Celebrating Mom on Mother’s Day

By Sandy Hu

I’m a mother of two sons, Dave in San Francisco, who is CEO and my partner on Special Fork; and Chris, a freelance photographer’s assistant in New York City. I’m also the daughter of 91-year-old Kiyome Matsukawa. So on Mother’s Day, I am feted by my sons and my husband Steve, and I also honor my own mother.

Mom no longer cooks anymore, but she still loves good food and is an adventurous eater. Mom was an excellent cook, as was her mother. In those days when I was growing up in Hawaii, she was considered very progressive. While most of her friends, second-generation Japanese-American women, cooked just Japanese food, my mom was a great experimenter and was eager to try Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Hawaiian and other ethnic foods. She was a good baker, making guava chiffon pies, peanut butter cookies and Japanese manju.

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How to Buy a Knife

By Craig Deppe

When most people decide to explore the wonderful world of cooking, one question seems to pop up almost immediately, “Are my knives good enough?” To which the answer is, “Probably not.”

The next question is almost always, “What kind of knives do I really need?” To which the answer is, “Good ones, but not as many of them as you might think.”

You will never regret buying good-quality knives and, if you take good care of them — hone them every time you use them, have them professionally sharpened once or twice a year, keep them clean and NEVER get them too hot (no dishwasher or stovetop!) — they will give you a lifetime of effortless slicing, dicing and chopping.

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Peel ‘n’ Eat

By Andrew Hunter

We discovered something amazing recently that compels the boys to eat foods they would normally shun. It’s both simple and surprising, but if they peel it, they’ll eat it. This miraculous discovery came when we realized they would eat a pound of edamame in one sitting. So we applied the same logic to shrimp and watched with anticipation and voilà!

With summer on the horizon and the sun shining brighter into the evening, we set up shrimp boils on the patio table. The boys peel and eat shrimp, a critter they previously refused. We peel and eat with them together sometimes and other times I peel a bunch for shrimp cocktail, which is one of Marilyn’s favorites.

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What Goes Around Comes Around: BBQ Ribs in a Clay Pot

By Lori Powell

Having just announced spring last week, we are back with a cold front.  This calls for warm measures in cooking!

When I moved to Pennsylvania, one of the items that moved with me was a clay pot Romertopf -- the original, unglazed terra cotta pot for gourmet cooking, as the pamphlet reads). Funny what you discover in the recesses of your kitchen cabinet.

This pot was, I think, re-gifted to me by my Aunt Gladys when I got my first apartment in Virginia Highlands, Georgia. It was my first real attempt as a grownup back when I was 20.

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Marry Myself Chicken

By Katie Barreira

In 2004, Glamour magazine printed a recipe for “Engagement Chicken,” an oven-roasted, lemony meal for two, fabled to have set wedding bells a ringin’ for a number of staffers. Since then, women across the country have reported stories of domestic bliss beginning with the nurturing flavor of an engagement chicken in the oven.

Now, the magazine has assembled a cookbook’s worth of such buzz-generating meals called, “100 Recipes every Woman Should Know,”featuring classics like the “He Stayed Over Omelet” and “Let’s Make a Baby Pasta.”

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