the potato and tomato, cacao, many squashes and beans, to name but a few—none were so readily accepted by Europe and lands beyond as that ur-American fowl, the turkey, about which we think thankfully at least once a year. . . .

Of all the foods that Columbus and his peripatetic descendants brought from the New World to the Old—the turkey, potato, peanut, tomato, and tobacco, among many—none since has been more widely planted globally than maize (Zea mays), what we call corn. . . .

“Tastes like chicken” has a lot of comic mileage because nearly everyone on the planet is familiar with the fowl. . . .

For just under one half of the year 1925, two Polish researchers ate no other food than cooked potatoes . . .

Before the year 1600, no recipes existed—anywhere—for these: spaghetti with tomato sauce, Caprese salad, red gazpacho, tabbouleh, Israeli salad, chicken tikka masala, fried green tomatoes, cream of tomato soup, ketchup, pico de gallo, chicken paprikash or, alas, the tomato sandwich. . . .

About the pig as food—about pork—many sayings have been said, and phrases turned well. . . .