Five Fabulous Reci-Tips for Tasso

By Katie Barreira

Eating out is great inspiration for home cooks. I’m forever ordering the dish with an unfamiliar ingredient or curious preparation in the hopes that it will serve as both sustenance and culinary education.

I never imagined that my latest food obsession would come from the good old pizza delivery menu, but it was there, buried in the topping selections that I came upon tasso. The parenthetical, “Cajun ham,” gave me enough of a clue to ring in an order for a cheese pizza with tasso and red onion. Since then, I have enjoyed the combination with such regularity that the pizza establishment knows me by name, that is, “Ms. Tasso and Red Onion.”

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Easy Chinese New Year Dish Starts with a Bottled Sauce

By Sandy Hu

Special Fork food editor Linda Lau Anusasananan found herself in the Chinese sauce business quite by accident. She happened to sit at a food professionals’ meeting next to a food manufacturer who produced food products for other company’s brands.

Linda, an accomplished Chinese cook and a long-time member of the Sunset magazine food editorial staff, reflected, “I used to cook mostly Asian food at home and I found making the sauces took most of my time. In 1983 there weren’t many sauces available that were very good.” So she and her husband Terry took the plunge.

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Mac & Cheese Night

By Andrew Hunter

Mac & Cheese is my generation's original comfort food. It was on home menus so often that it became a packaged food that our moms used for convenience. But many of us kids who grew up with Mac & Cheese from “the box” are now parents seeking the same comfort with a homemade spin.

We started a Mac & Cheese Night at the Hunter house when Benny and Nicky were babies and still carry on the tradition five years later. Our version changes with the kind of cheese, pasta and goodies we have in the house, but the classic recipe below is a good starting point. It can be made a day or two in advance and conveniently reheated for dinner and a few easy lunches.

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Bacon & Eggs on a Frightful Night

By Lori Powell

I have moved to Pennsylvania to be the Food Director of Prevention magazine and I am thrilled…super beyond thrilled. What I am not so thrilled about is getting stuck in the snow on the 1/3-mile-long driveway of the place where I am house sitting, until I find a more permanent situation.

It sounded so blissful at first…a 40-acre farm, remote, quiet, with a kitchen that has a Viking range, Sub-Zero fridge and sunny windows.

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Faux Foie: a Sumptuous Super Bowl Spread on a Pauper’s Budget

By Katie Barreira

Foie gras, literally, “fat liver,” is a famously French product manufactured by over-feeding geese (traditionally) or ducks, forcing the animal’s liver to more than double in size. The culinary result is a sinfully rich and silky spread that is the piece de resistance of fine dining menus and one of my favorite indulgences.

Other aspects of foie’s sinful nature have been brought to light, not only by animal rights activists, but also by chefs, like Charlie Trotter, who made foie gras (and himself) infamous when he succeeded in having the specialty item legally banned in Chicago. (The law was repealed two years later.)

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